Do It Yourself

I turned a ring “box” on a lathe and my fiancée said “yes!”

Myself, mostly.

I bought a used 125 gallon aquarium 6 months ago that I need to reseal and build a new stand for. Got the sealant, lumber, and tools last month. Right now I'm working on procrastinating the actual DIY part.

Just got a bunch of stuff delivered to build my own hyperhdr tv backlight. Its a relatively small project, but im hoping itll have a huge impact on my viewing experience 😊

Built a pantry extending into a garage. Did drywall and mud for the first time. I see the mistakes but wife is happy. So thats a win!

Just got all the supplies I need for making a Dopp bag.

Just finished a crochet blanket with hood for my little one. Still have to put a ridge of dragon scales down the back for him.

just finished sewing (or rather just modifying) myself some pants

Depends how many levels of recursion you're interested in.

The most immediate project is to rewire all the ceiling lighting in the basement, to get it all on one circuit, while also eliminating a few dim spots and swapping some old flourescent fixtures for some nice dimmable LED panels I got on a sale, for the area that we eventually wanna turn into an entertainment center. I've got all the supplies ready, but I keep getting sidetracked by lawn work and issues with the car.

THAT whole project is in service of tearing down and rebuilding the drywall facade walls in the basement, and being able to have working lighting available for that project.

THAT project is in service of finishing waterpoofing the basement after we had a gutter and sump system professionally installed last fall. That eliminated all the issues we had with water seeping up from under the foundation, but there's still a very small amount that leaks in from over the TOP of the foundation, when there's heavy-enough rain. For that, we need to rip out the remainder of the walls, which were partially ripped out to install the gutter, and put up a liner directly on the foundation walls that will redirect all water down into the gutter.

THEN we can replace the carpet that we had to rip out after the record-setting rain storm we had last summer that soaked the entire basement.

THEN we can move everything in the garage back intonthe basement.

THEN I can being working on the car that grenaded itself when it threw a timing chain.

Also, does buying a new car count? Cause that was our entire 3-day weekend.

Planning to replace the old TV coax cable with Ethernet cable so everybody in the house gets their own low-latency connection for gaming. The problem is that TV cable is installed in a daisy chain while Ethernet has a star topology, and there's only room for one cable from the basement to upstairs. So at the moment I'm pondering whether to keep the daisy chain and place a switch in every room, use some sort of MoCA (Ethernet over coax) adapter or go all the way and install fiber.

Also, we should really replace the carpet in the master bedroom with hardwood soon.

(Edit: spelling)

all my crochet projects are on hold until it cools off a bit. the sensation of sweaty hands and yarn is a no-go for me.

Currently putting the finishing touches on a wall-mounted chest of drawers for the workshop, which is holding everything from screws to scrap metal to machinist vices. It's made of scrap pallet wood and ply and totally hand-tooled (planes/chisels/saws). My workshop is very very small (under 8ft by 9ft) and doubles as my home office, so this baby really frees up major space.

Just the rest of the drawer labels left to do. Not sure if these photos will work, but here goes:

The new mantle I've been working on is finally ready to install! So, we'll be mounting it this weekend, along with the TV (yes, "tv too high" but we don't have an option). So excited to finally have this done!

About to get started on my new bed frame to replace the one I have that was built with pocket screws.

I replaced my brakes last weekend. Did the pads, realized I also needed to do the disks and brake fluid too. Ended up being a lot more work than I wanted, mostly because I was missing tools.

I just put up an awning over our back deck. Now it’s time for modifications. I’m going to adjust how the straps connect for the fabric so it’s tighter and water runs off better. then I’m going to seam seal and put on some waterproofing spray.

After that, my daughter and I are building a padded bench for a window nook in her room. The design and measurements are done. Fabric and foam have been purchased. Actual work completed: zero.

I'm about 3 injuries into making Rex Kreuger's roman workbench. Then we can use that to tech tree up and continuously make nicer workshop stuff.

Making progress on linen shorts. The belt fits, despite some unfortunate inaccuracies while attaching the waistband. Button hole and button are next. Or hemming..

Slowly gathering the tools and materials I need to make my own desktop. I'll be trying to use pine sap resin to glue the boards together before sanding it down. I think I'll be buying the rest of the desk from Ikea, I just don't want to keep touching melamine when I'm studying (although it's probably safe).

I am currently not installing a ventilation system in the workshop to remove nasty 3d printing fumes. Any day now I will start.

I'm trying to network some spare laptop motherboards together with a working laptop that remotes in, my Desktop named Theseus, my AWS VPS, and a raspberry pi running Home Assistant to make a mini supercomputer to run AI locally. Unfortunately I have a bad habit of "painting the Mona Lisa pixel by pixel', so I've been stuck cutting holes, gluing things with ABS-acetone paste, and putting in heatset inserts (for maximum serviceability) for weeks to make cases for them while my ADHD ass keeps forgetting what I was doing and switching between tasks at random 🥲 One of them is done enough that I got the metal tape for grounding laid down so I only have maybe a few weeks left

The network's name is Navi, as an homage to Serial Experiments Lain!

I had made some sweet built-in bunk bed for my kids but they've both outgrown them and now I have to turn it into a built-in for a full-size mattress.

Trying to repair a spice grinder. After swearing a bunch and cutting up my fingers I gave up putting the original switch and safety lock and decided to cannibalize a new switch from a space heater that isn't a POS.

I’m redoing the front garden!

Converting my van into a campervan. Specially fitting the awning and all the wiring/electrics next.

I have my guest bath torn down to studs. A new cast iron tub went in. I had to replace a few termite-eaten studs from who knows when. The house is 60 years old. I'm working on putting it all back together now. New insulation, then drywall and backer board. Then, moving on to the shower tile. Also, I have to schedule a new stone top for the vanity and get a new sink and faucet. Then, texture and paint all the walls and finally replace all the floor tile in the area. I started a week ago, but it's all moving quickly. If I can keep up the momentum, maybe I will be finished in a month.

My list for the month:

• Bring the drill press inside and see if I can get the rust off the base. Like the crappy hand plane I derusted a couple of weeks ago, it's been sitting in an unheated shed through several Canadian winters and attracted condensation. It's functional, but the table is a mess.
• Do Something with the red oak left over from the desk chair repair (since I had to buy a much longer piece than I needed for that). It will likely be combined with a piece of leftover birch plywood to become a tray, and the leftovers from that will become a wooden mallet.
• Attempt to 3D print a fairly complex router base for my Dremel, which is going to be interesting because the available instructions are 1. scant and 2. in German.

Oooh, this is a post for me. I have a handful of projects going.

I have a network room that needs a fan installed where the window used to be, I have the fan, just need to cut open the board covering what used to be the window, install the fan, and wire it up to exhaust hot air out of the room directly outside. Non time critical, I have the door to that room open for now, it used to be a root cellar in the basement.

I also need to fix the insane electrical work for the basement lighting that the former owner of this house put in. He put in one of those light socket to plug things, then wired together all the new lights in the basement with Romex (all fluorescent) and finished it to a plug that connects to that light socket. I want to pull apart this hot garbage and wire it correctly, and replace the light switches box in the process (some of the threading in the electrical box is stripped, so the switch doesn't mount correctly), and move it to a different circuit, because it's currently sharing a circuit with the recreation room, and a couple of bedrooms for seemingly no good reason.

I also have to replace all the magnetic ballasts in the basement light fixtures with electronic ballasts because we have fluorescent replacement LED bulbs, which only work on electronic ballasts. Yay. I have to check the garage and at least one other room with fluorescent fixtures to see if they're on magnetic ballasts and replace them too so we can finally have all LED lighting in the house.

Going with lighting here: I have to find my multimeter to test and hopefully fix a lamp my brother purchased that doesn't work that will go in the living room, and replace all the lightbulbs in the living room with smart bulbs, then have them controlled by an in-wall smart light switch (which is already in place), via home assistant. I also need to do smart bulbs in the recreation room, I also have new light fixtures for the rec room to replace some that had loose bulbs (the bulb base was loose in the fixture), and replace the light switches in there with in wall smart switches.

A whole room is lacking power, it was split between different circuits, one was the basement lights/rec room, the other was to the bathroom, I managed to rewire the room to a single point, and I'm trying to pull a new circuit to the room with 12/2 Romex. Holes are drilled, just need to feed the cable along side another run of Romex, and likely pull one more circuit to separate the bathrooms (which are on different floors above/below eachother), from the fridge in the kitchen. Two new circuits, woo. Need breakers for them.

My brother also bought a gazebo from the hardware store that needs to be built and set up in the back yard, and my father in law bought us some pathway lights that I have yet to unpack.

The back yard garden is overgrown with weeds, and I need to deal with that. We didn't do any gardening this year so nature took over.... I don't really have many if any tools to deal with it, so I need to do some garden supply shopping.

I'm also prepping to install ethernet throughout the house, I have two boxes of category 6 cable, 1000 ft each (2000 ft total), including wiring going up into the attic for access points.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot, but that's the projects that are foremost on my mind.... Some are pretty easy (like the rec room fixtures, I have them, I just need to hang them, or the new wire pull from the power-less room, I have the cable partly run, just need to pull it the rest of the way).

Longer term, I want to build raised boxes in the garden, plus renovate to add a kitchen and another bathroom (with a shower).... Build a new shed, and replace the old antenna tower with something less rusted and perhaps taller, plus run coax from the antenna tower to my office for my ham radio hobby.

Maybe eventually put solar panels on the roof and perhaps a battery system so we can produce and store our own power....

We are renovating our Atelier to be a temporary house while we strip and redo the main house. My girlfriend's parents have done a full renovation, he is an industrial electrician, her brother is a woodworker just out of school and a modular house designer. They are all super helpful and I am so grateful and learning a lot.

During the 2 weeks I worked only 2 days per week and a few weekends before we have:

• trash removal of previous owner

• ripped out electrical in the main house

• tore down the gyprock in one room and found that the main house and atelier both have a moisture blocking barrier after the first brick layer

• washed away the gritty loam paint that the previous owner had used over much of the house

• primed and painted the entire 44m^2 atelier stone walls

• placed 6cm cheaper insulation in the storage area since there it was only 1 brick thick instead of 2 bricks plus a space.

• cut a hole in the brick wall for the gas heater stove

• got a quote for switching to 3-phase 25A, 400V and prepared the site

• made a temporary fence to keep our dog in the first piece of our garden that is closed on the sides

• cut and dug trenches inside for gas, water, electric and internet

• broke up and hauled away 6cm thick concrete slab where we had to route things under

• placed and hooked up electrical in the atelier loft, storage room, and the outdoor storage shelter behind it

• made technical drawings for electrical, gas, sewer, and water

• found a quality 2nd hand gas stove to heat during our mild winters

• dug out and mapped sewer and gas lines through the property

• dug a 24 meter trench 70cm deep and laid water, gas, and 3-phase electric (in a flexible pipe) in that layer, and laid internet and sewer at ~40cm deep with a measured 1cm per meter "afwatering."

• Quotes for redoing the asbestos filled roof in the main house and currently setting up asbestos testing for the slanted wall since the attestation documentation seemed to be wrong and there is asbestos-based insulation according to a roofer + asbestos remover we got a quote from

• temporarily rennovated the small bathroom, repainted, replaced the broken toilet, removed the leaky sink, and re-silicones the tiny sitting bath/shower and replaced the shower head

• Found 30m^2 of click laminate for 40€. Proud of that find. Good condition too.

Next up is hooking up the gas and water fittings fully inside, getting a plumber to come test and hook us up to the main 22mm line to the boiler in the house, place and hook up the electrical in the kitchen/living room and for the appliances, find a 2nd hand oven, stove, and fume hood, and fill in the inside trenches and re-pour the concrete, place the floors and finish up for the year in the next month.

I destroyed an old, out of order chimney. I rebuilt a wooden formwork with an electric radiator which looks like a fireplace. Now, my SO and I are going to cover the formwork with mosaic tiles (she knows how to lay tiles, I'm going to learn to). After that, I'll put wooden shelves on top, for books and geeky decorations.

Also, on the evening, I'm helping her sewing amigurimi toys, as she is a professional crochet craftswoman.

though not as home oriented as most posters here, i have a denim jacket i’ve been working on for the past couple months. have been making and sewing my own patches on, and am currently looking at dyeing the sleeves, though i’ve been procrastinating from that a bit ;)

Currently stripping popcorn ceiling on entire first floor, shoring and patching dry wall on all walls and ceiling, painting entire first floor, and replacing most fixtures and rugs. May not sound like much, but it's full time. First spruce up place has had in 21 years. Also replacing pads and rotors on car when I need to take a brake (intended) from the dust and endless sanding.

I have a couple of air quality sensors I need to get wired up with wireless interfaces. I also have a book that I'm hollowing out to turn into a crystal radio-slash-diorama that I need to get back to work on.

Hmm, I guess the most active project is a sweater I started on a knitting loom. My first knitting project. I normally do crochet.

I ~want to~ finish my powder room vanity and sink, get some shelves up over the washer/ dryer, and finish my pot rack so I can free up cabinet space.

Not much at the moment. Trying to find out how to the table saw fixed before I can actually do something useful.

I just installed 12" exhaust fan in my garage because my car refuses to charge it's so hot. 15 minutes to install and wire the fan. 2 days to frame and finish both sides. I fucking hate stucco.

I finally managed to make my coffee table into an usable state but it still needs a bit more wood to become stable and then it needs to be waxed/oiled.

I have many projects going on.

1. Complete window / frame restauration underway at the country house built in the fifties, I scraped all the original paint off by hand and now I'm waiting for drier days to finish the painting.

2. Fixing the terrace at the country house, I laid the first new layer of concrete to fix the corroded parts just last Thursday. When it dries I'll see if an entire additional layer is required. Next summer I'll also rebuild the terrace fence and install growth lines for vines over the terrace.

3. Acoustic Research AR-7x speaker restauration. I installed the new woofer surrounds few weeks ago, now I'm waiting for the ferrofluid for the tweeters to arrive by mail. Just yesterday I found suitable and cheap linen cloth for the new covers in a nearby cloth shop.

4. Fixing the rain gutters at home, the weight of last winter's snow and ice pulled some if the screws off. This is a priority.

5. Yard fence repainting, I rebuilt a large part of the fence in June but the weather has been too hot / humid to paint the old parts.

6. New ceiling curtain rail installation at home. Would be easy per se, but it's a two man job and the ceiling is high...

7. Motorcycle needs a new heat resistant paint job for the exhaust.

8. Two sets of new custom speaker stand parts are cut and ready for welding, just haven't had the time to start it yet.

...and many more.

It's not much honestly, but in order to make both kids fit in one room I'm making all their furniture from sheets of MDF. This was my very first project, and likely a mistake, but good progress has been made.

https://pasteboard.co/IbsHZghy5fz3.jpg

I’m tuning up the sole of my #5 bench plane so I can use it for more reliable edge jointing while I continue my half-hearted search for a #7 plane.

When I’m done with that I am going to start work on a Morris chair using plans from Norm Abram’s New Yankee Workshop. I’ll use mahogany and plan to make my own leather cushions. It will be my winter project, I think. :)

I recently made a netting needle and paracord hammock 😎

I’m hoping to get around to cad-ing up some replacements for paper pieces in one of my tabletop board games, get those 3D printed and painted, and switch over for next time I play.