Showing (off) your (young) age ?
Naim, along with Linn, were what I listened to at the high-end audio stores in college (to date my age) hoping one day to be able to afford...
NAD really nice looking !
wood case, black faceplate with 'dem nice UV meters, and Dirac (and bass and treble)
(and NADs were at that same shop back in the day as well)
I had a boss ask me why my family and I went to church because Jesus was just another alien. He also claimed to have been abducted and probed by aliens, not once but twice. So he has that going for him...
The wife and I are engaging in home improvement activities this summer. We hired a landscaper and are remodeling our home bar as we speak. I am not a fan of this type of shit because I am simply not very good at it.
We are currently in the process of painting those stamped tin ceiling tiles in hammered copper, they are currently silver. We liked the pattern but not the color. When I say "we" I mean me since I do know how to paint. Sigh.
The landscaping will be nice, interlocked edging blocks and a 4' "rat run" of 1-1/2" river rock around the house.
Rain today means the areas I tore the old plastic edging with that shitass red mulch (looks pretty when new but blows around, birds kick the shit out of it getting to the worms etc) and replanted with grass will grow even more.
Also, my wife says I'm grumpy about all these projects, but hell - $6000 buys a lot of drivers to put on my shelf.
I've been dragging my feet so bad on what will end up being essentially a complete rebuild of an old porch that was poorly walled in. Well, pretty much everything about that room was a hard fail...
Whatever was the original structure of the house is dated 1914, so who knows when this porch was first conceived. And there was evidence of multiple renovations. Old and new roof structures intermingled, along with repairs to that "new" roof structure when it leaked and was re-shingled (and leaked again because shingles were a poor choice). The posts that would have held up the roof were closer to a modern treated 4x4 style so the originals were likely replaced at some point when it was still an open porch.
When we bought the house there was a glass sliding door to the room that made it feel sort of like a small sun room, but on the east side of the house that is shaded by a tree?!? The floor level dropped down about 1.5" from the rest of the floors in the house. There was no ventilation to the room. And there was a roof leak since it was very low slope, but shingled anyway. The foundation had sagged a bit down towards one exterior corner over who knows how many decades, so the floor was noticeably out of level and even the windows were visibly skewed. Not to mention they installed the windows between the porch roof posts, which made them off center.
Durring my initial 2.5 years of nights and weekends renovation (before we even moved in) I replaced the glass sliding doors with some bare poplar french doors that I clear coated. Ran a duct to the room and cut a wall return pass-through. I completely removed the floor and joists and rebuilt a level, insulated floor matching the same level as the rest of the floors in the house.
Fast forward to over a year ago, I decide to completely rip the roof and roof structure off the room and rebuild with a slightly better slope and use a sealing roll roofing instead of shingles. The leak was thoroughly dispatched and roof line was now more level too, which unfortunately really made the out of level, and off-center windows look pretty awful.
So last year I took another week off work to totally rip out and rebuild that wall along with mostly rebuilding the side wall. Replacing all three windows with dimensions that better matched the others on the house.
Dragged myself kicking and screaming through installing the underlayment and siding, exterior lighting, Insulating, Installing drywall, taping/mudding drywall, prime the drywall, paint the ceiling and install the light fixtures. I guess I'm still so burnt out from the initial rehab of the house that I would put each thing off for months between. Ended up painting the room twice since we didn't care for our first choice. Just got done installing the flooring, so now all that is left is to trim out the room and finish the final wiring. Soon I can put this little 8'x10' hell behind me. and move on to the next major project
Why did we even buy the place? It was super cheap and had newer hvac, water heater, and shingles. And pre-covid prices on materials during the initial rehab were very cheap too.
@squamishdroc said:
The wife decided she wants ducks, so I am currently building a duck coop
My folks neighbors have ducks, apparently the domestic variety are bred to have little to no flight capacity and are very docile. Wild ducks are assholes, I know - we have a swamp in our backyard and ducks seem to find places in my yard to build nests. They are very aggressive animals when they are protecting their eggs.
This year I put some large rocks on and around where they nested last year and they just built right next to the rocks. Sigh.
I love eating domestic duck. I hear their eggs are not all that good to eat, however.
So are geese. We have a large pond at work where they love to live. They are agressive and mean. The previous owner had a dog, Polo, that he brought to work everyday and he let him run free. Very few geese. Now there are probably 75 maybe more. They poop everywhere! One thing we found out, geese (maybe ducks too?) won't step over a wire that is 6" - 8" high. So we installed stakes and wire to keep them from walking across our side walks pooping all over them.
@squamishdroc said:
The wife decided she wants ducks, so I am currently building a duck coop
My folks neighbors have ducks, apparently the domestic variety are bred to have little to no flight capacity and are very docile. Wild ducks are assholes, I know - we have a swamp in our backyard and ducks seem to find places in my yard to build nests. They are very aggressive animals when they are protecting their eggs.
This year I put some large rocks on and around where they nested last year and they just built right next to the rocks. Sigh.
I love eating domestic duck. I hear their eggs are not all that good to eat, however.
Emily has definitely been doing research - she got 3 Kahki something somethings, apparently these ones can’t fly and lay lots of eggs. I wasn’t really on board with the whole duck thing but she is recovering from a neck injury and can’t ride so ducks it is I guess to keep he occupied. 😁
My wife rehabs houses for fun. Her father was a fireman and built houses when he was off duty and turned out a house just about every year and the family would move into it and sell last years. She helped him and she built an entire house with a past husband. 9 years ago we bought a repossessed ranch that had been empty for 2 years.
It was a mess with a lot of bad improvements from a previous owner. He sold pies for a living and tried for years to get a license for a bakery in the basement. One area of the basement was where all the baking gear was and there were multiple floor drains and 220V outlets everywhere. The house has 2 200 amp breaker panels and I took out a pile of copper wire. The other half of the basement was bedrooms that had been added poorly and was full of mold and mildew. All of the basement was gutted down to the block walls and bare ceiling joists.
The kitchen was original so we tore it out along with a wall. The floor was tiled and a new kitchen installed. The single bathroom had a floor that had holes to the basement from the rot and had to be striped down to the floor joist. A new bathroom was installed with more tile. There was a stair to the basement in the garage but they had added a spiral staircase that was broken down. It came out and we stole some room (moved a wall) from a bedroom to put in a standard stairway. There was a nice 3 season porch that was finished out with cheap wood paneling with multiple colors of paint splashed on it. It was striped down to the studs, insulated, sheet rocked and all the window were replaced.
In the end all the windows in the house have been replaced except 2 egress windows in the basement. All the wood floors were refinished. New laminate flooring was installed in a dining area and the living room. The house was rewired to bring the electrical up to code. Almost all of this was done by my wife, contractors and hired help over the course of 2 years before it was ready to rent.
Last year the renter left and my wife decided the house needed more bathrooms and half the basement finished. So half of the closet in the master bedroom came out and a new bathroom with a shower went in. A basement room was finished off and a new half bath went in.
When I said almost all the work was done by my wife I need to explain that she can't do everything. If it's hard finish carpentry I get to do it. She can do basic trim but if it's complicated it's mine. So wood transitions between tile and wood floor, countertops, tops for half walls, etc.. are all mine.
For example:
This is an example of a previous owner cobble. There was a hall way in the basement and in order to get a little more headroom under the main support beam they just cut the beam and put steel posts and a piece of I-beam in. This was all enclosed in a wall originally. I should also mention that they cut the furnace ductwork to the upstairs bedrooms while they were at it. We had the duct work fixed before the house was rented.
Two temporary walls were built to hold up the floor while the beam was removed.
The posts and I-beam were removed and the main beam was cut in the middle of the support posts on each end. The original beam was built with four 2 x 10's nailed together in a staggered pattern. The floor joist above the beam was nailed to the beam from above making it a challenge to remove the old beam. I'm not sure why but there were several joists that were hacked that you can see in the photos.
Glue lam beams come in standard lumber heights but not the same thickness. They're thicker so I used 3 of them and padded 2 of them with 1/2" and 3/4" Baltic birch plywood glued to them to get the proper width to match the original beam. They were put up one at a time and pocket screwed to the existing beam and screwed to each other. Finally some sturdy metal plates were installed with 1/4" lag bolts.
The house was turned over to a new renter last weekend. I did a video walk through the day they moved in. One of my more complicated woodwork project was the oak stair rail to the basement. To meet code a stair rail must be continuous and return to the wall on the ends. This stair turns a corner and has a landing in the middle.
Now you know why my InDIYana project didn't get done.
Ron
PS The laundry room and basement stair were done before this recent project. A lot of the material that go into my wife's house projects come from Habitat Restores.
Comments
This is in Guanajuato.
https://www.naimaudio.com/product/nait-50
I have no real need for one of these - BUT I really want one. The classic old school naim design.
Looks cool (25W, 225W peak). but at $3600 it should be!
Huh, never heard of them.
Showing (off) your (young) age ?
Naim, along with Linn, were what I listened to at the high-end audio stores in college (to date my age) hoping one day to be able to afford...
I'm far more exited about this one:
https://www.audioholics.com/amplifier-reviews/nad-c-3050?fbclid=IwAR3bLSzUOVNWQxqr5SuQWHWZufeR3tUiKuXPeTHmAS-bIZboHInWDZ_EKj4_aem_th_AbK7pxntkEaTD0IOVIn-kis3a4bnUoODGCxuJvKqCCRMpKAVOWCmfmkFIS499URnYGc
NAD really nice looking !
wood case, black faceplate with 'dem nice UV meters, and Dirac (and bass and treble)
(and NADs were at that same shop back in the day as well)
Might not be that old, might have only been introduced to the usual stuff, Kenwood, Pioneer,Sony. But yeah, never ran across those in my travels.
I've seen it all now. An internet "off topic" thread unexpectedly veers on topic.
Carry on...
As if the normal everyday occurrences weren't bizarre enough:
Military whistleblower claims US has UFO retrieval program
Personal opinion: UAPs are real but rare, and it's not us OR "aliens". Not so sure about recovered tech...
I've always wondered about this boss I had years ago...
I had a boss ask me why my family and I went to church because Jesus was just another alien. He also claimed to have been abducted and probed by aliens, not once but twice. So he has that going for him...
Man his butt has got to be sore. Anyone remember the South Park episode with Cartman and the antenna.
No one doing intergalactic space travel is interested in your poophole.
The wife and I are engaging in home improvement activities this summer. We hired a landscaper and are remodeling our home bar as we speak. I am not a fan of this type of shit because I am simply not very good at it.
We are currently in the process of painting those stamped tin ceiling tiles in hammered copper, they are currently silver. We liked the pattern but not the color. When I say "we" I mean me since I do know how to paint. Sigh.
The landscaping will be nice, interlocked edging blocks and a 4' "rat run" of 1-1/2" river rock around the house.
Rain today means the areas I tore the old plastic edging with that shitass red mulch (looks pretty when new but blows around, birds kick the shit out of it getting to the worms etc) and replanted with grass will grow even more.
Also, my wife says I'm grumpy about all these projects, but hell - $6000 buys a lot of drivers to put on my shelf.
Or $6k in tools would be nice.
No kidding.
I get to put my summer chores on hold for few days. I caught a nasty cold.
https://www.jfcomponents.com/
After delaying several years we're having an 80' retaining wall installed in our steeply sloping back yard. Don't ask how much that is going to cost!
Just need to get yourself a t-shirt with ‘WE’ on the back, for all those projects WE need to do…
In the end, you’ll be the Happy elf.
I've been dragging my feet so bad on what will end up being essentially a complete rebuild of an old porch that was poorly walled in. Well, pretty much everything about that room was a hard fail...
Whatever was the original structure of the house is dated 1914, so who knows when this porch was first conceived. And there was evidence of multiple renovations. Old and new roof structures intermingled, along with repairs to that "new" roof structure when it leaked and was re-shingled (and leaked again because shingles were a poor choice). The posts that would have held up the roof were closer to a modern treated 4x4 style so the originals were likely replaced at some point when it was still an open porch.
When we bought the house there was a glass sliding door to the room that made it feel sort of like a small sun room, but on the east side of the house that is shaded by a tree?!? The floor level dropped down about 1.5" from the rest of the floors in the house. There was no ventilation to the room. And there was a roof leak since it was very low slope, but shingled anyway. The foundation had sagged a bit down towards one exterior corner over who knows how many decades, so the floor was noticeably out of level and even the windows were visibly skewed. Not to mention they installed the windows between the porch roof posts, which made them off center.
Durring my initial 2.5 years of nights and weekends renovation (before we even moved in) I replaced the glass sliding doors with some bare poplar french doors that I clear coated. Ran a duct to the room and cut a wall return pass-through. I completely removed the floor and joists and rebuilt a level, insulated floor matching the same level as the rest of the floors in the house.
Fast forward to over a year ago, I decide to completely rip the roof and roof structure off the room and rebuild with a slightly better slope and use a sealing roll roofing instead of shingles. The leak was thoroughly dispatched and roof line was now more level too, which unfortunately really made the out of level, and off-center windows look pretty awful.
So last year I took another week off work to totally rip out and rebuild that wall along with mostly rebuilding the side wall. Replacing all three windows with dimensions that better matched the others on the house.
Dragged myself kicking and screaming through installing the underlayment and siding, exterior lighting, Insulating, Installing drywall, taping/mudding drywall, prime the drywall, paint the ceiling and install the light fixtures. I guess I'm still so burnt out from the initial rehab of the house that I would put each thing off for months between. Ended up painting the room twice since we didn't care for our first choice. Just got done installing the flooring, so now all that is left is to trim out the room and finish the final wiring. Soon I can put this little 8'x10' hell behind me.
and move on to the next major project 
Why did we even buy the place? It was super cheap and had newer hvac, water heater, and shingles. And pre-covid prices on materials during the initial rehab were very cheap too.
The wife decided she wants ducks, so I am currently building a duck coop
My folks neighbors have ducks, apparently the domestic variety are bred to have little to no flight capacity and are very docile. Wild ducks are assholes, I know - we have a swamp in our backyard and ducks seem to find places in my yard to build nests. They are very aggressive animals when they are protecting their eggs.
This year I put some large rocks on and around where they nested last year and they just built right next to the rocks. Sigh.
I love eating domestic duck. I hear their eggs are not all that good to eat, however.
So are geese. We have a large pond at work where they love to live. They are agressive and mean. The previous owner had a dog, Polo, that he brought to work everyday and he let him run free. Very few geese. Now there are probably 75 maybe more. They poop everywhere! One thing we found out, geese (maybe ducks too?) won't step over a wire that is 6" - 8" high. So we installed stakes and wire to keep them from walking across our side walks pooping all over them.
Lol, my wife liked to go on walks during breaks at work, but she stopped doing it because of the asshole geese. 😆
Guess I never got around to getting any finished exterior pics so I snapped some.
Emily has definitely been doing research - she got 3 Kahki something somethings, apparently these ones can’t fly and lay lots of eggs. I wasn’t really on board with the whole duck thing but she is recovering from a neck injury and can’t ride so ducks it is I guess to keep he occupied. 😁
My wife rehabs houses for fun. Her father was a fireman and built houses when he was off duty and turned out a house just about every year and the family would move into it and sell last years. She helped him and she built an entire house with a past husband. 9 years ago we bought a repossessed ranch that had been empty for 2 years.
It was a mess with a lot of bad improvements from a previous owner. He sold pies for a living and tried for years to get a license for a bakery in the basement. One area of the basement was where all the baking gear was and there were multiple floor drains and 220V outlets everywhere. The house has 2 200 amp breaker panels and I took out a pile of copper wire. The other half of the basement was bedrooms that had been added poorly and was full of mold and mildew. All of the basement was gutted down to the block walls and bare ceiling joists.
The kitchen was original so we tore it out along with a wall. The floor was tiled and a new kitchen installed. The single bathroom had a floor that had holes to the basement from the rot and had to be striped down to the floor joist. A new bathroom was installed with more tile. There was a stair to the basement in the garage but they had added a spiral staircase that was broken down. It came out and we stole some room (moved a wall) from a bedroom to put in a standard stairway. There was a nice 3 season porch that was finished out with cheap wood paneling with multiple colors of paint splashed on it. It was striped down to the studs, insulated, sheet rocked and all the window were replaced.
In the end all the windows in the house have been replaced except 2 egress windows in the basement. All the wood floors were refinished. New laminate flooring was installed in a dining area and the living room. The house was rewired to bring the electrical up to code. Almost all of this was done by my wife, contractors and hired help over the course of 2 years before it was ready to rent.
Last year the renter left and my wife decided the house needed more bathrooms and half the basement finished. So half of the closet in the master bedroom came out and a new bathroom with a shower went in. A basement room was finished off and a new half bath went in.
When I said almost all the work was done by my wife I need to explain that she can't do everything. If it's hard finish carpentry I get to do it. She can do basic trim but if it's complicated it's mine. So wood transitions between tile and wood floor, countertops, tops for half walls, etc.. are all mine.
For example:
This is an example of a previous owner cobble. There was a hall way in the basement and in order to get a little more headroom under the main support beam they just cut the beam and put steel posts and a piece of I-beam in. This was all enclosed in a wall originally. I should also mention that they cut the furnace ductwork to the upstairs bedrooms while they were at it. We had the duct work fixed before the house was rented.
Two temporary walls were built to hold up the floor while the beam was removed.
The posts and I-beam were removed and the main beam was cut in the middle of the support posts on each end. The original beam was built with four 2 x 10's nailed together in a staggered pattern. The floor joist above the beam was nailed to the beam from above making it a challenge to remove the old beam. I'm not sure why but there were several joists that were hacked that you can see in the photos.
Glue lam beams come in standard lumber heights but not the same thickness. They're thicker so I used 3 of them and padded 2 of them with 1/2" and 3/4" Baltic birch plywood glued to them to get the proper width to match the original beam. They were put up one at a time and pocket screwed to the existing beam and screwed to each other. Finally some sturdy metal plates were installed with 1/4" lag bolts.
The house was turned over to a new renter last weekend. I did a video walk through the day they moved in. One of my more complicated woodwork project was the oak stair rail to the basement. To meet code a stair rail must be continuous and return to the wall on the ends. This stair turns a corner and has a landing in the middle.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19pkhSV-La13SOmkWFeOhI9LWfpUGMz1v/view
Now you know why my InDIYana project didn't get done.
Ron
PS The laundry room and basement stair were done before this recent project. A lot of the material that go into my wife's house projects come from Habitat Restores.
Ron, I thought you were retired.
That's a full time job!