All Forum Posts by: Johann Jells

That's plain old free Sketchup! KraftMaid has free models of all their cabs available for download on the model catalog site. The appliances were downloads too. Can't be easier. Sketchup has a very gentle learning curve compared to other CAD programs I've used.

Maybe in PA you can get slab that cheap, but when I did my own kitchen it was $2k for 33 sq ft of brown & tan stone. My tenants are thrilled to have granite tops, they're used to the crappy HD prefab laminate that always self destructs at the price point of my units. I'll look to see if I have any close up shots.

Edit: found this shot, not a new kitchen, but I painted the horrible old cabs and built a new top. Would have replaced the hardware but these particular inset overlap hinges were not to be had.

Got one

Way ahead of you. I take it a step further and do my own granite tile counters. $5/ft, and easy to repair if needed. $4 sounds hi for splash tile, I get porcelain for $2 from some local dealers. Below is a kitchen in a 450 ft 1br. You can see why I wonder about so much cabinetry!

I guess everything is big in Texas! But things are different here, you'd never have some of the bizarre spaces we have in the NY area. I've seen "kitchens" that would normally be a closet. This one, with all those cabs, a dishwasher, microwave and room for a table would opulent as a lower end rental, which $1600 actually is.

I'm renovating a rental kitchen, and want to make it nice. This is a 900 ft 3br that might rent for $1600 when I'm done. I've never put in this much cabinetry before, and wonder if I'm overdoing it. I have some tenants in 1 bedrooms who haven't turned on their stoves in years. Do I just do it up and hope it adds value to people who like to cook? It's not like there's anything else to do with the space. I think I even need to add a cab over the fridge, there's a space there behind the wall cab and the fridge that would be weird without it.

Yeah, that tax does sound very high for NYC, though it would be low for here! Surely you've looked at comps to see what their taxes are? I've seen listings for $2m properties paying <$3k tax.

It's both true. The wall of the pex is thicker than the copper though they have the same OD, and what you say about the fittings having a bigger restriction is true. But slight diameter changes can have big effects on cross section. Pex is 5/6 the ID of M copper, but only 70% the pipe cross section. The fittings with a 3/8 ID are 43%. The only way to avoid an internal fitting is to use the very expensive SharkBite style external fittings. I don't think pro plumbers would use those at all. What you do get with the homerun is only 2 restrictions, 1 at each end of the run.

There's calculations that designers make about friction in pipes per foot vs narrow port restrictions, that perhaps make the 2 narrow ports irrelevant on a long homerun. I learned about this voodoo with an indirect water heater and why it benefitted greatly from changing to a full port solenoid zone valve from the boiler, rather than the typical Honeywell zone valve that has like a 3/16 port on a 3/4 valve. The tiny port made no difference on a long heating loop since the resistance of the pipe was so high already. But the WH recovery time was much faster with a full port since it was next to the boiler. Saved me having to re plumb the whole boiler manifold system to 1".

My first exposure to the pex size issue was when I had a plumber run new risers as apart of a bath reno and he insisted that it be 3/4, and I was concerned at the amount of water that would have to be run to get it hot. I had enough experience with copper to think 1/2 should plenty for a bath and the laundry next to it. But 1/2 pex with normal fittings would not have been adequate.

Seems there's a little confusion on the thread due to the "SharkBite" brand making a number of products, including ring crimp fitting systems and the namesake push-in fittings.

I've only done a pex job once, this past year, and was pretty pleased. Bought the tool for the ratcheting stainless crimps, since they' were said to be the easiest to work with in tight retrofit situations. And they were. Made 3 outlet manifolds of 3/4 copper, put 3/4 pex ball valves on, and fished the 20 foot straightened colored lines up inside the walls of my 3 family to the kitchen bath feed. It previously was copper run outside the walls! Homeruns would have been too much of a PITA to fish double the number of lines. Would have done it in a gut job though.

Warning to the uninitiated, the ID of pex is much smaller than the same size of copper, you can't think of them as equivalent when planning flow capacity. I think that's one reason for the popularity of homeruns.

Funny you bring up Finaid, since that is where I got some of the info that led me down this path! http://www.finaid.org/fafsa/smallbusiness.phtml

On rereading, it's still not clear to a civilian that incorporating trumps the need to be active rather than passive, in addition to the clear statement that it obviates the need to provide services.

I'm still trying to find a local professional, there's an EA nearby, he's not a CPA too and he's pretty young. I guess I'm just not the trusting sort, I've had lots of bad lawyers for deals and my last EA was uneven in performance.

I've never put much weight on the landlord reference anyway, since if a tenant is bad why would a landlord say anything that would delay seeing them out the door? What am I not getting?