Cheap Remodel Home Auction

Back a few months ago, one of Karrie's friend was talking about how she got tons of great things for her home at a nearby auction.  She and her husband actually drove out of state with a truck and bid on several things for their house they are remodeling.  The company that ran that auction is called Peak Auctions.  Karrie said that that same company was having an auction here in Michigan at the Gibraltar trade center.  We had been planning on redoing the upstairs bathroom tile in our house.  Although we hadn't planned yet how we were going to do it, or if we could do it ourselves, but we decided to go and see what kind of deals we could get.

After checking things out on the website we went into the Gibraltar trade center and found the actual merchandise to be pretty good.  Although we weren't exactly experts since neither of us had actually been to an auction, let alone bid on anything before.  So we weren't sure how cheaply we could get it for.  It was interesting to walk around before the auction began, taking notes on a sheet of paper for what we wanted to purchase. The first thing that we focused on was the tile.  Karrie's friend told us about the weird way in which you had to buy things, although there was still some confusion.  As you can see from this picture all of the tile came inside of wood pallets.

On the side of each pallet was basic dimensions and total square footage. It turned out that when you bid, you are bidding on the entire palette.  Also you are bidding not on the total price but on the square foot price.   So for example the bidding started at around $.60 per square foot. I would say on average the tile work between $1.00 and all the way up to $10 per square foot for the fancy glass shower tile.  So if you won the bid on a specific palette for $2.00 sq.ft. and there was 500 sq.ft. on the palate, that meant that you owed the company $1000.  It was a little bit daunting seeing the big crowds and the auctioneer.

It also moved quite fast at first, especially when you didn't know what exactly was going on.  When the bidding began on the palate of tile we were interested in, the bidding ended before Karrie or I placed a bid.  We were a little bummed out, thinking we missed out.  But on the fly we didn't know if buying 450 sq.ft. of tile for $500 was a good deal.

There were a few different pallets of the same tile we were interested in though.  And for one of the pallets Karrie noticed that one of the winning bidders kept checking his sheet of paper.  Karrie said it looked like he might have bought more than he wanted to.  She said I should go talk to him and see if he would sell us some of the tile he bought.   So i did and after talking with him it turned out Karrie was right. 

He bought close to 500 sq.ft. of tile at around $.70 per square foot and it turned out that he only needed half of that.  He agreed to sell us 22 boxes which totaled around 225 sq.ft. of tile. That was enough title to cover the tile and Karrie's bathroom in my shower.  We bought it from him for $200.  Which turned out to be a great deal considering that if we bought 225 sq.ft. of that same tile at Home Depot it would cost over $1000.

We were quite happy with how that turned out, and the auction continued to roll on.  They got to the area of glass tile and lots of people in the crowd were interested in buying that.  Some of that tile was going for $10 per square foot and lots of people were bidding.  So we figured we didn't have a shot at getting any deals.  After what looked like they had sold the last box of glass tile, the crowd started to disperse.  But at the very end there was one stack of boxes left.  There was a little bit of confusion as the auctioneer started to shout out the prices, most people couldn't see what was being sold.  Karrie happened to be standing right next to the auctioneer and bid $0.70 per linear foot on some glass tile.  The guy yelled "Sold" and somehow she ended up winning the bid and we got the perfect amount of tile for our bathrooms at a fraction of the price.  Again, these tiles sell for $5.50 at Home Depot, we got them for $0.70.

Now we were feeling really good with what we had done.  We got the tile we needed to redo our bathrooms at less than a quarter the price than we normally would've spent.  And we got exactly the amount we wanted. 

The auction turned out to be a really great place if you are interested in remodeling your house.  There were large pallets of hardwood floor which were going for as little as a dollar a square foot, which is a really great price.  But again, the only downside was that you did not get to pick your quantity, it was whatever was on the pallet.  So for example, if it was 800 sq.ft. of hardwood floor, that you got for $1.00 sq.ft., you owed them $800.  But I would have to say that most winning bids were at least half of what you would pay in the store.

We watched the bidding continue as it went to cabinets and actual whole kitchens. I think that was probably the best deal in the whole auction.  You could buy complete set of kitchen cabinets which were super nice, for less than $3,000.  Considering that most kitchen remodel cost between $15,000 and $20,000, it was a great deal.

Another thing we were mildly interested in was chandeliers.  Although when the bidding started at a couple hundred dollars we decided to pass, we definitely did not need to spend that much.  

But we did end up buying a ceiling fan for just $30.  That part of the auction also was a little confusing but Karrie ended up bidding on and getting 2 ceiling fans.  She sold one to her friend at work for what she paid for it, so we ended up with one ceiling fan which we put in our bedroom.

Here's a link to the fan we got and me installing it:  Ceiling Fan

Later in the day they started selling miscellaneous pieces of wood trim.  We just got done remodeling our family room and the crown molding and base board we purchased cost between $1 and $2 per foot.  At this auction winning bids for wood, not quite as good, was between $.20 and $.30, basically 1/4 to 1/3 of what it cost in the store.  I was very tempted to bid, knowing what a great deal it was, but since we didn't need it and more trim meant more work for me at home, I decided to pass.  But for future reference it was nice to know of a place that had such a great deal.  This isn't a picture of that trim, this was just a bunch of random pieces that sold as a group.

Near the very end of the day the auction moved to bathroom fixtures.  They had a line of several different toilets and some of them were the real nice eco-dual flush toilets.  We needed a new toilet for our downstairs bathroom and I was interested in seeing what the final bid price was.  So as Karrie was checking out I walked to the back as the bidding was going on.  Some of the toilets had already been sold for between $100 and $130.   So I decided to get one and I ended up winning a bid on a very nice toilet for $110.  The whole process took about two minutes.  It took me longer to walk from one end of the floor to the other, to tell Karrie.  When i told her that i just bought a toilet she just said "Oh"

All in all it turned out to be a great idea going to the auction.  Everything we ended getting was way cheaper than if we had bought it in the store.  I'm not saying that everything in the auction was a great deal, some people were basically paying full price for the items.  But there was definitely some great deals to be had, especially on wood flooring, tile and entire kitchen cabinets and counter tops.

Here's everything we brought home.

Since the auction I've watched several videos and we are planning to redo the tile and toilet in the three bathrooms. That's our winter project for this year.

Maytag Kenmore Whirlpool Dryer Won't Heat - No Burner

Back a few years ago i had a problem with my clothes dryer, it wouldn't dry the clothes.  I have a Kenmore Elite gas clothes dryer.

 
So i took off the lower cover plate and looked in there.  My Kenmore dryer has a lower access plate, which makes it a little hard to get at stuff.  But the good news is that you don't have to get behind to work on it.

I learned that the drum was turning and the flame would come on.  But after just a few seconds the flame went out.  So i went online and read many many different possible causes for this to happen.  Until finally i came across someone who had the exact problem that i had, a flame that would turn start but turn off.  The way to fix that problem was to buy two inexpensive black coil solenoids.

They somehow transfer the electrical current into burning the flame.  I didn't/don't know if that's true but since they only cost around $3, i ordered them and replaced the two old ones on my dryer.  Amazingly this worked, and the dryer has worked perfectly ever since.  Until this past month.

After drying the third load of laundry of the day, i opened the dryer door and realized that the clothes were still wet.  I thought, "I know how to fix this, buy new $3 solenoids."  But just to make sure i opened the cover plate and turned on the dryer to check.  Unfortunately this time the dryer spun but the flame never turned on.  The "glow plug" never even heated up and turned orange hot.  I realized that i had a different problem then before.  So it was back to the internet to find a solution.

Here's a video i did which shows the entire process of fixing the dryer.  But for more details, explanation and pictures you can keep reading.

Gas Dryer Won't Heat - Easy Repair

http://youtu.be/N23wdTfq6Yo

This time i found the possible answer to my problem a lot sooner than before.  It was while watching a trouble-shooting video of what to check.  The guy in the video said that within clothes dryers there are different sensors and fuses which check to make sure everything is working correctly.  Dryers are designed to turn off if things get too hot.  It's safer for a dryer fuse to blow than have it burn your house down.

The video showed to take your multimeter, set it to 2,000K for Ohm's resistance and check each sensor and fuse for continuity.  Having continuity means that it is making a complete circuit.  If you take your multimeter and touch the positive and negative sensors together the reading on the multimeter will go from 1 to 0.00.  That means that there is no resistance between the entire "loop" circuit.  If you took the + and - sensors and touched them to either side of a resistor, you would be able to determine the size of the resistor based on how much it is resisting the flow through the loop.

All the fuses and sensors in the clothes dryer are a "closed" circuit, which means that if they are working, when you touch both ends there should be continuity and the reading should go from 1 to 0.00.  So it was simply a matter of reaching in and touching both ends of the multimeter to each sensor and fuse in the dryer.  The first and second sensors i checked seemed fine, the reading went to 0.00.  But the third thing i checked turned out to be a fuse and when i touched either end there was no change, the multimeter stayed at 1.  So i removed the wires and 2 screws holding it in place and removed it.

I checked it again with the multimeter and it was the same, no change.  The multimeter did nothing when i checked the positive and negative ends of the fuse.

I thought, "It can't be this easy can it?"  So to do a quick test i taped the two wires which connected to the fuse together and turned on the dryer.  The drum turned and after about 8 seconds the flame turned on .  It seemed to be working perfectly.  That confirmed it, whatever i had just taken out was the bad part.

I turned the dryer off, i definitely didn't want to run it all spliced together, possibly burning down the house.  Then i took the part upstairs to find out what it was.  After typing in the part numbers i learned that it was a fuse that would blow if the temperature in the vent tube got too hot.  It must have blown because i was running the dryer for about 3 hours straight.

The bad news was that even though it's just a tiny little plastic part, it cost $12 plus $3 shipping.  I thought that was crazy so i checked online for a local parts store.  There was a place nearby where i could go and buy the part at the store.  But there it would have cost me $17.99.  So i ended up ordering the part from Amazon and it arrived in a few days.

In the meantime i realized that there was another dryer in our garage.  We still have Karrie's old washer and dryer and i thought, "Why don't i just take the fuse off of that dryer."  Unfortunately she has a different model dryer, hers is a Whirlpool.

The good news was that her's was way easier to work on.  Instead of a small lower base cover plate, the entire back panel comes off, exposing all the fuses and sensors.

Immediately though i saw a problem.  Although she did have a small white fuse, it wasn't the same.  There was no way that i could mount it to the other dryer, it was a different size and the holes wouldn't line up.

 But before i reinstalled it and put the cover back on i checked it with the multimeter.  (Now that i look at this picture i'm not sure if i did this correctly.  I probably should have disconnected the two wires to make sure that i was only checking the fuse and not the wires going to the dryer.)  But anyway the reading on the multimeter went from 1 to 0.00 meaning that it had continuity, so this fuse was good.

After a few days the new fuse arrived.  I screwed it back into place and attached the wires.  The flame kicks on and it's worked perfectly ever since.  Although i try not to run more than 2 loads of laundry back to back anymore.  I give it a couple hours to cool down in between.

But overall it wasn't too complicated to fix, it turns out that the inside of a dryer is pretty empty.  Just a few wires, sensors, and a big gas flame.  So if you open up your dryer door to find a pile of wet clothes don't worry.  Just try to figure out what's going on, then look up how to find the problem.  80% of the time it's that solenoid or entire solenoid assembly, which is a cheap and easy fix.

DIY Air-Heat Duct Cleaning - Free

Back in December we noticed that when we were at home we seemed more stuffed up.  The first thing i did was to replace the furnace humidifier filter.  According to my digital thermometer/humidity gauge it was only around 30% humidity in the house.  The new filter helped, along 2 humidifiers we put in our bedroom, but not completely.

I looked online and didn't really find anything about cleaning your own air ducts.  There was a ton of information about companies that will clean them for you.  As well as a Dateline episode which uncovered a common scam that furnace cleaning companies did.  Dateline set up some hidden cameras in a house and then called a company that said they would clean your heating ducts for some low price like $60.  The workers came out, said it would be only $60 then went into the basement.  They pretended to do something then came back up and told the woman pretending to be the homeowner that unfortunately her ducts were too bad and it was going to cost $430.  Even after she payed, the company never did clean the air ducts, they just put up some fake repair plates.

And that's the thing.  With heating ducts you can't really tell what condition they are in, most of the pipes are hidden from view.  Even if you take off the covers and look into the large cold air returns with a flashlight, you can only really see a few feet.  But luckily Karrie's dad used to clean duct-work years ago and he said i could do it myself with a leaf blower and a shop vac.  I would be basically doing the same thing as the pro's, just with different equipment.

The way in which professional companies clean heating ducts is that they cut a large hole in the ducts near the furnace.  That is where they hook up their large vacuum tube.  They then cover all the heat and cold air return vents and run compressed air "brushes" throughout your houses duct-work, which loosens all the dust, blows it toward the vacuum tube, and it is sucked out.  Here's a small portable professional version with the brushes.  They also have the larger vacuum running to their truck.

I would be doing the same thing, except instead of the industrial size vacuum i would be using a shop vac.  And instead of the compressed air brushes i would be using a leaf blower.  After covering all the vents but 1, i would turn on the leaf blower at that open vent and blow the dust toward the shop vac in the basement.  Then i would work my way down the line with the leaf blower.  I would have to do this with all the heat vents and cold air returns in the entire house.  Here was the equipment i would be using.

In case you don't want to continue reading i did make a video of the entire process.  The video will probably do a much better job of explaining  what i am doing.

DIY - Clean Your Air Heat Vents 

http://youtu.be/QdKvKpwGOkk

But the first step was to turn off the furnace.  That was as easy as flipping the switch on the side of it.  Next i had to figure out where i was going to connect the shop vac.  Normally this would mean cutting a hole in the duct-work.  But luckily i already had access holes cut out.  I'm not sure if this means that my air ducts have already been cleaned, i think it does.  So instead of cutting a big hole i was able to just remove a few sheet metal screws.  There were access holes for both the heat vent (hot air blowing into the house) and the cold air return vent (cold air returning to the furnace).

I set up the shop vac with the hose in the vent and used some old insulation as a barrier to block the dust from getting to the furnace.  It's a little hard to see from this picture because of everything on the shelf in the background.  But it's my shop vac with the hose running up to the heating duct.

 Here's a close up of the hose and the insulation blocking the back side toward the furnace.

Next i had to go around to each heat vent and cold air return vent in the house and remove the covers.  Some of them were really stuck on and painted over, but after an hour or so i got them all off.  That's when i learned that the dust in the cold air returns was probably twice three times as bad as the heat vents.  That kind of makes sense, the cold air returns were always located along the floor and as the air gets sucked back toward the furnace it brings with it all the dust from the floor.  But i was surprised at how bad some of the cold air return vents were.  This was the worst vent in the entire house, it was under the step from the living room to the kitchen.

So i decided that before i did any blowing air with the leaf blower, that i should vacuum out as much as i could reach with the shop vac from the vents themselves.  

During the whole air duct cleaning process i always thought that i was going to end up with this huge amount of dust clumps in the shop vac, but that was not the case.  When you vacuum the carpet you are picking up all the big heavy dirt and debris and that stuff does have a lot of volume.  But things that get into your duct-work are the light and airy stuff.  By the end of vacuuming out the vents the inside of the shop vac looked the same, but the filter was completely clogged with dust.  

After all the cold air returns and heat vents were cleaned i covered them with cardboard and paper bags.  That way when i turned on the leaf blower, all of the air and dust would be directed to one place, the shop vac in the basement.  I also had to remember to cover the vents in the basement.

I started with the heat vent furthest from the furnace.  After turning on the shop vac in the basement i went up and started blowing air down the vent with the leaf blower. 

During that time i went back down into the basement and listened and looked for which vents the air was blowing through.  It was fairly easy to tell which vents the air from the leaf blower was blowing through.  This is when the pro's use that air brush to snake through the vents and loosen up all of the dust.  I decided to go with the highly technical approach of just pounding on the vent with the palm of my hand.  Hopefully loosening up any of the dust stuck to the side wall of the vent. 

I did this for about 3-4 minutes.  Then went back upstairs, turned off the leaf blower, covered that vent, went to the next vent which was the next down the line closer to the furnace and repeated the entire process.  Half way through the process, while in the basement trying to find the right heat vent to pound on, i realize that there was more than one heat vent exiting the furnace.  There was actually 3 more heat vents on the back side.  So for those i turned the shop vac hose 180 degrees and started vacuuming from that direction.  It wasn't ideal but hopefully i could suck up the dust before it got down into the burners.

After doing all this for the heat vents i then had to do it all over again for the cold air returns. 

That meant changing the location of the shop vac.  I had to move the hose and insulation over to the cold air return duct.  Luckily though this was the only point in which the cold air returned to the furnace, which meant that i didn't have to turn the hose around at any point.

So another hour and i had all the heat vents and cold air returns blown out and sucked up.  Again after checking the shop vac it didn't look like i really got much dust, but the filter was pretty clogged with dust.

The final thing was to take off all the cardboard and replace the vent covers.  Then i screwed the sheet metal access hole plates back into place and switch the furnace back on. 

I'm not sure it ended up making a huge difference.  Although some of the cold air returns looked dirty near the opening, i'm not sure that the vents themselves were all that bad.  A couple of times while cleaning, i took out the shop vac hose and saw that it was only a light flow of dust coming out.  Not the huge clumps of gray dust that i envisioned.  But it's been about a month and i think we are sleeping a little better, not waking up from the dry air blowing from the furnace in the morning.

All in all it was a lot of work, it took me about 4 hours in total and a lot of running up and down stairs.  But i'm glad i got all the vents cleaned out and even happier that it didn't cost $450.

Restore-Revive-Zap Old Drill Battery

Years ago i watched a video online about a guy who took an old dead drill battery and brought it back to life using a welder.  He said that the reason that the batteries die has something to do with the aligning of the positive and negative poles.  I didn't completely understand it but it seemed to work.

The reason that reviving an old power tool battery is so popular is because of the cost of them.  If you want to buy a new drill that comes with a battery the cost is around $150.  But if you need to buy a new drill battery, that cost $80 on it's own.

At the time i had an old 12volt DeWalt drill with 2 ni-cad batteries.  The batteries were starting to die and could barely hold a charge.  The batteries were practically worthless since they only lasted a minute or two.  But i didn't want to spend $80 on a new battery, it seemed like such a waste.  There are companies where you can send them your old drill battery, they will take it apart and replace the internal pack with new batteries.  The inside of a ni-cad battery pack is actually made up of what looks like several 'C' rechargeable batteries.  Here's a picture that someone else took.

But even this cost around $40 plus shipping.  Still not worth it to me.

So until then i used an old cord drill, it was a pain but it had tons of power.  Then two years ago Karrie bought me a kit of new power tools.  It came with a drill, saws-all, circular saw and light, which all ran off two 18volt batteries.  They have been great the past couple years.  And since then the old DeWalt 12v drill has sat on a shelf.

But recently i bought a new 90amp flux welder from Harbor Freight.  It is just the cheap 90 amp model, i used it to weld up my car mufflers and exhaust a few months back.

While cleaning up some of the old junk in the basement i saw the old drill and dead batteries.  I took them out and tried putting the batteries on the charger.  By now they weren't just dead, the quickly flashing light said they were defective, they wouldn't even attempt to charge.  So i thought that this would be a perfect time to try out the battery restoring technique using a welder.

The whole process couldn't be simpler.  You basically just turn on the welder, connect the Ground clip to the negative end and then repeatedly touch the positive end with the welding wand.  This creates a small spark from the high voltage coming out of the welder.  Somehow in the process the higher voltage re-aligns the + and - poles of the internal batteries and brings the entire battery pack back to life.

I made a video of the process of me trying to restore the two DeWalt drill batteries.  It might be quicker and easier to watch the video rather then having me try to describe the process.

Fix a Dead Drill Battery - Won't Charge

http://youtu.be/0D5J_-fTTKQ

But for more detail i try and explain what i was doing and why.

The first step was to check the batteries with the volt meter.  Like i said these two batteries had been sitting on a shelf for two years, so it's no wonder that they read 0.00 volts.  But i was able to determine which were the positive and negative poles.  If i had the + and - connected to the volt meter correctly it would read 0.00 volts, if i had it backwards it would read -0.00.  This would be important when i started sparking it with the welder.

Next i went to the garage and got out the welder.  I set the battery on a table and got ready.  Now normally when you weld the wire feed will roll out wire as you go.  This wire melts and becomes the "weld" to combine your two pieces of metal.  I did not want this to happen so i disengaged the wire feed tensioner, so that no wire would come out.

I put on my welders mask for safety, just in case the battery decide to blow up.  Not sure that would even happen, but it couldn't hurt.  Here's the battery about to be sparked, with the two ends of the welder that i would be using.

Then i touched the ground clamp to the negative terminal of the battery and started "sparking" the positive end with the welder wand.  A few small sparks shot up but it wasn't bad.  I did this about 5 or 6 times, until the small wire at the end of the wand melted off.  Then i used a wire brush to clean off the positive end of the battery which was now blackened and had small pieces of wire weld on it.

Back down in the basement i checked the battery with the volt meter and it read 0.12 volts.   I was happy that it wasn't at 0.00, but still not sure what that small voltage meant.  

Before even putting it on the charger i snapped it into the drill and it actually worked.  Not very much but i was amazed that it had power without even charging it.  So i put it on the battery charger and left it for a few hours.  Another good sign was that it didn't start flashing 'defective battery'.  It appeared that it was charging correctly.  In the meantime i took the other battery to the garage and repeated the process.

A few hours later i came back downstairs to check and the light on the charger was solid, meaning that the battery was charged.  So i removed it and checked it with the volt meter again, 13.69 volts.  I was amazed.  

I plugged it into the drill and it worked great.  I wouldn't say 100% good as new, probably more like 65% of it's full original power.  But i was still amazed that it took an old defective battery and got it working again.

I tested the drill and battery out and it seemed fine...for a minute or two.   But pretty quickly it apparent that it wasn't some miracle cure.  Yes it did restore the battery, but only a bit.  The charge quickly went away after just a few holes drilled.

So in conclusion, this does work.  If you have a battery that is not quite as good as it used to be i would highly recommend trying this, it might be able to save it and get it back to 100%.  If you have a completely dead/defective battery i would still recommend doing this.  But know that it probably won't bring it back good as new.