The dirty secret that nobody wants to talk about. Sometimes, stuff equals capability. This is especially true with tools, renovation supplies, and hobby supplies. That old drain snake in the garage? $350 plumber call. Rarely used winter gear in a closet? No $$$ rental on the occasional ski vacation. Sewing machine and supplies? Now you can alter or repair your clothes.

It can also be resiliency. All those extra Christmas candles? Great for a power outage during hurricane season. Buying, preserving, and storing summer produce can save money later in the year. A deep pantry can be a critical safety net for some people with job insecurity.

Of course, there’s still a lot of crap we can get rid of, like old hand-me-downs and things we’ll never use.

It’s really a balancing act between the cost of maintaining capability and the cost of paying for outside services. For me, I basically add an entire room to my house for $150 a month, and still get to keep the ability to do the things I love and have some resiliency in my life.

So true! Whisker stress is a real thing.

That’s why we installed a tankless unit, it freed up an entire utility closet because we were able to tuck it in to a pretty small space while still respecting the required clearances. The only downside we’ve had was initial cost, and the yearly flushing process, which really isn’t bad if you install the correct valves from the beginning. Takes about 30 min. a year, which is worth it for endless hot water. Our gas bill has also been lower too.

Be careful with those! A lot of the more powerful drain cleaners are concentrated sulfuric acid, which can ruin any metal parts of your sink and plumbing. And if they don’t work, and you end up having to snake the drain anyway, you can get chemical burns from the drain cleaning chemicals still in the pipe.

Not saying I’ve never used it in a pinch, but be careful.

Zip tools are life changing. My bathroom sink gets the zip tool treatment every month or so when it starts to drain slowly. It’s amazing how much hair these can pull out.

Oh man, I can second the tree removal experts. We have a corner lot with a lot of large mature trees, and we get tree services knocking on our door monthly, telling us we should cut all of our trees down to “protect the house”. We were concerned enough to hire a certified arborist who worked with an engineering firm, who came out for a couple hundred dollars, assessed our trees, and told us all those companies were morons and our trees were just a bunch of nice healthy oaks.

Good post for sure. I can chime in from the environmental consulting and remediation side. Honestly, from the pictures that doesn’t look that bad. If it were my house I’d treat with biocide, paint, and be done with it assuming it’s fully dry and the water problem is gone.

Not an official recommendation of course, but I wouldn’t use bleach. Bleach can damage building materials. What’s a better option is something like Shockwave or Concrobium, something that is EPA-registered for use as a biocide. I would apply it on both sides of the drywall to the point of it soaking in, and then allow it to get fully dry. After I was SURE it was dry I’d paint both sides with Kilz primer, and repaint to suit. The Kilz primer will act as an encapsulent and make sure you are not exposed to any of the dead mold.

I’ve done quite a bit of mold removal in my house from before we encapsulated the crawl space, and this has worked flawlessly even though I have family members that are extremely sensitive to molds. I wouldnt worry too much about mold spores present throughout your house- the dirty secret of the remediation industry is that there are mold spores literally everywhere. They key is to make sure the humidity levels in your house are controlled and never exceed 60-65%.

Yeah, most established forums with active user bases have been around for a loooooong time. One of the reasons people are still active on them is because they haven’t made significant changes.

There’s no drama like changes to forum drama.

Yeah, most established forums with active user bases have been around for a loooooong time. One of the reasons people are still active on them is because they haven’t made significant changes.

There’s no drama like changes to forum drama.

Definitely don’t use JB weld, and I think you should be able to do it without replacing the box.

Regular electrical boxes are usually 6-32 size screws, ceiling fan boxes usually 8-32. If the holes are stripped, especially with plastic boxes, a lot of times you can get away with using the next size up (either 8-32 or 10-32) and forcibly screwing them in. They will cut new threads in the soft plastic/metal of the box, and you’ll be good to go. This is how most electricians would handle it without replacing the box.

If you want to do a cleaner, less hacky job, you can get a set of drill-taps, like this:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Klein-Tools-Drill-Tap-Tool-Set-4-Piece-32383SEN/304401087

Or the hand tool: https://a.co/d/6fr9d4Z

You can usually find them in the electrical section of your big-box home improvement store of choice. Just use the next size up and get some appropriate screws.

This has been a “thing” for a while now. Here’s a Hackaday article on it from 2018:

https://hackaday.com/2018/07/02/using-an-ai-and-wifi-to-see-through-walls/

Strongly agree. When I pulled a toilet that had been caulked around, I found an unholy mess beneath it. Just a little weep hole in the back is enough.