What did you do today?

[highup]

I don’t pay for transitions so I’m not up to speed on their exact price. A single 6’6” transition piece is $65? Used to be maybe $25 per transition. I figured current prices somewhere around $35 to $40 but damn $66 just hurts. I’d have @highup doing Z bar up to a clean cut raw edge for that price. I suppose the installers these days would have to be able to leave a clean straight edge though.

You laugh, but these guys actually did pretty close to a 45° angle in that living room. That said I've got a Starrett angle finder which shows the miter angle and the actual cut angle. That Starrett is usually dead on perfect but for some reason I made trip after trip to the saw to shave off an extra 32nd.. my fault fer sure. Starrett don't lie.
As far as installation costs go, I haven't figured out what to charge. I've got more than a few hours just placing the trim in the living room. That doesn't include the turn and tack to 22 ft of carpeting to the transition. I'll bill out the job out on Friday but I'm not sure what I'm going to charge for it. There are six, 36 inch doorways, plus 22-ish feet in the living room. I've never heard of a linear foot charge for stuff like this. I think they ordered 49 ft of this reducer. I mean I estimating an additional $175 to $200 for screwing with it. Probably not nearly enough.
I go as far as sanding the bottom of the reducer trim with my belt sander and 60 grit paper to give the adhesive something to grab onto.

 

[highup]

Changing plans on doing my dashboard mod to add 3 gauges. I want the dash itself to look somewhat stock so I removed the radio and that's where I'm going to put the gauges.
I bought a 5 ft long piece of 1/8 inch aluminum today and that will block in the area where the radio was. I'll drill three 2 inch diameter holes into the aluminum to install the gauges.
I'll decide later on what I want to do for a radio.
I was going to start my modification by the two heater vents in the center of the dash, then make a piece that from that place all the way down to the center console in one piece. Too difficult, and it just wouldn't look right.
I was originally thinking of making the console/dash all in one piece, but in a 1993 pick up, I think it would look kind of corny trying to over modernize it. I'm going to take this one step at a time as the Rice Krispies tell me what to do next.
So far I've removed a small section of the dash that contained the radio, cigarette lighter and vents.
I cut out the radio opening and made it slightly wider than the original radio opening.
I then cut an piece of 1/8 inch thick aluminum to fill in that radio void.
I drew out an accurate template for the three gauges. I'm going to cover the piece of aluminum with some black formica for the background behind the gauges.
I could have made this out of stainless but then it would match nothing else in the truck and look kind of like out of place.
To connect the piece of aluminum to the back side of the section of dashboard , I glued in two 10/24 nuts into the plastic piece above the radio area. Those two fasteners will hold the aluminum in place after I mount the gauges. I haven't figured out yet how to secure the bottom part of the aluminum so it doesn't rattle around, but I have some ideas.
Film at 11:00, as they say, but I don't recall them saying which day at 11:00.
Here's the aluminum in place and here are the threaded sections that I have epoxy into place to mouth the aluminum too.

 

[C.J.]

You laugh, but these guys actually did pretty close to a 45° angle in that living room. That said I've got a Starrett angle finder which shows the miter angle and the actual cut angle. That Starrett is usually dead on perfect but for some reason I made trip after trip to the saw to shave off an extra 32nd.. my fault fer sure. Starrett don't lie.
As far as installation costs go, I haven't figured out what to charge. I've got more than a few hours just placing the trim in the living room. That doesn't include the turn and tack to 22 ft of carpeting to the transition. I'll bill out the job out on Friday but I'm not sure what I'm going to charge for it. There are six, 36 inch doorways, plus 22-ish feet in the living room. I've never heard of a linear foot charge for stuff like this. I think they ordered 49 ft of this reducer. I mean I estimating an additional $175 to $200 for screwing with it. Probably not nearly enough.
I go as far as sanding the bottom of the reducer trim with my belt sander and 60 grit paper to give the adhesive something to grab onto.

When I was ‘polishing turds’ I would charge as much as I could have made had I gone and done a new job that wasn’t all messed up for a different customer that day. If I can go and make $500 a day installing LVP for Suzy homemaker then I’m gonna charge $500 to polish a turd for somebody else otherwise I’m gonna go and make $500 putting Suzy’s LVP in and you can figure out how to polish that turd yourself. Your numbers may vary but $500 is just an example. You do top notch work so don’t feel bad for charging appropriately. In fact when was the last time you gave yourself a raise? I think it should be today.

 

[zannej]

Thanks, CJ. I looked at the Zamma products & they had some negative reviews about the way they attach to the floor. Apparently they glue on and stuff doesn't line up right and the pieces don't stay on. The MSI/A&A stuff comes with a metal track and screws down. Also, I didn't see any of the Zamma in a matching color (and I looked). If they actually had it in stock at the stores it would be nice so I could compare but they hardly have any at all. I've looked at both HomeDepot and Lowes. It sucks that my good neighbor is no longer in the flooring business. He might have been able to find something for me.

Taking the lamination off of the vinyl plank made me wonder if I could scrape the backing off of some scrap sheet vinyl (it's somewhat thick-- I'll have to get pics at some point) and then adhere it to a wood or metal transition strip (tucking it under the edges). Since I intend to use whatever is left from my mom's bathroom to do the floor in the guest bathroom, I might not have enough to go in to the doorway so I want to bring the vinyl planks in to the doorway more and have the transition piece go to the edge. Probably won't look the best. Alternative is to use scraps for the doorway. I think I have some scraps left from my bathroom. I had given a large chunk of scrap to some friends to put in their trailer. It covered the whole room. So there's not much scrap left from my bathroom.

Is it even possible to do the vinyl sheet glued to a transition strip or should I just go with something that is "close enough" for a match?

I finally got up around 9pm and had some ramen but I still feel exhausted.

 

[highup]

I appreciate that a lot. The shop I am working for originally said that they wanted me to start doing all the patterned material. I was told I would measure it and give them my estimate rather than them trying to guess. Well, someone else is doing the measuring and he's actually doing quite well. The shop gives the customer the price for the carpet and pad and then bills them whatever I decide to charge. It's a better relationship than most stores would ever offer someone and I probably cut myself short because I don't want us overstep the boundaries....
......the boundaries that I probably put on myself. I tend to rethink my charges a few times over and then come to a fair conclusion prior to billing it out. Something is fair to me, and still fair to the customer. I suppose I could build $2,000 for installing a hundred yards of carpet....... But I don't work that way.

 

[highup]

When I get done applying the black formica to the aluminum which will hold my three gauges, it's going to look sort of like this.
.....
Except it won't be a piece of paper, and the gauges will be real, and with any luck it will look happily decent. Good enough for an antique S10 pickup.

 

[zannej]

Looks like the project is coming along nicely in planning stages, Highup. It will look very cool when you are done. Are there any places like U-Pullit in your area where you can go pull parts off of old junkers? I wonder if you can get any of the parts you want from scrapped vehicles.

Got a call from my friend's gf. She's upset because Walmart called her back & said that she doesn't qualify to be hired (despite having been told they would hire her earlier). Not sure how she can't qualify because they hire people with criminal records and all sorts of things. My only guess is someone who knows her told them knot to hire her. Her current place of employment called her to yell at her for not returning to work yet. She's got active Covid but tested negative earlier but my friend tested positive. Everyone in the household is sick and having fevers. She did the responsible thing by not returning while sick. The casino clinic told her to quarantine for 14 days. Her boss wanted her to only quarantine for 10 days-- but she is still sick. They basically told her they are firing her for not returning to work while having active Covid. I told her to go get tested again and then if they try to fire her, sue for wrongful termination and/or unemployment benefits for being wrongfully terminated. She's currently trying to figure out where she can work since she needs to pay for her car and cellphone. She also told me that her sister, her sister's husband, the sister's baby, the sister's husband's brother, etc all have Covid and are using nebulizers. Her mom (who has Covid for the 3rd time) is not doing well. She said that my friend's ex's son has Covid. Which means my friend's daughter has Covid and is likely the one who gave him Covid (if he didn't get it at school) since the ex brought her home halfway through quarantine. That means they likely infected classmates and possibly teachers. The school by all rights should shut down, but they insisted the kid with Covid had to attend classes in the first place so I doubt they will.

 

[highup]

Zan, I've been looking up ideas for a console that goes to the dashboard. Custom-made stuff by do-it-yourselfers, not commercial pre fab stuff.
I want to put a main power switch, a switch for the gauge lights with possibly a reostat/dimmer, and a manual switch for my radiator fan. I also like to install two or three USB ports for charging.
Once I had this part of the dash done, console can be done separately and it doesn't have to mold up into the dash like I had previously planned. I'll have to wait and see how this turns out to see what I need to do next. I've never been good at planning a project from start to finish in one step.

 

[zannej]

That makes sense. I was just thinking that maybe there are some bits and pieces you could pull off of old vehicles that might work- a mix & match to make something custom out of them-- if that makes any sense.

I've been thinking about my flooring again & trying to figure out what will be the best starting point for laying it out. I went and measured and realized that what I thought was around a 4" bumpout is almost 7-1/2" (it's two 2x4s and light box switches in between. Now, I could always pull that back a bit so long as the switch boxes still fit. I plan to have a double rocker switch in a single gang box on one side and a GFCI outlet on the other side with the outlet higher than switches (so I can plug in the washing machine).

I'm thinking it might be easier to start on the lower right part of the diagram & notch the first board to fit in the doorway-- leaving room for a transition strip & track. The transition strip size may end up determining how far into the doorway I need to bring the flooring. I think I may err on the side of caution & do it a bit long just in case. I can trim it off if it is too long. I saw some stuff about up to a certain point in the doorway. Although, I don't want to waste any flooring.

This is my layout:

It's ~122"x94.5" and planks are 7"x48". I saw a suggestion to stagger the starting boards like so: full board, 2/3 board, 1/3 board leaving the shortest one around 16", but I need to remember that it has to go in to the doorwway ~2.5"

Leaving an expansion gap I think that means I would have to notch the first board about 2.75" deep and also notch around the door frame so roughly 5.5" (since it's about 5.25" and I'm adding expansion gap of 1/4").

I'm going to add to my thread about this and have more pics.

 

[Mark Brown]

today.... the flooring fought back!



Apparently you cannot work with safety floor for weeks on end and not suffer the consequences.

 

[zannej]

I was wrong about the Zamma flooring. I was confusing it with another brand that had bad reviews. Zamma had decent reviews. They don't seem to have the "antique mahogany" to match the MSI/A&A flooring, but I'm wondering if the "Shadow Hickory" is close enough. I can order cheap samples to compare. Although, the sample for Shadow Hickory is from Lifeproof and it seems Zamma made something to match. I checked both Lowes and HD. The latter had a larger selection but none are in stock.

Ouch, Mark. That looks painful!

 

[C.J.]

Zamma makes a match for many different flavors of flooring. Lifeproof, Home Decorators, Traffic Master… pretty much whatever HD sells will have a matching Zamma reducer to go with it and I’m sure Zamma isn’t just limited to HD. I think that’s all Zamma does is transitions so it makes sense that they can do them cheaper than other manufacturers can which I’m sure is why they are being used as opposed to the LVP manufacturers themselves.

I did a Coretec job couple weeks ago. Here’s a baby threshold that came with it. As @highup mentioned somewhere on this forum, when he talked with Coretec they said their baby threshold doesn’t come with a snap track yet there clearly is one in the wrapper. Clearly this is a Shaw threshold that matches a Coretec product but that doesn’t surprise me because Shaw owns Coretec. Then again maybe it is a Zamma threshold. Nobody will ever know

 

[C.J.]

My kids came and visited me this week. We had a blast. Went tubing, drove through the ****** parts of town, had a few great meals and lots of laughs. Got this text from my boy today and I guess I did something right for once. Hope all you guys have as great a day as I did today.

 

[Mark Brown]

I mean... that sounds good and all, but I dont think this world is ready for two of you buddy.

 

[C.J.]

Hopefully he wants to emulate current me and not old me

 

[Mark Brown]

current you is what I'm worried about

 

[zannej]

I managed to scrape my arm on the same spot on the microwave door that cut my thumb. Maybe it is sharper than I realized.

Mark, I hope your hand heals quickly.

CJ, I'll have to see if I can find Zamma's company site and figure out if they have anything that matches my flooring. I am going to order samples of the life-proof hickory to compare to my antique mahogany to see if the color is close enough. I'm not good at differentiating colors that well.

These are photos of the Lifeproof shadow hickory

This is the stock photo of the MSI antique mahogany

Obviously the latter has more dark spots-- I actually prefer the Lifeproof's look with less black-ish coloring.

This is the photo of the Zamma shadow hickory trim

I'm tempted to just order the transition instead of the samples and hope it matches well enough.
We don't expect perfection in this house.

Something I didn't think about with the room size was that the measurements are done with the existing walls that are very thin wall panels and some of the paneling will have to be removed and replaced-- because it's super thin/cheap crappy ugly wood stuff. I *might* end up using "waterboard" a sort of waterproof drywall that is purple (if the local hardware store still has it). It's thicker and I'd have to measure just how thick. It cracks easily though.

I really wish I'd ordered enough of the MSI stuff to do the kitchen, but I wasn't anticipating the floor deteriorating the way it did. I also wish they sold vinyl tile or planks that looks like parquet.

to get an idea of the wall panels (and ugly ceiling-although not as ugly as the ceiling in my room that looks like pegboard tiles)

It's thinner wood paneling over slightly thicker wood paneling. I don't like drywall so we will probably get more paneling of some sort. Maybe something similar to beadboard.

 

[highup]

My kids came and visited me this week. We had a blast. Went tubing, drove through the ****** parts of town, had a few great meals and lots of laughs. Got this text from my boy today and I guess I did something right for once. Hope all you guys have as great a day as I did today.

View attachment 12736

That is really cool. I think a lot of times you know that you're doing the right thing but for him to go to the point of actually sending you a message like that...... That's over the top cool.
I don't have any kids so that's not going to happen to me......
....well, not in the same way that you received an acknowledgment that you've done the right thing.
I got a surprise today. My brother has been helping me with a carpet job for a little over a week. We've been working at a home for a retired couple and their daughter and three children live with them.
The kids like to talk a lot, but overall, they've been pretty darn good the entire time. The oldest of the daughter and I think she's around 11? She's bright and has a good sense of humor and plays with her younger brothers and you hear laughter all the time.......... ear piercing at times. . You know, that I don't do production work so this is actually been kind of a fun job. They clear out one room each day and we complete one room each day.
Today we finished the master bedroom and we're outside for quite a while packing out tools and rerolling some of the carpet that was removed and putting it in my truck.
The kids came out side and they knew that we were leaving and both the two younger boys came over with there arms spread out wanting a hug. It felt really nice whatever it was that we did had some sort of impact on the kids.
........of course the only thing I noticed when we dumped the garbage out of the back of the truck into the warehouse dumpster, is I didn't have my main tool bag. I left it in the house.
I only live about 5 mi away from them. After realizing my error I called them up and told him I'd like to come back and pick up my tool bag. They said that's great, come on over. The little girl answered the door with her sweet little smile and I said:
"I had to come back because I miss you guys already"
Yes she knew I was just coming back for my tool bag but she thought that was quite funny.
I don't think you can leave a job much better than that.
I have tomorrow and the weekend off so I'm going to tinker with the gauges that I'm trying to install in my pickup. One of these days I'll gitter done.

 

[highup]

Zamma makes a match for many different flavors of flooring. Lifeproof, Home Decorators, Traffic Master… pretty much whatever HD sells will have a matching Zamma reducer to go with it and I’m sure Zamma isn’t just limited to HD. I think that’s all Zamma does is transitions so it makes sense that they can do them cheaper than other manufacturers can which I’m sure is why they are being used as opposed to the LVP manufacturers themselves.

I did a Coretec job couple weeks ago. Here’s a baby threshold that came with it. As @highup mentioned somewhere on this forum, when he talked with Coretec they said their baby threshold doesn’t come with a snap track yet there clearly is one in the wrapper. Clearly this is a Shaw threshold that matches a Coretec product but that doesn’t surprise me because Shaw owns Coretec. Then again maybe it is a Zamma threshold. Nobody will ever know View attachment 12735View attachment 12734

The customer had a tube with 49 ft of trim along with the loose pieces of track. They weren't sealed up like the one you have.
Maybe it's a carpet one/Cortec/Shaw thing. I don't know, I run into the situation probably three times. Most installers don't even use the transition moldings they just turn and tuck the carpet against the LVP edge because they hate the process of adhering these transitions...

 

[highup]

There is another company that makes custom trims for virtually any manufacturer. They color match wood trims for specific products and they also have vinyl trims. I think they even have baseboards cord around that literally everything.
They're called Artistic Finishes
https://www.artisticfinishes.com/Page/Moldings