Comment by lnsru
1 year ago
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.
Yes, I have also bought a lot of tools which I never needed before in my life. And like you, I'm also usually going for the lower end price-wise because chances are that I will not ever need them again after our reno. And frankly, most of the time the tools are completely fine for me.
Interestingly, there already were a number of times where a tool came in handy that I had bought as some point in the past not when I had a need for it at that point but because it was on sale. And if not, I could always resell it, although I probably won't because it's not worth it.
As for the concrete grinder, I actually looked into buying one coming from the same mind set. But the kind of machine that I could rent for 100 bucks costs North of $3000 if I bought it new. And I will likely never need it again after using it once. So this time, I'm surely not going to buy one.
With the windows, I know there's quite a difference in terms of installation depending on where you live. For instance, in the US, you basically buy a window with a flange on it, put it in the whole and screw it into the studs. Then you foam spray the gaps and trim the window. In Germany, installing a window (to code, mind you) is a whole production. Even just measuring what kind of window to order is non-trivial. And I'm sure there's lots of variations in other countries as well.
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