@greenwitch - replying here 'cause we can’t reply in the Say It… thread. Can you roll the drapes and stash somewhere so they don’t get creased or peed on? I feel your pain. We were almost in the same situation a couple of years ago. Windows replaced three days before Thanksgiving- talk about a nailbiter!
Has anyone had to restucco/repair a house? Our house has stucco on the 2nd and the 3rd floors. The previous owners just painted over it instead of doing the repairs. After the winter, we’ve had a ton of peeling and cracking all over. (Basically the paint just hid the issues (grrrr)).
I’m struggling to get people out to give us estimates and so far have only gotten one. It was super expensive. He suggested that if we don’t repair it before next winter, that the repairs will grow exponentially and cost much more.
I’ve been doing some homework on line and while that does seem to be the case, the costs we were quoted seem way off from the national averages. There are lots of homes on our street that have stucco in horrible states of disrepair, which I understand can cause water intrusion, but I guess the question is how long does that take to happen? The stucco guy told me we ‘had to’ fix it before next winter.
I have a couple of calls out to other companies and hope they get back to me, but I’m afraid I’m going to get stuck using this company. They do beautiful work and our neighbors recommended them, but again, I almost had heart failure at the cost.
I have no recommendations on how to find the best stucco contractor in your area. One of the reasons that stucco repair on 2nd and 3rd floor homes is expensive is because of the cost for secure scaffolding, safety and liability. Scaffolding your house could cost about $5k alone.
I just finished a project where the stucco was failing with major cracks that had been left for a long time. When we opened up the walls inside there was a ton of water damage from leaks inside the walls for years. And this was in dry California!! Some internal studs were completely rotted away. If the stucco is cracked or pulled away at the top of your house near the roof, it’s pretty serious.
Thank you so much @coralbrook! Guess we’ll be re-stuccoing this season.
The company we did speak to did say they would need to scaffold the entire house and they also think they’ll need to repaint our timbers because the paint will be damaged during the stucco repair process, so the estimate includes repainting. The house is very, very tall as we have high ceilings on each level, including the basement so that makes sense about scaffolding costs.
I haven’t posted in a while but we are finally starting our project! What started with a refrigerator leak that ruined some wood floors in the dining room behind it has turned into us replacing all of our floors (minus the bedrooms). getting a new kitchen (the wall behind the fridge had a little bit of mold so they had to do mold remediation and rip out half a wall and some cabinets) and just for the heck of it we are going o do the kids/guest bathroom as well. I say we but the only thing I am doing is picking out all of the new stuff, we have hired a contractor to take care of anything as we are not handy at all.
I have all of the porcelain wood look floors, the cooktop and the bathroom vanity sitting in my garage right now and the tub is supposed to be delivered today. The contractor said they should be able to come tomorrow morning to start my bathroom- so exciting! The bathroom was the last add on, we were planning on doing it this year but once the leak happened we thought we would postpone it because it would be too expensive to do all at once. Then DH convinced me to just bite the bullet and go for it. It is a small bathroom about 8x5 with a 48 inch vanity, a toilet and a 30x60 tub. Right now the vanity is one of those that fells like vinyl and the tub has been repainted and is peeling everywhere. The tiles surrounding the tub are square, tan colored and just ugly. The floors are an extension of the floors in the main part of the house which I HATE - an off white textured tile which catches dirt in every nook and cranny.
I picked a simple white vanity that I found on Houzz and a cast iron Kohler tub (I asked if I could get the bigger 32x60 so the kids could maybe take baths that were a little deeper but the contractor said it would be way too crowded in there.) I spent a little more on the floors than I planned because I loved the marble hexagon tile I found so I saved by getting plain white subway type tile for the tub surround (it’s a little longer, I think 3x12.) Now I’m working on picking faucets, lighting, a mirror and the towel bar type accessories. I wanted to do a glass door but wth my kids still using this bathroom it is always a mess in there so for now I will use a curtain.
It is exciting but I am very bad at making decisions and I still have so many to go between this and the kitchen which will be soon as the cabinets should be here int he next week or so!
Beautiful @momtogkc!
Suggestion about the tile for your floor - pick a darker grout so you aren’t going nuts trying to keep a light grout clean!
I used that hex mosaic tile (well, not that exact stuff, I used this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004P96URO/ ) on the floor of the master shower, it looks great and the honed finish provides a lot of grip so it is not slippery at all.
Agree the with suggestion for a non-white grout, a light grey looks really great.
One thing about these sheets is that there can be fairly noticeable differences in color from one sheet to the next. If you just randomly put the sheets down, there will probably be spots where you can tell where the sheets are. My tile guy didn’t try to minimize the color changes, and I didn’t notice it was like that until it was installed.
I would suggest going through all of the sheets and laying them out on the floor. If there are any that are noticeably darker or lighter than the others, maybe consider not using those sheets, or try to lay them out to minimize the color changes from sheet to sheet.
Totally agree with @notrichenough to lay out the tile before adhering. There are tons of natural variations in marble. We made a lot of shifts before settling on the" right" color pattern. Our contractor also recommended getting an extra box so we could mix and match and then took the left overs back.
Thank you! I have not picked the grout yet so I will keep that in mind. My contractor had me buy 55sf of tile which seemed like too much but I got it anyway. I noticed the different variations in each square so I did lay them out in my living room last week. I like the ones that have a little darker color in them so I tried to pick those out and put them in a separate pile then made two other piles of “medium color” and “lighter color” sheets. It is still confusing but I’m hoping they can help when I get to that stage. Since i go them at Home Depot it is was to run back and grab a few more sheets if I need to swap some out.
On the back of the tile it says to seal them before and after grating then it gives two options for sealers. It says one keeps a natural stone look and the other makes it a bit darker to bring out the natural variations in the stone - I wish there was somewhere they had pictures to show the difference but I haven’t found anything yet. I’m thinking I’ll go with the darker option since everything else will be so white in there.
Ooh - my tub was just delivered as I was typing! 
My mom and dad just moved to an apartment and met with a realtor today about putting their house on the market. She told them to paint the whole interior a light grey and remove the old carpet and put laminate floors throughout. They already have basic white tile floors in the bathrooms so they will leave those. I suspect we will also have to remove the dated wallpaper in the kitchen, but not sure. I guess grey is still the in thing, but I wonder for how long?
Paint it grey. When it goes out of fashion, it will not be your problem. If you are going through the trouble of painting the whole house, remove the wallpaper. It will looks really odd against fresh paint.
I just want to say… one hundred times what @notrichenough said. Tile guys just slap the stuff up, they don’t care. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve walked back in and there is a big white or dark blotch in the middle of a tile layout. I’ve spent way too much money pulling off the odd sheet and replacing it. The beauty of Home Depot or other stock tile places is you can return all the ones you don’t like and easily get more. Also, if feasible, search the boxes on the shelf and look for a Lot Nbr. Ask me how I made that terrible mistake with a bunch of boxes of tile with different lot nbrs that were all slightly different in color!!
Even worse is when they take the ONE, and I mean the ONLY ONE piece of tile that has some big brown blotchy natural color variation and put that one and only tile right under the toilet!!
Regarding painting the house gray–all of the light switches and electric outlets are ivory. They would look yellow with gray paint. I am proposing antique white for walls and ceilings (easier than cutting in around the ceiling) to avoid replacing all the outlets with white. The trim is already white but will be repainted. I would choose a lighter wood laminate for the floors. Whoever buys it will want to paint to match their stuff anyway. I think they will be happy with a clean look, as long as it’s a neutral color.
The kitchen is a different story. The cabinets are dark with dark wainscoting around the room, and the wallpaper is country blue and beige. I’ve never liked the wallpaper, even when it was new. My mom didn’t mention what changes need to be made in there, other than the floor. Painting the cabinets would be terribly time consuming and they are ready to get the thing sold. I definitely think the wallpaper needs to come down and hope that the walls were prepped before it was stuck up there. I had a devil of a time removing wallpaper in my own house a few years ago.
Seriously consider replacing all switches and outlets with white (use the wide switches). I guarantee it will have a positive impact. Ivory light switches really date a house.
At the very least, consider replacing all wallpates with ss, like this one:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Leviton-1-Gang-Decora-Wall-Plate-Stainless-Steel-84401-40/301349145
You will have about a month to put the house on the market though. Summer is when RE market goes into dormancy. Good luck!!
Thanks @coralbrook! I will go look at the boxes of subway tile in the garage and see if there is a lot number. The hexagon tiles I just bought sheet by sheet, I didn’t get them in a box so I will just have to look at them closely and hope I pick out the best ones. I did a quick run through of them and tried to separate the lightest ones from the darker ones. It is only an 8x5 bathroom and with the tub, toilet and vanity taking up most of the space there won’t be too much floor that shows so I should only have to pick out a dozen or so sheets that I like best. Luckily they are all grey and white, no brown LOL!
The guys showed up to rip everything out this morning. My dog is stressed but happy because to keep her away I am feeding her constant treats. I knew it would be loud but I didn’t realize it would be a little smelly. Kind of a bummer they decided to show up on a Friday as now they are taking my kids toilet out and won’t be back to work on it until Monday - 2 extra days with them complaining about having to use their sister’s bathroom! Oh well, I am so excited to have that old stuff out I can ignore them for a while.
I like those stainless steel plates if you’ve got a midcentury modern house, but I guarantee you no one would consider them a plus in my neighborhood of Colonials and Tudors from the 1920s! I agree white looks better, but I’m not sure I’d bother.
I once tiled an entire powder room with marble tiles the other owner had considered too streaky. You had to line them up so dark and light sides were up against each other. I laid them all out on the floor and explained to the contractor what the plan was. Luckily he understood and it looked pretty good. (In an early 1990s way - I’m sure it looks horribly dated now!)
@BunsenBurner - I managed to drape the curtains length wise over an upstairs couch. At least they had finished with the two downstairs windows, so I could rehang those.
Thanks for the idea of rolling! I’ll do that next time if I need to. So far, my little dog hasn’t tried to jump on the curtain couch and make a little nest or anything.
Phew. My cats would not have been so nice to any fabric object. It would have been covered with cat hair in nanosecond!
+100 to laying out the tile and the lot numbers. The variation (or even the whole box is much darker than the other boxes) reminds me a lot of getting different lot numbers of wallpaper back in the 1980’s. If I could manage it, I’d get it all off the same pallet too!
I had all new white outlets in the old farmhouse I’m remodeling. Incredibly cheap and easier update–looks great. A lot of people cross off a house with wallpaper–so much work! Good luck selling. I know it’s a balance between cost, time, energy on what gets done to put it on the market.
Those ivory ones yellow and get dirty over the years. You don’t really notice until you hold an old plug next to a new one.
Replacing them with white ones is a quick and easy change that you can do yourself for very little money, and it will look much better. I’m mixed on whether to use wide switches or not. I don’t mind the look of traditional switches, but some people think the wide ones are more contemporary.