Do It Yourself

Staining red oak for a slat wall around our fireplace. Hope to get it installed this week.

That doesnt sound fun at all. Would a drain snake work?

Edit: responding to @jarfil@beehaw.org. Sorry, still getting used to the Connect app.

Was going to try to get the rust off my father's crappy old hand plane (since restoring it would get me out of having to buy a hand plane of my own for now), but it doesn't look like I'm going to get that far this week. Spent a couple of hours moving books around to clear some shelf space instead.

I'm still building the addition to my wood framed green house, still have a couple of weekends to go till its done.

was going to make a small garden in a wood box on the deck of my apartment, but its getting unusually hot i think i'll put it off for a little longer

Installing a new sink and dishwasher, here's to not flooding the place. Probably.

Reattaching my towel rack to my wall. It was held in with drywall anchors but those have failed so will either repatch and reattach or glue it back on. Depends on how done with it I am

Going to be resealing our countertops today. Shouldn't be too complicated, but it's my first time doing it so we'll see.

Trying to fix a slow bathtub drain.

It's got one of those flexible ribbed pipes that keeps holding onto everything, and whoever installed the bathtub had the amazing idea of fully encasing it in brick and large tiles, with no access left to replace the pipe. To add insult to injury, the pipe is attached to the bathtub by a single screw going through a metal strainer, so no way to properly shove in a pipe cleaner without it coming detached and falling under the bathtub... inside the encased part; even if I managed to fish it out afterwards, no way it's going to match the gasket again. The toilet is also so close to it, that even to try breaking the tile and brick to get to the pipe, one would have to remove the toilet first.

I've poured in some "gel drain cleaner", left it for a while, washed it out, and some plunger action seemed to move some stuff around, but it was still slow. Poured some caustic soda, which outgassed pretty nicely, and the plunger worked some more, but I'd say it's still less than 50% there.

I'm torn as to what to try next, whether some HCl, bleach, or sulfuric, but the strainer is metal and I don't want to make it look worse than it already does. Could try more of the gel and/or soda, but I think they might've already done all they were to do.

I need to tighten the bolts on the kids toilet, lol. Otherwise just running a ton of errands (none DIY-related).

Starting the refinish job on our front porch. Got my broom and sander and some dry weather in the forecast, hopefully it'll be finished before the next storm rolls through!

I recently finished my butcher block desk and enjoyed it so much I asked for a bunch of wood working tools as birthday gifts. I don’t usually care about my birthday or gifts, but it’s always an ordeal for my family because they insist. So this year I finally told them to get the wood working basics.

I’m eyeing my second project now and trying not to tell myself that it should be the new coffee table that we’ve needed for the past 3 years. That feels like a more advanced project, but it’s so tempting.

I did get around to the hand plane this week. Most of the rust and grot is off and now I need to lap the sole as best I can.

If there's still a bit of rust left somewhere . . . I don't actually care. It's a 1970s Canadian-made Stanley Craftsman plane, which means that it's effectively worthless. I just want it in good enough shape not to leave rust streaks on whatever I'm trying to plane. In five years or so, I expect I'll either have given up on woodworking or bought a higher-quality replacement.

(I also need to fix a chair, which I didn't quite get to today.)

I live in a rented apartment and since we moved in one of the (IKEA) bedroom closets has been horrible built.

The landlord commented that the previous tenant had taken them down, but put them back together when they moved out.

Didn’t look to closely but it was always a bit wobbly. In part thanks to covid we’ve ended up living here longer than planned and the closet was now almost tipping over, so I decided to take action.

Just disassembled it and apart from the back plates being taped together and held in with about 6 nails each, three of which was at the bottom, the upper shelf turned out to not be from this closet.

It has a label from IKEA and says it’s a kitchen shelf.

Took out the tape measure and sure enough. It’s 5mm to wide, and at least 3mm to deep.

Too late to do anything about it now, it’s 10’o clock, but it amazes me at the shit people do.

No wonder the cabinet doors aligned poorly and all.

Probably going to practise using my new laser cutter/engraver I just got last week.

Should be ripping out Windows and getting Fedora Workstation working on a new machine. I'll probably start working on installing the AI tools I used to justify the new rig. I'm halfway thinking about modifying my laptop bed stand to add more cooling capacity built in, but it kinda depends on how hot it gets with the GPU at full tilt.

I also need to make some progress getting my desk/hobby electronics workstation back to useful conditions and reinstall all of my lighting.

That's a big help, thank you! I spent some time on it today and I think I figured out what's actually leaking, but this kit should make it easier to just repair it

Working on building a modern style barn door, although I doubt I'll be able to paint it this weekend.

Recoating a fire pit with high heat enamel. I was dumb, bought a new fire pit without a cover and it got suuuuper rusty. I almost had it finished when I started yesterday but luck would have it I ran out of paint for the last coat.

Preparing for a new flatbed printer bring delivered next week. Requires cleaning up the workshop, preparing to pull heads and flush lines.

Trying to fix a slow leak in a toilet, likely, but the main project is patching a gap in the ceiling where a vent fan doesn't quite fit

I'm in the process of destroing an old, out of service fireplace, to rebuild a fake one with an electric radiator.

The chimney hadn't been swept before it was taken out of service, and now I know how much I hate tallow.

I'm going to attempt to fix my truck's air conditioning. Of course it waited until the weather was sweltering hot to stop working. I know just enough about refrigerant systems to be dangerous, wish me luck!

If that's successful and/or doesn't take all weekend, I'm going to try to build some temporary screening around my tiny back porch to give me somewhere to sit outside away from the mosquitos.