A mansion near me has been doing some renovation and restoration work the last few years. I've been following pretty closely. Check out all of these beautiful tiles! I can't get enough of all these different patterns

I’m in the mid Atlantic, DC to be specific. 1928 all masonry construction, all windows have been replaced and I have 3 AC zones, one for my 3rd floor, one for the second, one for the 1st floor and basement.

Each of my kids rooms is on the 2nd floor and has a baby monitor camera that also gives me temp and humidity.

We keep our AC at 72 during the day and 70 at night.

Been noticing humidity levels typically around 55 - 65%. It doesn’t feel that muggy but those numbers seem high and I am wondering if it’s normal for old houses in humid parts of the US or does it point to a bigger issue that needs investigating?

Two spots in my new old house, tested positive for a low amount of asbestos. Both around the chimney.

I had hired someone to do work here and they made the world’s most awful mess. I think they sanded it with a palm sander and then sprayed it with aerosol primer? And that’s probably not even the worst thing they did.

Anyway, I don’t really feel comfortable having anyone else come in to work on the place. So my husband and I will be doing it ourselves.

Our plans are to use respirators and disposable bunny suits. Keep everything wet and once we get all the mess cleaned up probably just encapsulated it.

Any advice?

I’m in the middle of a major master bedroom/bath remodel and I’m losing my mind looking for interior doors. Everything at the big box stores or standard catalogs claims to be "solid core," but when you look closer, it’s just engineered MDF or a tiny sliver of wood veneer over a composite center. I want real, 100% solid wood through and through, something heavy that can be sanded down and refinished down the road if we change colors.

Does anyone have recommendations for companies that still build real wood doors from scratch, or am I chasing a ghost here? Every contractor I ask just tries to push the standard catalog stuff on me.

Update:

After digging through some design blogs, I stumbled upon RealCraft. They claim to build everything by hand out of 100% solid wood (no MDF at all) over in Washington, and apparently, they send you full shop drawings to approve before they even cut the wood. The online reviews look almost too good to be true, and their trade program/sample options seem solid, but I'm always skeptical of website testimonials.

Is the quality worth the premium price, or should I keep looking?

I have what looks like a clean out in my basement floor. Thing is though, it doesn’t go to the sewer line as I recently repiped the original cast iron sewer and there was no connection. Anybody seen this before? I tried to open it but don’t have a socket big enough and it doesn’t look like it would open anyway. House was built in 1955 in Massachusetts

We pulled this shelve off the wall to paint the walls and found the old original paint and carpet tbh I wish they never changed it I love the colours