Retreading Main Stairwell - Sound Dampening?
5 years ago
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Options to make wood stairs slip resistant?
Comments (29)I looked the SlipDoctor product up on Amazon after seeing their website, and the reviews weren't great. I also have to disagree with how slippery the hardwood is compared to carpet. Carpet can be slippery, but let me tell you, hardwood, when you're in socks, is much more slippery and hurts so much worse when you fall on them, flat onto your back! We have two long steps that lead down into our family room, my foot caught the edge of the second one as I stepped down, and I landed right on the edge of it with the small of my back. I was sure it was broken. Thankfully it wasn't, but I'm not taking another chance and have been searching for something to save me or someone else in my house from having this happen to them. I'm looking at some sort of clear tape. I'm hoping to find something that isn't going to ruin the new floors. If it does ruin them, it's better than ruining me!...See MoreDid you kitchen stay in the existing space?
Comments (33)We converted our 2 family into a single and used the tenants 1st floor kitchen (12.5'W x 14'L) as our kitchen. The last updates were 1950's or '60's. We gutted the kitchen and moved the ceiling height to the room above it (raised about 1'). Found an old floor just above the lowered ceiling made up of ~170 year old wide pine that wasn't used for at least 100 years and we will now incorporate it into the banquette. We bumped out the back of the house 6' for the kitchen (now 20'L). Since some of our bathroom plumbing was from the 1850 - 1870s and the newest being 90 years old we replumbed the whole house. Also most of the wiring was when they invented it so we had the whole house rewired and upgraded to 400A service. We added the "sandwich" in a new nook opposite the basement door (60"W x 22"D cabs). We recessed the frig into the back stairway - much more than the drawing shows. In the bump out we added 5 windows, french door and skylight to the kitchen, 1 small window in the half bath and a transom between the half bath and pantry. Here's a basic idea of the kitchen but we swapped the range and sink plus DW after suggestions from GW and moved the prep sink. The shaded area is the bump out....See Morewhat's the worst part of the reno?
Comments (34)our reno of Kitchen and DR lasted 6 mos, March to September with DH doing 90% of work....contracted out plumber, electrician and counters...plumber was a friend who did sink, pot filler -copper line and ice machine -copper line...electrician was my brother who ran wire but DH told him what and where and we bought all material ourselves... same as everyone else, dust dust and more dust.... we/I cooked on a induction hot plate, the grill, a griddle - it really was a huge help that the summer was coming, but we planned it that way.... if i remember correctly, there is a thread with "meals to cook while under construction" or something like that...that really helped me... my kids were in college/HS, so that end was so much easier than OP.... we ate in our FR, which is downstairs, split level.... had a dish, condiment, food cart....sounds good, but truly ugly and horrible, but it did serve the purpose. my kids still laugh about.... we were so cramped but we had to make it work, no choice... my best advice is set up a temporary kitchen as best u can and use paper products as often as u can... i had to wash in my "slob sink"...which was tough but again, no choice go to family houses to be in a clean house, let kids sleep there if possible... and hopefully u will get some invites for dinner.... i just kept telling myself..."this too shall pass", this too shall pass".... it will over one day and it will be sooooo worth it hang in there :)...See MoreSound proof between floors, new construction
Comments (31)Let's actually set this right. There are NOT three different methods of sound transmission, that is either way over-simplified or over-complicated, depending on the view that you want to take. Building designers have created a checklist to deal with building design and sound transmission. But that is because building designers have enough stuff to deal with without getting into the physics of mechanical waves when designing a building. There is exactly one method of sound transmission in buildings, on earth, in space, etc. Sound is a mechanical wave, or energy that travels through matter by disturbing it. More specifically even, it is the displacement of matter from its equilibrium position and that displacement as well as the rebounding of material is what moves sound through all matter, including air and walls, it is also the lack of matter to disturb that stops sound from moving through outer space. Sound is easy to understand as work, as sound encounters various forms of matter it expends effort to move through the material, even air, that is why decibels are lessened over distance. There are really only two ways to reduce sound, require more work and convert the work (technically there are three, but locate your basement in outer space seems a bit extreme). More mass means sound has to work harder to move the material, not unlike throwing a boulder compared to throwing a pebble. So one simple way to reduce sound transmission is to add more mass. The other is to convert sound to other forms of energy, usually heat energy. This is what resilient materials such as rubber and cork do. Think hitting someone with a bat versus hitting someone with a foam pole. ---------- Now all of this may seem immaterial to the discussion at hand but it really isn't. Building designers, especially when designing commercial buildings, have broken sound transmission into three very broad categories that they need to address in the design of a building. However, not every situation requires considering those things as they are presented, nor are those three things adequate in other situations. The final, and really more important point for homeowners, is the cost of effective design versus the cost of effective treatment. No one who actually works in theater installation and design really spends their day looking after these "three sound transmission characteristics" of building design. And no one creating sound isolation booths for recording studios would think addressing those three things are remotely adequate. I have both a home theater and a sound isolation booth in my house. There are thousands of installers, and hundreds of home theater and listening room designers who all use the same four steps for sound proofing: (1) sealing, (2) adding mass, (3) decoupling, and (4) dampening (note: that dampening is often separated into dampening and absorbing for ease of understanding). Any approach using these four steps, even in a cost effective manner, will adequately address sound transmission for most needs. Just to be clear it absolutely deals with airborne, flanking and impact transmission, it is well detailed in the material I directed the OP to. So any assertion that no one has dealt with that, is absolutely wrong. If you are building a sound isolation booth for a home recording studio, this is a good start, but by no means complete. However, you are going to have to get into specific attenuation at that point, at which time I would advise visiting the gearslutz.com or SoundonSound.com sites to get more information....See MoreRelated Professionals
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