Comment by kleiba
1 year ago
We bought a 50 year old house that has never been touched since the year it was build. With the costs of trades being through the roof, I'm trying to do as much as possible myself - currently demoing the house to the studs (if it had studs, it's actually all brick walls and concrete floors).
In my off-hours, I'm working on an old school pixel art RPG, but in 3D.
Oh, and finally I'm also working on finding a new job :-(
You’re not alone! I cleaned 100 square meter of wall in February from everything that was put there during last 70 years. From somehow modern plasterwork with probably asbestos to two inch thick dirt in other room. Waterproofing is brittle and does not function anymore, so it comes next and then replacing windows. All by myself, the costs of trades can’t be justified especially when quality isn’t there in most cases.
I've looked into replacing windows but decided that that's going to be one of the things that I'll let professionals do.
The ironic thing is that not only are the tradies expensive, but prices for renting specialty machines are also crazy high where I currenly live. Like, I looked into renting a stand-up concrete grinder/sander -- $100 for 4 hours! Plus, you need to buy the sanding attachments which are another $200 if you go for diamond disks. I'm now actually considering using just a hand grinder and spend a whole week on what I could probably do in a day or two otherwise.
The window part ist not that hard as long the windows don’t weight too much. Of course, the wall opening should be somehow suitable and the wall stable enough to accommodate new thick and long screws (sadly not my case).
I am buying all the tools. AliExpress price and quality level if I don’t need them much. Good quality ones for the bigger tasks. I tried renting at the beginning, but it’s very expensive at the end. Sometimes it’s more about convenience and not money. Having the equipment at home allows me much more relaxed planing.
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