r/Renovations

We have this open walk-in/roman shower and water constantly ends up all over the bathroom floor when we use it. I really don’t want to rip the whole shower out or completely redo it. I’m trying to figure out if there’s a simpler fix.

The guy we bought the house from (well technically my husband bought it before we started dating) had flipped it himself, and I’m guessing the shower was meant to be the more open style that’s oh so trendy right now to appeal to buyers.

However, in real life it’s honestly not very practical and I’ve been putting up with our bathroom floor turning into a puddle every time someone showers for years and I’m over it so word of advice please consider this grievance when putting in an open-concept shower.

ANYWAY, I was thinking maybe adding another glass panel, some type of door, or hanging a shower curtain from the ceiling?? Ideally I’d like something that’s somewhat DIY-friendly and doesn’t turn into a huge project. Any ideas on what would work best with this setup? I’m desperate and so tired of my socks getting wet and having a disgusting bathroom floor.

Also if this isn’t the right subreddit to post in can someone please redirect me to the correct one? My husband is in denial and says that the shower is fine so it’s just me here. I can add more pictures as well.

I had some water damage underneath a window. I cut out the plaster and board it was on.

I am spraying the wood down with vinegar, will put some new insulation followed by a piece of osb(to get the drywall flush with the rest of the wall.

Any help on what I need to do going forward would be greatly appreciated.

We’re currently under house renovation and there is this uneven gap between the window and the tile apparently because our walls are tilted.. can this actually be the case because the tile not being aligned is really bothering me. I actually wouldnt mind if there was a gap or not as long as it was consistent throughout the whole window.
Even in the second slide pov of the floor the wall is supposed to go up meaning the diagonal of the tiles meeting will no longer sit at the corner.

this will be our bedroom, the original plan was to box them in but now I’m really looking at them and they’re at least an arms lengths apart and that would be such a huge box in almost the middle of our room!
Any other suggestions?? I have a very hard time visualizing these things.

This is how my walls look after removing existing tile. The house was built in 1930’s. Some sort of plaster over concrete board walls. So some of the plaster came off with the old tile down to the concrete board.

What do I need to do to prepare for laying the new backsplash tile? Should I remove all remaining thinset? Or just skim the wall relatively flat? Or am I good to just tile over everything since there isn’t more than ~1/4” deviation between high and low spots?

Thanks for the input!

I just spent so much time taking a backsplash off of my kitchen wall and there was sticky foam residue that I can’t get off.(it’s goes about 10ft across my kitchen) I’ve tried goo gone, alcohol, a heat gun, a rag and water, acetone (I also used a scraper with the products mentioned ) I can’t seem to get it off for the life of me. Everything takes major scrubbing/scraping and I’m getting nowhere. I also don’t want to have to replace the wall. Is there anything else I can try? Any suggestions? Can I sand then paint over this and stick the new backsplash over top? What would be the most effective solution here?

I can’t add the video of it but for a little while one of my downspouts back flowed during heavy rain. The down spout in question is my only outlet for water collection of the rain off the front of the roof. Waited a while to deal with it but finally had a drain guy come out yesterday to cam it and see what the deal was, i figured at minimum it was blocked or potentially collapsed. Turns out it was buried, I’ve lived here 3 years and have never seen it.

Lucky for me he found the outlet and it functions, no blockage and no collapse—great! All I (thought) I had to do was regrade the lawn around the vertical pop up and call it a day since we tested it and it worked, but something wasn’t quite right.

Later, after I had everything situated, I run another test before I replace the dirt around pipe. Great, easy! Water is running through the pipe and the pop up is coming up but I also see water leaking out from the side of the hole as if water was leaking upstream.

So i dug up another 2 feet or so to expose the pipe horizontally to check it and there it is…2 holes. And I know where they came from, but cant prove it enough to complain since the area wasn’t exposed when the drain guy was here. He did it tho. He had a tool to locate the general location of the drain and another tool that he slammed into the ground a 4-5 times to confirm where it was for sure by hitting the pipe with it—seems like a dumb practice.

So being a nurse, naturally I know how to fix drain lines and all that stuff of course. Kidding, obviously, but it wasn’t as hard as I expected and ChatGPT can walk you thru just about anything anyway.

Pictured is where I started vs where I ended. I may have left the vertical pipe a little high but I’d rather have it be a small mound by the edge of my yard that no one walks on than something that migrates into the ground again. On my final test before burying it, the seal was perfect and no more signs of leaking.

For people who know what they’re doing, what are your thoughts on my work?

Hello me and wife just bought our second home. The house is a livable house but needs some work.
I was given full range of the basement to do whatever I want.
On the walls there is the carbon fiber straps. We got the lifetime warranty transferred to us through the company that did it since it was a one time transfer only. The house was built in the 1957. We bought it off the original owner who built it.
The kitchen area my goal is to rip out those cabinets and the sink since the sink doesn’t work and the cabinets are trash.
Should I frame the walls at all or leave it and just add flooring.
The basement was finished before but since the repairs that had to happen years before we bought the house. Just looking for the tips and ideas. Looking at doing a hobby and hangout basement.
Carbon straps for bowed in walls. Job was done professionally.
If you are looking for the water heater it’s jn the canning room. Also there is a utilities room as well.

Hello everyone! This is the first time we have experienced a leak in our house after having it for 12 years. I am wondering what are the needed steps in order to get this fixed and avoid mold. Thank you to everyone who are willing to help!

After years of planning, reworking and designing this space we have finally completed the vast majority of it. We started with a blank wall in our builder grade home and I knew I had to do something with it. So I planned out builtins and a faux fireplace bump out with a detailed mantle and surround. Started by making the framing for everything and securing all of that. Then drywall (took the longest of course lol I never want to sand again in my life). Then we built out our surround and mantle. Primed everything. Then we started on our builtins. We built the lower cabinets and started on the walls and shelves. Installed sconces above the builtins. Then painted the builtins. All that’s left is cabinet doors on the builtins, then Roman Clay on the fireplace bumpout and painting the mantle a complementary color to the Roman clay. I can hardly believe it’s real🥹.

This is the only bad rafter tail. I don’t want to sister a board on if I don’t have to because it would bug me aesthetically. I’d like to chop and splice a new end on. Is there any problem with just cutting it off at an angle and screwing a new tail on that obviously isn’t supporting any weight but is purely aesthetic? Like I said, all the other tails are in perfect shape (old gutter seem leaked heavily on this one).

Love it or hate it, she’s done.

Thanks again for the encouragement and input last week. Shifting to a different color than the white was a game changer.

Notes: yes, the outlets are GFCI protected by the next outlet upstream; yes, I know this is code questionable; no, this will not be inspected; placement is 7” below counter top due to drawer on the front face.

Hello everyone. I live in a condo with an identical unit above me. Their bathroom drain pipe goes down my wall which is between my bathroom and my hallway. This can make their flushing quite loud. The pipe is also quite large exactly the width inside the wall.

Earlier this year I did some reading on here and decided to wrap the pipe in mass loaded vinyl and add fill the wall with insulation. The walls barely close shut and this has not resulted in any improvement.

I am deciding between

Doubling down and increasing the scope of the renovation - my preference
Ripping everything out and refinishing the walls as they were
Calling a professional - not my preference

Can anyone suggest how to further improve this?
I am considering widening the wall an inch or two to make room for more insulation. But I have no idea what else to add inside the wall. I also don’t know how to widen the door frame. I am also considering adding insulation to the ceiling since the pipe flows from the toilet across the ceiling into the wall. I wouldn’t mind redoing this bathroom anyway.
Finally if very successful I would redo the same project on the master bedroom and bathroom which has a similar in wall pipe but would be more labor intensive.

Renovating my kitchen (house built in 1950 in northern Ca).

I have the walls gutted and this large opening has only 1 jack stud. There is plenty of froom for another jack stud. Can i add another jack stud without it resting on a bottom plate 2x4? And just have it sit on the subfloor plank directly.

Seems uneccessary to try to extend the bottom plate or cut a portion of the existing out and swap in a new one. Curious what others think. See last pic.

My wife and I live in a ~800sqf cottage in Mississippi that she and her grandmother fixed up before I was in the picture. The house is very hot in the summer and cold in the winter-I'm pretty sure the walls are very poorly insulated but my focus is on the ceiling/attic.

In one half of the house they decided to remove the old ceiling from below the rafters, and put in tongue and groove on top of the rafters, and they threw all the insulation that was sitting in those rafters over to the other side of the house. So the ceiling in one side of the house is uninsulated.

So my question is what would be the smartest way to insulate this? We do want to keep about 200sqf of flat floored/accessible storage space around the attic ladder, I was thinking maybe just XPS board or something there.

From what I've read an attic fan seems like a bad idea in a poorly sealed situation like this. Is adding some insulation in between the roof rafters worth looking at as well?

My wife is convinced that nothing we do will make a difference, and would rather put the money towards building a new house, but I suspect that we could make this house more comfortable which would be nice for guests/renters/employees (we run a farm).

Just recently bought a house from renting, I have a little DIY knowhow but not a ton. Our new house has this awesome glass block window in the shower with a TERRIBLE grout job. We’ve been here about 2 months and just got a leak that found some cracks in the grout and is dripping down the outsides of the tub into the basement ceiling. The grout is dark grey and feels very crumbly and not very waterproof. Ive mitigated a large part of the leak with a (terrible) caulk job towards the bottom but am still getting water downstairs. Where the tub meets the tile/window is just grout. How/what could I do with this to prevent any more water getting down? Thank you for your time🙏