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A week or so ago I woke up to take a shower and the water flow in the upstairs shower was really slow. As a test, I bypassed our water softener and the flow came back. I left it that way until I could look at it further. Earlier this week my wife mentioned there were "black spots" in...

I am working toward finishing our basement. Right now I need to add several outlets to an existing finished wall. I know that for a new wall I have to support/secure the romex 8" after the box and every 4-1/2' after that. What are the requirements for adding outlets to an existing wall. The...

Well my shoulder has gotten good enough (sort of) to go and use my meter. I measured 24VAC across the end switch then tripped it manually - no change. The microswitch is definitely toast. Can just the end switch be replaced or do I have to replace the entire valve assembly? If so, where...

Our master bedroom and bathroom are adjacent to the garage attic. As far as I know it is just a standard 1/2" SheetRock wall (not 5/8 FireCode). I'll check next time I am in the garage attic. I checked with a friend who has a similar stairs put in by the builder and it is rocked. No...

Well I decided that the Basement remodel meant we needed some additional storage sapce and the attic above our attached garage would be perfect to last week I installed some pull down attic stairs. Then, after I finished I found a comment that installing pull-down attic stairs can compromise...

Good catch hj, sorry for the oops. :o The 48" is correct and the 8' door width is wrong; I must have been thinking of the opening when I said 8'. An 8' wide door would indeed be huge and way more than the Johnson Pocket Door Frame could handle. The depth of the mud room will be 11' (the...

To achieve the function and look I'm looking for, dual bypass doors seems like it would be more work not less. The overall wall is 15' long but there is an intersecting wall just after the door. This allows for a 48" door with about 18" on each side. No way my wife will go for a track on the...

I get heat upstairs whenever the upstairs zone valve is closed and the circulation pump is running. The upstairs thermostat is properly opening the valve but I guess the end switch in the upstairs zone valve is not working. The circulation pump turns on when any of the other zone valves are...

I'm pretty sure my wife would never go for the surface mount slider. I chose the Johnson 2000 series over the 1500 series because I really like the extruded I-beam design over the traditional folded sheet-metal channel. It only costs about $50 difference and I can remember all the grief my...

In my basement remodel I am planning a large (8' wide) pocket door to seperate the mud room from the main living room. The reason for the wide door is to allow large items to be moved in (such as a pool table). Normal swinging doors would consume a lot of space given that the doors will...

I have hot water baseboard heating and for some reason the upstairs thermostat seems to be opening the zone valve but not turning on the circulating pump. The downstaris zones appear to work fine and when they engage the circulating pump, I get heat upstairs. What is supposed to turn on the...

Will the Outside Air Kit reduce the "oil smell" Things are progressing on the basement project and my wife is starting to ask about stuff. One thing she has noted several times is the "oil smell" that we get in the basement. She says she notices it the most when the "whole-house fan" is on...

I am putting a HT in my basement and am planning on mounting my surround speakers and wall sconces to rectangular columns along the side of the room. I would like to run some sort of inexpensive conduit to them so that I can change the speaker wire later if I need to. I've attached a floor...

Thanks Lonny, So what you are talking about is a one-sided version of what hj first posted (putting a 2x8 on top so it overlaps on both sides). I only need to rock one side of the wall so the offset 2x4 could be a good option. Great idea about peeking into a new house being built. We...

Well, thanks for the interesting discussion. The idea of putting the rock on the wall first for a non-loadbearing wall so it can float as the ceiling joists move is an interesting idea. I'm not sure it will really work, though. Once the top plate of a wall is nailed to the joists it really...

I am putting up a partition wall in my basement that runs parallel to the ceiling joists. It falls in between the joists so I am adding blocking between the joists to nail the top plate to. As I was doing that, a question popped into my mind. When I finally get around to sheetrocking the...

Another options I just thought of which might be a middle ground solution. Cut the back wall sheetrock on the right at the point where the new wall hits it in the finished area and on the left at the nearest stud then slide a stud in behind the wall on the right to nail the sheetrock to and...

Yes you are correct, it misses it by at least 5" in both directions. Opening the wall and adding studs to match the new wall seemed like the "corrrect way" but it also seems like moving backwards as it means breaking open a nice clean floated wall :(. I was hoping for another magic cure but...

Just Added them to the original post. The wall shouldn't be an obstruction to the cleanout. My thought to build some sort of removable box around it or to build a fixed soffit with some sort of removable end.

I am in the process of finishing my basement and want to add a partition wall to extend an existing wall along the stairs back to the back wall. We have a walk-out basement and that part of the back wall is above grade so it is conventional wood frame and is finished on the inside with...