What home improvement work did you do today?

Damn. An old wise man once told me. Choose you battles wisely. This is a battle I would also choose. Fuck that guy.

 

Flashback Father’s Day, I am posting some pics of a playhouse I built for my kids.

 

That's pretty damn cool,the hatch has a gas piston

 

I finally have our small powder room renovation done. Painted the oak cabinets, new white baseboards and door casing, painted oak door white/new hardware. New sink/countertop installed. They did a good job lining up and matching the marble grain on the countertop/backsplash.

The wainscoting was wallpaper. My wife and I debated how to update that. I was thinking tile, but that would have meant cutting out the drywall and installing backer board. She talked me into a peal-and-stick wood veneer —Stikwood. With that thin product everything is just a butt joint at the edges. Expensive product but the install was A LOT easier than tile. Transitions between materials is easier. For the cabinets we went with General Finishes Milk Paint. And on top of that their Dead Flat polyurethane is an excellent product.

New mirror, and new light, new switches. Installed a timer switch for the exhaust fan. Wife wants all of the receptacles updated to white everywhere.

Behind the mirror, when they built the house in ‘96 they had a place for a medicine cabinet, but just a wall mirror hung over it. This is also a plumbing wall. It’s also dead center in our house and on the main level. So around 15 years ago I made it our internet wiring hub and ran wiring through there. And then a few years ago, I thought about the fact that this is a code violation with the transformers plugged in back there, so I stuck a smoke alarm in there, for now.

 

Today I am painting my last door/replacing ‘90’s hardware. I’ll be glad when this is over, almost done.

Plus I’m sure my neighbors would like my cars to be in the garage.

 

resealed back porch... hardest part was the temp and humidity today.

 

Just finished redoing my office room today. Excited to move my stuff back in there, took about 5 weekends. Room is about 10x12ft.

What I started with which was a plain drywall room, carpet and some odd vent/foundation indents on the wall to work with:



Put in 9 ceiling lights first:


Next put up plywood on the walls and the beginnings of the built ins like a desk (walnut), also Tundra sneak shot!!!:


Built in shelves and cabinets, with walnut counter. Also began the ceiling work:


Desk and built ins further along:


Trim work mostly completed:


Trim completed:



Walls painted “Dark Everglade” in Satin:


Completed project:

 

Wow. That is a huge transformation and such an upgrade for that room! Do you have a background making stuff like this? Turned out very nice.

 

Took another tree out. Still gotta fill in the stump hole though.


Here’s a little drone footage when he topped it if anyone’s interested.
https://youtu.be/zVshK7_daXM?si=i4alBb8ng8LHPShL

 

Really, really nice work. And fast.

x2

 

Redoing the pavers around pool

 

I'm afraid to share and hear I did this wrong but pops came over today to help me tackle this. I did a ton of research on step flashing and kickout flashing. The lack of kickout is what caused the issue. We had to pull 5 pieces of Hardie today. We're slowly working our way up.

I purchased a prefabbed kickout flashing made by J'D. Added step flashing and waterproof tape up the sidewall.


Tomorrow he's coming back over to finish the job.

Don't judge the torn shingle...





Also discovered there is no plywood behind part of the Hardie Siding. Lovely. I'm not fucking with that today.

 

That plywood missing. Wow. Don't feel too bad needing help with the siding, the builder should have called his pops too!!

I was basically worthless 10 years ago doing anything for myself, I got comfortable asking an older friend dumb questions and he's been happy to pass on his knowledge. Get everything you can get out of your Dad while you can!!

 

Yeah I'm thankful to have his help. He's approaching 69 and it was rough on him today. Around 90 outside. I think there was insulation board there at one time and something happened to it. The house originally had vinyl siding and the Hardie was installed in 2015 by previous owners. They did not take great care of this house.

 

Ordered a Betta SE automatic pool skimmer from Amazon this afternoon. Supposed to arrive this evening. Our pool is covered in flowers and leaves daily from the neighbors trees that live behind us. I get so irritated when I go clean the pool in 110 degrees and it needs to be skimmed again a few hours later. This robot skimmer has some great reviews so hopefully it will be a good investment. Will post some pictures of it working tomorrow after I get it set up.

 

I am really skeptical of anything robot, for no reason at all, just not mentally ready for them I think. Would love to hear about the experience.

 

I’ll admit that I was a bit skeptical as well, but the very high reviews are what changed my mind on this unit. Set it up last night which took all of maybe 5 minutes and away it went. Woke up this morning to a spotless pool! Easy to open the cover and empty the basket and it’s off to cleaning again. It says that you can leave it in the pool all the time and just remove when the pool is in use. Time will tell how it will hold up to the extreme temperature we have. So far I’m pretty impressed.

 

I put in a swimming pool and built a deck.

Here are few pics of the backyard from a few years ago. The first step was to remove the tree, bushes and the left side deck extension.



Here’s where I cut the tree down in April



Next I needed to level the site. The slope was 8” for 18’. The back yard had some low spots so the removed dirt was used to fill that.



Now for the fun part, setup and filling. The pool is a 16’x48” Funscicle brand metal frame from the online big box store.



After that was set up, I removed the 3 bushes and the 7’x8’ deck extension to make way for my deck and stairs.



Lastly, I added the railing, post lights and mounted the ladder. I’ll need to wait to stain. Wife and kids are happy as am I

 

I've had my Betta SE for 2 years now.....i cant imagine not having one. Water surface has nothing on it.

I would recommend spending the $60 extended warranty. Doesn't matter where you bought it, you can get the warranty directly from them.
https://bettabot.com/products/betta...R3ZK_ttT--QtSQhsgv_1n2XcvHLFc2Z6D8H6pzZ7G1EVa

I had the gear on the paddle come off after about a year and they sent me out a new basket.

 

Just ordered the Betta Care Plus, 3 years for $60. Thanks for the heads up.

 

Just a little circle back because I stumbled upon this meme, and I figured you could appreciate it hahaha

 

I'd love to get my hands on that F-body, I'm sure he's "gonna fix it up someday" (they always are, hoarders)

Not my favorite year, but ...

 

They're pretty handy to have around.
Use em to start the fire pit,BBQ Pit and to kill all the Scorpions under the welcome matt at the weekend place.
Those things give me the Heebie Jeebies!!!!
Had one fall out of the fart fan while I was taking a dump and it bounced off the Johnson and into the toilet!!!
Most satisfying flush ever!!!

 

Scorpion sting to the dick... that would be funny af to hear someone explain
You definitely shook hands with danger

 

You would want zero part of it,that poor thing....

The hood is always left open and he placed an old school tool box to sit on top of the fan shroud, he deliberately scattered box wrenchs and sockets all around it "as if" he is actually working on it.
He doesn't know the difference between a ballpeen hammer from a Philips.
Shit 3 weeks ago he was spray painting the engine bay blindly to cover up all the rust because he leaves the fucking hood open

 

You definitely shake your clothes out before putting them on!!!
They're about like a Wasp sting.
Not horrible but definitely not pleasant!!

 

After going through a half dozen of the automatic cleaners we finally said F It and hired a pool guy.
And the pool guy takes care of everything,chemicals and all.
I know one thing for certain!!
I dont want to have to deal with it!!
Did that crap since I was old enough to do it as a Kid!!

 

Damn!!!
That tree is taller than it looks!!!
It took awhile to hit the ground after he cut it!!
Why'd you have it cut down?

 

Not really...
Thats why you always shake out your clothes before putting them on.
Those little F'ers get into everything!!!

 

Well, now we're back from 16 days in midcoast Maine, I finally got to get off my ass and do some stuff, just in time for this bullshit heatwave.

I'm exhausted with having to replace our crappy oscillating sprinkler at the ripe cost of $35-50 every 2nd or 3rd year with some "bulletproof" sprinkler system. Or dealing with Melnor and similar companies jumping through hoops to replace under lifetime warranty. And trying to remember to turn the water on during hot spells. And having our yard get burnt when we go on vacation for a few days, or because the dog keeps peeing in one spot and we don't get rain for a couple days after. IT also sucks to manually stand by our raised stackston veggie beds I built to water, while getting tore up by mosquitos.

So I bit the bullet.

I've been working on a modular smart housing startup idea with a friend/former coworker, and testing out a range of smarthome products and hubs, and then @FiatRunner mentioned these sprinklers that don't need to trench to install, they're a $20/ea Rainbird 32SA that comes on a stake, sold at Home Despot: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Rain-Bi...-Pattern-Adjustable-19-32-ft-32SASP/203826817

Originally our house had a single spigot in the front yard. I installed one of these hose holder/extender things and used a splitter with underground heavy duty hose to extend it to the other side of the yard. That hose feeds into the rear of this and adds another spigot in another location.

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Fabbed up some brackets to mount that to the side of our porch next to our stackstone garden beds I built some years ago (3 beds total, each one 3' deep x 4' wide). This is a pic, from March this year, before planting, but after laying fresh manure and mushroom compost. We usually grow herbs in the middle bed, with heirloom beans on the rack I welded up there, asparagus and strawberries in the far left bed, and tomatoes and peppers on the right, and sometimes tomatoes anywhere there's space.

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So, with two hose locations on either side of the yard to feed sprinklers, I grabbed two of the RainBird sprinklers linked above, one for each side of the front yard. Then I got this kit from Melnor because it had two 15ft hoses I could feed those RainBird sprinklers with, and some heads I could use to water each garden bed: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Melnor-Multi-Adjustable-Garden-Watering-Set-85568HD/322694683

I also bought 50ft of irrigation hose, to plumb those three Melnor heads together, and an assortment of press-on compression fittings to link the heads together, and into a water source.

Last, I bought two of these Sonoff smart water valves (SWV-NH) on scAmazon to control my water flow, after checking to make sure my Hubitat C8 smart hub could talk to them, because I planned to use my smarthub to tell them when to turn on and off, and maybe eventually program them never to turn on if it's rained within the last 36 hours or something:

$32 SONOFF Sprinkler Timer Zigbee 3.0, Smart Sprinkler Controller Compatible with Alexa and Google Home, Automate Irrigation Timer, Water Timer for Garden Hose Outdoor Lawn Pool Watering, SWV-NH (1)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D5B8S8N8

Setup was pretty easy. Added a 4-way splitter off my main spigot, one leg feeding a 15ft hose to a Rainbird, one leg empty, 3rd leg over to the spigot extender by the garden, and fourth leg to a 50ft hose/nozzle for misc purposes. The RainBird sprinklers are stupid easy to adjust with a screwdriver, just find the leftmost starting point, install into the ground pointing where you want to start, then screwdriver to adjust how far they should spin. I'd like a little more distance, but they do the job for our small yard. I used a 2-way splitter on the secondary spigot, used the 15ft off one leg to feed the other Rainbird to cover the other half of the yard, and used the drip irrigation hose off the other leg, cut to custom lengths, to feed the little Melnor heads, which I setup to do a very low-volume 360º output.

The Sonoff smart water valves were one of the easiest devices I've ever had to setup with my smarthub. Some devices are a friggin pain to get adopted in, the technology (IMHO) still isn't really there. With these Sonoff valves, I just went into my C8's control panel, 'Add device' on the device tab, tell it to look for Sonoff Zigbee device, then pop the 4-AA batteries into the valve to power it up after the C8 started its device scan. It found them in under 5 seconds, and added them into the hub with a generic driver. I had to go into the device configuration for each valve, on the Device Info tab, and change the 'Type' (i.e. driver) to Sinope Water Valve, then save and send a 'Configure', then 'Refresh' command to the device for it to update.

Once updated, I found this cool app on GitHub made for the Hubitat which gives you a full dashboard to quickly and easily configure things: https://github.com/kampto/Hubitat/blob/main/Apps/DeviceTimeActiveTracker

Instructions for setup were stupid simple. In the Hubitat C8 control panel, under 'For Developers' section, I went into Apps Code, chose Add App, pasted the code from that GitHub link in, saved it. Then went to the main Apps section, clicked Add User App, and ... I configured the two valves.

I found the water pressure - given I've only got 1 spigot as a source feed - I had to stagger the two RainBird units. When both RainBirds are running, and the 3 garden heads are running, I lose about half the distance out of the RainBirds covering the grass. Really, I should probably buy one more smart valve so I can stagger all three units by about 5-10 minutes each, but for now, I've got the splitter set to feed half-volume to the garden sprayers, with full volume to the Rainbird and run them after the main RainBird spraying the yard and landscape beds is done. For water bill safety, I setup the smarthub to forcibly terminate any running sprinkler 5 minutes after both scheduled sprinklers complete their daily schedule. I'm running it all late at night to cut down on residual evaporation, when things are less-hot.

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