Co-student posted asking for help. I obliged with some thoughts on how to set up the problem, i.e. you started on step 2, back up a step and start at step 1 (because, though I didn’t say this, they got step 2 wrong).
So now there’s like 2-3 students emailing each other comparing answers, as in ‘i got d for question 2’. And including me in the email. So now I have to tell grown adults to stop including me in the email chain. Geeeesh. I’m happy discussing techniques and hints, but no, I do not want to see your answers. This isn’t undergrad, the point isn’t even remotely about getting the right letter answer on a quiz.
This is the type of thing that gets people an email from the dean. No thanks.
Can you tell them to stop including the dean on the email chain?
A lot of times when I click on a link on mobile version of GoA and then click “done” to go back, I’m logged out of GoA and have to log back in.
Clear your cookies is likely the answer.
The really annoying thing here is every time I view a youtube link, I have to click twice.
filed my taxes. i do it myself as I think we (household) are a pretty boring example and not very complex.
paying taxes doesn’t bother me. it’s the gazillion questions to somehow be able to answer in the 60 minutes I devote to it once a year that annoys me.
yay us, refunds.(def less annoying when this happens.)
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Our house continues to be a money pit. Not really the house this time but our oven went out in a weird scary way. The broiler somehow came on and wouldn’t turn off and it got too hot and there was an error code and it kept beeping. We had to unplug it to make it stop and there was a bad electrical smell. Thankfully dinner was cooked. The oven might be fixable but we bought it used and decided we got our $300 out of it. Sheesh!
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We are 20 months into our house, and I haven’t kept all the receipts but if we haven’t spent $100k by now, then we will be there next month. Another $80k and I think we might just be done-ish.
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6 months ago a friend’s over caught fire (pest nest was in the broiler which was used for the first time in forever that day). smoke filled the house and flames damaged the wall, oven, and adj cabinets. lucky they caught it.
stove mishaps can be a disaster. glad it’s just an annoyance.
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Yes, really so glad hubby was still cooking on the stovetop when the thing went crazy.
Speaking from experience, the good news is that once it’s done you’ll be good for many many years. We did our entire house over during the last couple of years. I haven’t done any house maintenance type things in the last few months. And that’s a first in likely decades because we always had something we wanted to get done.
The only things I have left are paint and trim in the gym, and I want to skim coat the california ceilings in the bedrooms (the rest of the house has been done). But neither of those are a big deal, and neither are pending. I’ll probably do them sometime when I’m bored. Like, between school terms lol.
Anyway, it’s kinda nice to have the whole house done. I just with my house ‘done’ looked like your house done.
“Done” won’t happen for us for years, but we are close to deciding to stay here & fix the place up. Kinda depends on if The Kid is eventually able to get a place of her own or if it turns out she will be with us FOR-EV-ER. If she is going to be under the same roof we are going to need more space/different setup.
Yeah, once we are done I think we should be down to normal maintenance for quite a while. We should have 100% of the electrical and plumbing done this year, and the three-year plan includes a new roof, new HVAC, new hot water heater, re-built windows, new storm windows, and a new driveway. The good news is a lot of this work is fairly hands-off, I’m not going to DIY any of that except I’m making my own wooden storm windows.
We also have some textured ceilings plus some visible cracks in the plaster I’d like to smooth out, and that will probably be the last thing we do as well.
What does this mean? I live here and have never heard this term.
They spray the ceilings with drywall mud then run a trowel over it to knock down the high points. They do it because it’s cheaper than finishing the ceiling flat. It’s a 90’s thing. If you know what a popcorn ceiling is, it’s like that but not quite as gross.
They looked good in the 90’s and a bit afterwards. But I believe the current modern look is old-school flat finished ceilings.
All you do to move from california ceilings to a flat ceiling is skim coat it 2-3 times with drywall mud, sand a bit in between coats. Paint, and done.
You say “all you do” is these steps, but as a DIYer that has done lots of different things, I would definitely say this is out of reach for the vast majority of DIYers. Drywall mudding isn’t super hard, but it takes practice to get right. THere is a steep learning curve. Expensive tools put to shame the cheap plastic knives, so there is a cost component. And the difficulty of working on the ceiling adds a decidedly complex twist to a labor intensive task. I would never attempt this.
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Oh ok, I had these in my house growing up - built in 1973.
Our current 1963 house has the standard drywall texture on the walls but ceilings in the bedrooms were popcorn with a layer of paint. Such a pain! I scraped one of them clean then touched up the texture and repainted. Another room we tore it out and put a wood ceiling. The other one is still that awful popcorn.
Agree the skip-coating can be tricky. I’ve done it with stucco back when I worked construction but never did it with drywall.
I am not joking, this is not something to take lightly. Popcorn ceilings are known to contain asbestos.
Asbestos Popcorn Ceilings: What Is Considered Safe?
Written By:
Spray-on textured ceiling was popular from the 1950s to the 1980s because it was an easy way for builders to hide imperfections.
Unfortunately, this was during a period when asbestos was a high-demand building material in the U.S.
Known as “popcorn ceiling,” “cottage-cheese ceiling” or “stucco ceiling,” it was typically 1 to 10 percent asbestos.
To find out if your old popcorn ceiling contains asbestos, you can purchase a test kit or hire an asbestos abatement professional.
If you buy a test kit, you will have to collect a sample of the ceiling and mail it to a lab. Hiring a professional to do it is safer but more expensive. Many inspectors recommend testing your ceiling for lead paint while you are at it.
So what do you do if you find out your popcorn ceiling contains asbestos?
Any percentage of asbestos makes popcorn ceiling dangerous. Make sure nothing disturbs it, and decide whether you want to have it encapsulated or removed.
Removing asbestos popcorn ceiling requires many precautions. It’s a job best left to qualified professionals.
Popcorn ceiling is a friable material — meaning it is very easy to damage. Friable asbestos materials release toxic dust at the slightest disturbance. Inhaling asbestos dust is what can lead to serious diseases such as asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma.
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Yep I wore a bunch of gear when I took it down. Having it painted made it way harder to get off but made really minimal dust. For the one room we took down all the drywall in big pieces so the popcorn stayed put and didn’t make a huge mess.
I was just about to comment this. Wouldn’t touch popcorn unless I had it tested. I mean, I would still do it - probably even more so if there was asbestos because I’ve done asbestos before. But I wouldn’t just start scraping it.
The other solution there is to strap the ceiling and drop in some 1/4" drywall. Leave it for the next guy.
. I would never attempt this.
Curiously, skim coating a ceiling is about the easiest drywalling I’ve ever done. I’m borderline competent at mudding and taping and am past the stage of put on 8 thick coats and sand off the first 7 so I appreciate that it’s not for everyone. But of all the mudding jobs, skim coating the ceiling was surprisingly the easiest and easiest to get right.
I suspect it helps that it’s the ceiling, and that it gets painted in a very low gloss paint which hides a lot of the potential mess. And perhaps that you’re starting with a 12" trowel so it’s easier to not get high spots.
I made a mess of the bathroom ceiling last year (knocked out a wall, put in a larger fan) and I look at it about once a month and think "what an absolute mess, I have to redo that sometime’. But nobody has ever noticed how bad the drywalling job is there. And skim coating over the california ceiling was easier than that.
Two protips: Get the mud and tape perfect. Then throw a coat of primer on it. THEN actually go back and do it perfect now that you see how bad the job is. Secondly, for top coats, water down the mud a bit. Goes on way smoother.
Well, don’t do it again in another room. Seriously.
Asbestos level mask (not n95 or dust), goggles, and coveralls. Seal the room. Wet the ceiling and then do the work. Double bag the material before you dispose of it. When you step outside the room, strip down, clothes go immediately into the washing machine and you into the shower.
Asbestos isn’t like have one cigarette. The fibers get in your lungs and stay there permanently. They don’t get flushed out. Any exposure is too much.
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