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!
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.
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 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.
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 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.
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!
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.
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. :)
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…
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.
Chiming in because I just finished swapping over 15+ fixtures. You can get LED replacement bulbs that do away with the ballasts entirely. At first I went with the LED retrofit lights that used the existing ballasts but I still had issues with the ballasts failing (because they were all 20-30 years old). Found the “ballast bypass” replacements and swapped everything over.
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 embarrassed how much time and money I put into my garden this spring just to let the weeds take over. It’s so hot out there.
Thanks! I think in the short term we’re going to try to make the electronic ballast lamps we already purchased work… If we hit any issues, I’ll look around for the bypass.
We only have 10? Bulbs, I think, and we have at least 8 fixtures, each taking two bulbs. So we’ll have to buy more anyways, I’ll probably get what you suggest for the remainder, and test them along side the direct ballast driven ones… Either way, thanks
They both work fine. I mainly meant if you were having to buy electronic ballasts to make the bulbs you have work, it may be cheaper to buy the bypass bulbs and do away with the ballasts. Same amount of work.
I strongly recommend Bully Tools for shovels and other garden tools. I bought the most heavy duty shovel home depot had on the shelf and broke it two hours into my project. The bully tools shovel handled the same work no problem. I have two shovels, a rake, and a hoe from them.
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.
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