What home improvement work did you do today?

Yup, Bar Keepers Friend was the only thing that improved it at all. It's become my favorite cleaner lately (starting when I ditched my teflon pans and got a combination of stainless and carbon steel instead). Maybe after everything is sealed I'll try a couple more rounds of it to see if there's any further improvement.

 

I used quite a few of them on jobs as pull cords to chase cat6 down in the walls, if they’re in strategic locations.

 

Yeah, last thing I need in our house is more listening devices

Man, some of the deep dive dissections the IoT research guys at my old job did on consumer devices would leave you wanting to be a Luddite for life.

 

Yeah, I'd feel bad for the poor sap that gets stuck listening in on me. They'd be bored as hell.

 

Barkeepers Friend contains grit. Have you tried a Magic Eraser to see if it will help?

 

I want to turn this grass into gravel for parking my trailers. If I can avoid ripping out the sod, it'd be alot less work. I'm thinking of weed whacking the grass to nubs, covering with dirt and then landscape cloth and finally road crush compacted.

Thoughts?

 

Melamine foam (“magic eraser”) is also an abrasive FYI. It works by sanding away the stain. I learned this the hard way not long after someone got the bright idea to rebrand the stuff as “magic eraser” and I used it on my truck’s paint 20+ years ago. Big mistake. It sanded hazy spots into my paint everywhere I used it. Had to polish out the whole truck.

 

Assuming you need to keep somewhat of a valley here for drainage for you and your neighbor?

A short 2 block retaining wall would be sweet but that would probably crowd property lines.

 

The neighbor is on board with turning the whole thing gravel, so no wall needed.

 

Even better

 

Unfortunately, it looks like your sod is quite a bit higher than your concrete at the bottom of your driveway.
I'd rent a power sod ripper and do it right, to get your finished rock grade on plane with the sidewalk/driveway.

 

I'd follow suit with @NWPirate's plan. Renting a sod ripper will deliver the best long term results. Still use some sort of landscape cloth for regrowth.

 

Maybe pull Sheetrock and do tongue in groove wood?

 

Yes, I know Magic Eraser is an abrasive. My point was that the OP had already been using an abrasive. It wouldn't do a vehicle's finish any good for sure.

 

Prepping house for paint. First step was to take out this ridiculously large window going to the garage. Will be doing Hardie plank on this west side.

 

Can you please jump back in time about 25 years ago and tell 20-something me that?

It cost me about 6-8 hours of hardcore polishing to undo that fuckuppery.

 

Today I learned there's such thing as small sod cutters. That changes everything.

 

Tundras.com really is a one stop shop.

 

Usually an expensive shop too

 

Especially after exchange and shipping.

 

Took advantage of the nice weather and did some more yard work. Trimmed some low hanging branches that I always run into mowing the lawn, did some weeding (probably some poison ivy-ing too), ripped out some very expensive bushes that didn't make it, and mowed the lawn.

As much as I hate yard work, it's extremely gratifying when everything is cleaned up and neat looking.

 

I had no idea. I’ve got some great pics of me clearing a good 200-300sf+in my front yard. Flathead shovel. Kick it down into be ground an inch, tilt it backward, kick it forward until you get a good sized square skimmed. Works great.

 

Weed whack, spray it down w/ 'all vegetation' killer, verify it's dead, then cloth, and rock..

or, that other high speed stuff they talked about before I woke up

 

If you think that's old, imagine my surprise when we bought our house in 2023 and found *these* telephone jacks:



Our house was built in '73, I believe it was...and still has these in 2 or 3 rooms. If only my Dad were still alive - he retired from AT&T and would probably die laughing at these.

That said, no need to have phone lines run, because:

- our new house has fantastic internet
- also has fantastic cell phone reception
- the 'telephone service' from Breezeline is basically just repackaged VoIP that is crap, and also requires their routers that are ALSO crap. LOL

We just use our cell phones, and haven't found an actual need for a wired phone line since we moved here.

 

Ha ha ha yep!!

 

Attempted to install a new outlet in the bathroom. No big deal, I've done dozens of them and had no issues. We'll, the wiring is pretty old, at least not asbestos old thank the Lord but it's pretty old. May have to put the old outlet back in. I wanted a new one that has the USB outlets. Oh well.

 

I've banned verizon from our property. They promised me they could get us DSL (laugh it up, was the best option at the time, and only 5 years ago too) if we gave them a right away and used them for our business. When it came time to build the house, they refused and said they wouldn't add more dsl anywhere, the limit was reached. We ripped their lines out of our business, and told them we're all set at the house. Refused them at my MIL's too. Luckily we got fibre on the road two years ago, because we have no cell service.

Was a tough 3-4 years of satellite internet with a 25gb limit for the month. Hughes net can suck a big one, that was such a bad internet experience. My mom has starlink now and says its not even in the same world as hughes net was.

 

Yeah, suffice to say I'm not a fan of Verizon *OR* Hughesnet. I mean, where I used to live, it was better than dialup...but only marginally so, IMHO.

Thankfully, not only is Breezeline (coax, 1Gbps) good at our house (with an AFTERMARKET router, mind you lol), but cell service is good enough that we can use it as a backup if our internet goes down (which is almost never, to be honest).