Do you have an older faucett with washers?

If so the seats of the faucetts may have been pitted and the rubber washers are being chewed up.

Posted by: albany at February 8, 2008 6:52 PM in response to Jumping pipes

Flat for years? Nooooooooo. Prices have gone up 3 to 4 x what they were a decade ago in much of the city.

Residential market has cooled a bit on the lower end stuff. Sellers are still getting close to what they are asking however.

Lark Street is still Lark Street. (www.larkstreet.org) and the gentrication marches on.

When were you in Albany?

Posted by: albany at February 8, 2008 7:36 PM in response to Open House Picks

http://houseofantiquehardware.com/s.nl/sc.13/category.168/.f

The above site has some of the individual boxes. If you are looking for a bank of boxes then you are probably SOL if you want historic looking. Salsbury makes boxes but they are functionally ugly.

There is another option which I hesitate to suggest. If you can get someone to design it there is a brass foundry in Syracuse that will make just about anything.

Posted by: albany at February 8, 2008 8:27 PM in response to historic mailbox

Im a landlord and find Craigslist to be a great resource. However, everytime I post an ad I get more scam emails than real requests.

Here is some basic advice:

1) If someone wants to conduct business site-unseen then simply walk away. None of this send me the check I will send you the keys BS.

You can put a stop payment on the check and then discover that your check has been duplicated and people are your checks taking advantage of bank rules which allow banks to clear the checks overnight and then take several days to process a deposited check.

2) Someone wants you to accept a bank check- don't do it. Banks will hold you responsible WHEN the check turns out to be fake. It is actually better these days to take personal checks with ID. At least then you can try to get the city or state to prosecute.

3) Ask a lot of questions. All of these scammers have a narrow story to tell. Ask them something that gets them off script and then go back and ask related questions to what they have already told you and see if the story changes. The story changes walk away.

Posted by: albany at February 11, 2008 10:04 AM in response to Monday Links

10:28

He. I have known people hwo have been burned and just trying to offer some very simple and effective advice. Thanks for the sarcasm.

Posted by: albany at February 11, 2008 11:17 AM in response to Monday Links

10:28 Sorry, I had just got of the phone with someone from your neck when I read the reply.

For the record: We do not have Indians camped outside of our city gates looking to trade beads.

We do not have cows within the city limits and not everyone drives a pickup truck- although I do own one.

I did, however, convince one of the NYC reporters I had living here that we do play rooster calls from our city hall at 6AM because we miss the chickens so much.

Posted by: albany at February 11, 2008 12:21 PM in response to Monday Links

Wow, I bet that there was a hell of a lot of dust. Generally its best to wreck one room at a time instead of going to down and creating large piles of debris. While it is very satifying to start wrecking everything in sight it causes a hell of a lot more dust then cleaning as you go.

Hollander, just remember that there is "CON" in contractor.

Posted by: albany at February 11, 2008 6:24 PM in response to Holland House Intro

You should try to use a National Association of Home Inspectors. Their inspectors are required to be PE's and have errors and ommission insurance.
http://www.nahi.org/

Posted by: albany at February 11, 2008 8:03 PM in response to engineering inspection

here's a bunch of inspectors

http://www.cityhammer.com/catalog/companyList/?category_id=41

some engineers also but not really sure the diffrence

ramon

Posted by: guest at February 11, 2008 8:36 PM in response to engineering inspection

Be careful of ordering from House of Antique Hardware (www.houseofantiquehardware.com).
They have some good products but they seem to be getting anal about the 20 day return policy which is fine if you are stuck in Oregon, but since shipping to the east coast takes a week and a week back to them theres a good chance they'll stick you with a restocking fee.

Posted by: guest at March 21, 2008 12:14 PM in response to historic mailbox