All Forum Posts by: Bob H.

As others have said, get the rough areas as smooth as possible before proceeding. I've always primed the newly applied drywall compound with Kilz water-based primer, and it looks fine. I don't know why you'd want to bother with oil-based primer unless you were working with exterior metal or something special like that.

People debate whether to prime before or after texture or both. I've always primed before the texture and painted over the texture without additional primer, with good results.

I have a house for rent in Colorado. Today I heard from a lady who works for a small company in Kansas and is "scouting" for herself and about eight families who will be moving from Kansas when the company moves its headquarters to Colorado later this summer.

She said the company is going to rent homes for some of the employees, which I presume is for a limited time. The time frame could fit with my plans for the house, but I don't know how to screen tenants like this. I have never rented to a corporation.

In the usual screening process, I try to verify the applicants' employment information and rental history. I rely on a screening service to produce a credit score or a tenant-screening score. With a corporate employee whose employer is paying the rent, I suppose I still want to make the employee responsible for the rent if the company doesn't pay. I think I want to evaluate the individual's rental history -- at least regarding property damage, pet problems, etc. -- and I want credit information for the company. This doesn't fit the process I've been using.

What do you suggest? Should the employee be on the lease as a tenant with the company as a guarantor, even though the company is the primary payer? How do I get information about the company's credit? Do I also need a credit report on each of the residents? What can go wrong here, aside from the things that can go wrong with a regular rental to a family?

Thanks, @Chris Mason, but there's brick on the outside. I wouldn't want to go through that.

@Teri Feeney Styers, we'll ask, but I think the builder will refuse to reverse the tub. Before making an offer, we asked about something else, and the builder representative said, "The home is sold as shown," which is a polite way of saying, "Take it or leave it." Yesterday I met some neighbors who had the same kind of tub and asked the builder about it. As the neighbor recalled, the builder said, "No way!" Like many people who have tubs in bathrooms with separate showers, he and his wife never use the tub. He put a board over it to hold plants or something.

The builder apparently continued to build more homes with this kind of tub after the problem had been pointed out. The city building official said the city inspects for code compliance but not bad design -- hardly reassuring in light of the municipal fees that drive up home costs everywhere.

@Mike McCarthy is right about the feasibility of cutting through a post-tensioned slab, as long as the tendons are located first, but no one wants to incur this expense and the builder can find another buyer.

My wife and I have been considering a "light" fix: By cutting access panels into the bedroom wall to the left of the tub, we could move the faucet to the front and replace the narrow strip of tile where the faucet is now. Then it might be possible to install a remote-control drain with a button at the front of the tub; I've seen one model and there are others, but it might be hard to get enough access through the side wall to install the control mechanism below the tub.

I am in the process of buying a new-construction home. We had a home inspector look at it today. Many of the problems are minor -- typical of a home just built -- but there are a few that seem important and hard to solve. I am looking for advice to help negotiate with the builder during an option period that allows me to cancel the contract at a minimal cost. Of course, I hope to find solutions and keep the deal.

The most difficult problem is that the tub in the master bathroom is installed essentially backward. As you can seen in the photos, the faucet and drain are at the far end of an alcove, so it's impossible to move the drain stopper or turn the water on and off without being in the tub. In addition, there is no access panel to allow maintenance of the plumbing, which the inspector says is required. A cosmetic related problem is that the tub is not centered in the tiled deck; it's much closer to the far wall than it is to the front of the tub where a person would have to enter. Also, because the sloped end of the tub is at the end allowing access, there is very little space for a person to enter the tub and step on the level surface.

The obvious solution is to reverse the direction of the tub, putting the sloped end toward the far wall and the plumbing at the open end. That's not simple, because there is no basement or crawl space; the tub is installed over a cable-tension slab.

One possible solution I thought of would be to take out the tub, reverse it and install it a little higher, with a slightly sloped, essentially horizontal pipe running under the tub from the drain to the existing trap, a distance of maybe 45 to 48 inches. I have read that that's not a good approach, though, and apparently would not meet code.

Do you see any reasonable way to approach this?

Another significant but easier-to-solve problem is that the back door opens outward. I have never seen that before. Aside from aesthetics and possible trouble with wind blowing the door, I've read that this is a security issue because, in the absence of special hinges, it's easy for a burglar to enter the home by removing the hinge pins. I'm interested in your experience or opinions on an exterior door that swings outward.

@Account Closed, this decision turns on the narrow question of what constitutes residential use of the property, as opposed to business use. HOA rules and ordinary leases often require residential use, and the HOA had a weak argument in stating that renting a place to stay for a short time is not a residential use.

Many HOAs have deed restrictions that say homes may not be rented for terms shorter than a minimum, such as 30 days or six months. The HOA in this case did not have a minimum rental duration and therefore had to rely on the residential use argument.

Nothing in this case is going to allow short-term rentals in communities that require all leases to have long terms. 

The court's opinion is at http://www.txcourts.gov/media/1441730/161005.pdf 

Either would work, but I'd avoid the laminate in bathrooms and kitchens. If you like the wood look but want the durability of tile, consider the new tile that looks like wood.

If you do go with laminate, humor me and do it right: I keep seeing homes in which installers were too lazy to remove the baseboard from the walls. They lay the laminate inside the baseboard and then cover the gap between the laminate and the baseboard with quarter-round that matches the floor but not the baseboard or, worse, with a ton of caulk.

Either way, this leaves the baseboard too short and looks terrible.

The right way is to remove the baseboard, lay the laminate up to the wall (minus a quarter-inch or whatever the manufacturer recommends for expansion), and then reinstall the baseboard on top of the laminate. Ideally you would sand the baseboard and paint it, then reinstall it, fill the nail holes, caulk the top next to the wall, paint the top edge of the baseboard and the filled holes, then paint the bottom edge of the wall. It's definitely more work but worth the effort.

Lead-based paint, maybe?

I think drawer slides typically are attached to the front of the cabinet on the inside and to the back of the cabinet. You need to first build two boxes. Each box you build should have a front made of the same material as the back and sides. This front will support the decorative front you need to buy. Ideally, the front, back and sides of each box would have a slot near the lower edge to accommodate the edge of the thin bottom.

Get two decorative drawer fronts from the kitchen design department at Home Depot, Lowe's or some other place. Finish them, as well as you can, to match the cabinet. From the inside of each drawer box, screw through the front of the box and into the decorative drawer front, being careful not to go all the way through the decorative front.

If you are going to add knobs to the decorative front, do that before attaching the decorative front to the box. Countersink your knob screws into the decorative front or the box front so they don't interfere with mounting the decorative front to the box.

@Jim Adrian is right that those centered knobs look weird, but people probably could get used to them.

Some close-up pictures would reveal more flaws, but your kitchen really doesn't look too bad now. New appliances, including replacing the range hood with a microwave, would do a lot.

For the cabinets, at least get oil-based paint. It takes much longer to dry and is more work to clean up than latex paint, but you'll get fewer brush strokes and a better result.