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Plaster Recommendation
Hi Brownstoners,
Haven’t posted to the site in quite some time but I found it invaluable for the work I did on my house these past 1.5 years so I want to help future seekers of decorative plaster moldings with a somewhat belated (but glowing) recommendation of the plasterer Luis Arias who ran decorative moldings in our house last summer (see pictures). I copied 4 different profiles from our neighbors’ house using a contour gage and traced them onto a piece of paper, and then Luis made the molds and ran the molding in place. He did a huge amount of work (entryway, parlor hall, parlor stairs, 3rd floor hall, back parlor) in 1 month and the result was beautiful. The moldings are stunning, but still have the small imperfections and variations of moldings run in place rather than cast on the ground. What’s more, the price was substantially cheaper than anyone else who came in to do estimates. Luis can be reached at luisenrique0571_62@hotmail.com
03/18/2010 9:52 PM
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Help! Heating Question
I’m hoping Master Plumber will weigh in on this, or someone else with plumbing and heating knowledge
We have a brand new hot water heating system, Weil Mclain Mod Con boiler, lovely VEHA radiators but a few problems are surfacing. First, the boiler has a tendency to shut off and leave an error message of “supply too fast.” Since the house is really well insulated we often don’t notice until we try to take a shower (indirect water heater off the boiler) and can’t get any hot water but now we have tenants and are more worried about it shutting off for them. The plumber who installed showed my husband how to adjust the supply but we still have the problem quite frequently. I begin to suspect it might be the boiler itself, I’ve heard nasty internet rumours about this problem with Weil Mclain. Thoughts? Possible causes other than faulty boiler?
Second, sizing radiators. We recently realized when we finally turned heat on for the bottom two floors of our house that the radiators in our house are, for the most part, horribly undersized!! But the weird thing is that with the exception of one slightly colder room, the upper floors are heating just fine (those radiators are undersized too) but the 2 bottom floors won’t warm up. Each floor is its own zone, and the worst is the bottom floor. Any thoughts about radiator sizing/caculations? SHould I replace all the radiators that I know are too small, or should I just replace the ones on the bottom floors? Recommended easy way to calculate? I’d been told room volume *3 for halls, *4 for bedrooms, *4.3-5 for living space. Is this a good shorthand calculation?
01/08/2010 12:10 PM
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multiple year lease?
Has anyone ever heard of people buying a multiple year lease (like 10 years) on an apartment up front? Sounds weird to me, just wondering if anyone had ANY examples of this ever.
05/27/2009 10:50 AM
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Electrician to wire boiler
Heya Brownstoners,
We’ve got a hitch in our giddyup because despite the fact that the plumber and electrician who’ve been working on our house are great, both claim they can’t wire our boiler (weil mclain ultra series 3). Both recommended electricians to do it, and both were (in our opinion) way too expensive. Anyone out there know of an electrician who can do this work for a reasonable price, or anyone out there who can do it themselves?
Thanks.
05/11/2009 11:30 AM
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Kohler Memoirs Pedestal 24 inch
Okay, before I take this back to build it green, does anyone want a totally new, just out of the box, 24 inch kohler memoirs pedestal sink in white for $150? Came from the salvage place but was part of their Kohler overstock so it really is new-in-box. It’s the classic style. google “kohler memoirs classic 24 inch” and you’ll see. It was listed for $200 at BIG but if I can just unload it to someone else instead of taking it back for store credit, that’d be great.
Online prices range around $300ish for it.
Thanks
contact: raisarex AT gmail.com
04/14/2009 2:04 PM
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Junior Prates recommendation
Hey Brownstoners!
I need to add to the chorus of recommendations for Willian (Junior) Prates and his wife Aida. We’re doing a big project on an inconceivably tight budget and thought that we would never be able to afford plaster, but Junior’s price came in low enough that we were able to do it–some blueboard, some skimcoating, some 3-coat over brick plaster work. Junior’s done our entire house. His work is really beautiful–it’s the first thing people notice when they come into the house. He’s been very flexible about fixing things that were my late decisions (moving light fixtures as blueboard went up, for example), and was totally reasonable when we were confronted with a minor disaster partway through the process, requiring us to re-do some work and change our plastering plans on our brick parti walls from skimcoating to three-coat with mesh. My husband and I are also working in the house at the same time and it’s been nothing but pleasant to have him there–he’s always friendly and willing to offer advice (such as demonstrating to me a more efficient way to paint the ceiling, suggesting the most efficient order to do finish work, etc)
Aida handles most of the scheduling and billing, and is very easy to talk to. Also, their son is adorable. Oh, and Aida’s father Enrique did a lovely job tiling one of our bathrooms.
I recommend the whole family to anyone looking for someone to work in their house!
03/13/2009 4:03 PM
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Pocket Door Hardware for sale
Hey Brownstoners,
I just bought this pocket door hardware on Ebay intending to break up the set and use it on 2 single pocket doors but then I got it and realized the way the two sides fit together (convex and concave) was so nice, it would be a shame to repurpose it. Anybody want a full set of hardware (two locksets with pulls, four plates for the side of the door) for a double set of pocket doors? I’m asking $100 (the amount it cost me on ebay with shipping to Brooklyn). Contact me at raisarex AT gmail.com
01/11/2009 12:27 PM
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Can I extend a door?
Yet another question. Any carpenters out there who can tell me how difficult it would be to extend a set of front doors by about 15 inches? The top 1/2 of the doors should be a glass panel (no glass right now–the doors had none when I bought them), and I just want to extend the top of each door and put in a longer piece of glass, rather than building a transom. From what I can tell, this means attaching an extension on either side piece around the glass, and re-attaching the top piece, and putting in a longer piece of glass. Does this create too many seams in the door (a join in the side panels…), or would it work?
thanks in advance.
12/03/2008 11:22 AM
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plywood stair risers?!
Hi Brownstoners-
I have someone doing my staircase who gave us a bid for solid oak stairs but (among various other incorrect and annoying things) actually did the risers in oak ply. WHen I pointed this out, he agreed to re-do risers with solid oak, but only for a hefty price. I am so annoyed that I’m willing to pay just to have it finished, but is it worth it? Aside from the misrepresentation, is there anything inherently wrong with plywood risers?
11/17/2008 2:35 PM
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Help! Boiler sizing…
So I’m getting a new boiler and have a deep fear of it being sized too large. House is 16.67×37, 4 stories, ceiling heights 8/10/8/8, all new windows, doors, 6 ins (R30) foam insulation on 480/620 square feet of roof, plus foam insulation on roof exterior (remaining portion of roof interior will have exposed beams with pressboard insulation between), possibly even insulation ceiling of basement below garden floor, plus both front and back walls insulated with r14 foam.
So my question is, can I get away with a 105,000 BTU boiler? My plumber says hells no, especially because I will be running indirect water tank off the boiler, but online heatloss calculators indicate my worst case scenario heatloss to be around 87,000 BTUs, which means the 155 BTU boiler advocated by the plumber is almost 2x too big. Plus, the place where I am buying my radiators told me sizes that were also almost 2x what I found using heatloss calculators. I’m not so worried about rads because it’s a mod con boiler, and oversized radiators mean lower water temps, which is good for efficiency…but panel radiators are expensive and I would like to size them accurately. Care to weigh in, Master Plumber or anyone else?!
11/11/2008 2:28 PM
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466 dad
May 21, 2012 | 02:16 PM