What did you work on Today; Home Edition

Gravy said:

I use those everyday in my world. Cherry limit switches.
Chad likes to be modest but he's an electrical Sensei.

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I'm not modest, I have just worked around super smart people long enough to know where I fit in the hierarchy, that is firmly in the realm of checking a switch for resistance

ohm y hell

Needed a little Me time this evening. So I ran up to the property.

Our property has a very old foundation and rotten lumber about where we enter the property. Last time I was there, a rock somehow caught my eye. When I picked up the round rock, it left a square hole. Weird. I dug out and around it. As it turns out, it was sitting in the hole left behind from a previous gate post. I assume one post would mean that there would be another nearby. Sure enough I was able to find both of the concrete holes where a previous gate had been.
We have some fun future plans and ideas for these. But for now, I just wanted to keep them marked. I dug all the dirt out of the hole, and set new posts down in the original concrete. We will start using them as the driveway into our property.







Then I took few minutes and sat in a chair, enjoying my view. There were a handful of deer in the valley just below me drinking out of a water trough the neighbor sets out for them.

Been getting by the past several years on 50amps stolen from the house. Shop has its own 200amp service now. Back-filling the 200’ trench and fixing all the broken sprinkler lines. 🤷‍♂️

Vonski said:

Been getting by the past several years on 50amps stolen from the house. Shop has its own 200amp service now. Back-filling the 200’ trench and fixing all the broken sprinkler lines. 🤷‍♂️

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$$$$$$$........but worth it.

anderson750 said:

$$$$$$$........but worth it.

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Indeed. This was actually my Plan B. Plan A was to have 3ph480 pulled 3/4 mile down the road at 6x the cost. Plan B won. 😂

jeeper said:

Needed a little Me time this evening. So I ran up to the property.

Our property has a very old foundation and rotten lumber about where we enter the property. Last time I was there, a rock somehow caught my eye. When I picked up the round rock, it left a square hole. Weird. I dug out and around it. As it turns out, it was sitting in the hole left behind from a previous gate post. I assume one post would mean that there would be another nearby. Sure enough I was able to find both of the concrete holes where a previous gate had been.
We have some fun future plans and ideas for these. But for now, I just wanted to keep them marked. I dug all the dirt out of the hole, and set new posts down in the original concrete. We will start using them as the driveway into our property.

View attachment 175283

View attachment 175284

View attachment 175285

Then I took few minutes and sat in a chair, enjoying my view. There were a handful of deer in the valley just below me drinking out of a water trough the neighbor sets out for them.

View attachment 175286

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Looks like you were eyeballing me in that last pic. 🧐

Lost power to the east side of my kitchen and it killed my GCFI receptacle there. I pulled it out for replacement, and sure enough, the ground wire was covered in latex paint. This exact scenario happened about 12 years ago on the opposite side of the kitchen. Must have missed this one, but I went through every receptacle in the kitchen back then and cleaned the ground wires. They were all painted.

Took care of the backyard recently. Fixed the hole and mound where the skid was turning in the backyard, and leveled it out the best I could with a shovel. My yard both front and back are not level, and I would like to do some major landscaping/redesigning at some point, but for now, this will do. Pulled out a ton of tree roots (part of the reason I want to landscape - get rid of these big PITA trees for some more mild options).



Sod is the best type of rug or carpet, change my mind.

Then I got all the weeds and crab grass cut out around the patio, and tetris'd and origami'd new sod in its place.



Moved some dirt around to help thinner areas of grass. It has since come back pretty well in those thinner areas.

Then we installed some string lights off amazon. The sod has taken pretty well, a couple areas that still need some attention, but its a lot better than it used to be.

After a child flooded my bathroom/laundry room a couple of months ago, I finally got new flooring installed yesterday. Best $250 in labor I've ever paid! I put new baseboard in today and I'm 1/4 of the way through caulking so I can paint the trim. I'm too lazy to paint the walls.

And back to 20lbs of $hi+ in a 5lb room... I put 2 coats of paint on the trim this morning and just wrapped up putting things back in their place. If I ever remodel my house I'll remove the cabinet on the left side to make more room for laundry, but for now it's as good as old. Happy to have this project done!

Been replacing outlets.
I wondered why this metal box was loose when it had big 16 g nails going through the back of it...
115yr old house... Brick interior walls.... nailed to the brick.
Now I've got some drywall mess to fix.



The fix is a new- shallow old construction box, ground the new plug, a tapcon, and now some paint.

Finally got the driveway replaced and side parking added.
I applied penetrating densifier last night.
Hopefully the densifier gives me a chance to get drips wiped up and minimizes cracks and spalling.
Big thanks to @zmotorsports for the product and supply house suggestion.

Looks fantastic!

I was asked to build a couple of shelves for a friend's shop.

I picked up some supplies to do a 16' continuous shelf and a smaller shelf for over the window in his office.

For the big shelf we decided on black pipe for supports.

When I ordered the flanges I bought some I could modify and still have 3 holes for mounting to the wall. I setup a jig and used a metal blade in my circular saw to cut them all the same.








Once I cut all the flanges I put the pipes, caps, flanges together so I could lay out the spacing between the supports.



Once I had everything laid out, I sanded the boards to smooth them out, then painted everything black per the request (no pics).

Once I had the big one done I turned to the small one.

I cut it to length, and then setup my drill press to setup the floating shelf pins (again no pics).

Today I installed them and they started filling up.




I like the way they turned out.

Inspired by @cruiseroutfit wanting to organize his toys at his shop, I wanted to find a way to store my hats in a way I could see what I had and display the ones that mean something to me. I knew I have a lot of ball caps, but I had no idea just how many...

I thought of putting a shelf all the way around my office, but decided that would be too much work and too expensive right now. Instead I bought 120 command strip hooks at Costco and decided to just hang some hats for now.

As I started pulling hats out of my closet and storage, I quickly realized I have too many. Then I ventured into my garage and found twice as many as were in the house!

I have been collecting ball caps in a way since I was a kid. 20+ years in my industry has led to many, many more hats through the years. Instead of throwing any away, I would store them in boxes or on shelves, and wear maybe 4-6 of my favorites.

Yesterday afternoon I started hanging up hats and sorting out the ones that don't mean anything to me. The grand total so far is 185, NOT including straw sun hats, cowboy hats, fishing hats, and beanies...

I have 83 displayed in my office (each one has meaning to me), 21 that I haven't found a way to display yet but can't bring myself to donate, 17 in my clothes closet that I wear semi regularly, a few stashed in vehicles in the event I forget a hat and need one while out and about, and 59 in a box to be donated (anyone need a free hat? )

Donation box.


Here is what they look like in my office. I don't love it, but I won't be changing anything in the short term.

Building a pew pew wall for a client, ran out of batteries.
I think I'll have about 80 panels on the wall when I'm done -each have 4-6 screws to studs.

I did a work bench for cleaning and teardown on the other side. We framed posters from the Nurburgring.
Should be cool when it's done.
The whole room locks solid.

I felt like a young Marc Bryson today with a spray gun in my hand. My wife took advantage of our day off and made me work on stuff, like all day. I used my HVLP gun to spray a couple doors (for the first time) and brushed some door frames. Yay and stuff.
I did like the gun. It worked pretty slick and made it look like I know what I’m doing.

My daughter wants a bookcase bed. She was planning on buying some cheap bookcases at Walmart until I told her those would never hold up as a bed.

Her birthday is coming up so I decided to build her a new bed for her birthday.

I started last week with a few sheets of 3/4" plywood, some 1/4" plywood, and some 1x poplar.

I cut out the pieces to build the boxes the first day and did a dry fit.





Saturday I glued up the 2 boxes and started trimming out the bottom of one box.



Tonight I finished trimming the bottom of both boxes and put some cleats on the bottom for support.



With that done to both boxes I started on the trim for the tops. That's where I stopped. Still a ton to do but I like how it's turning out so far.