🏡 Better Homes Brag / Complain About a DIY Project Thread

FESTER665

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If your wrapping the entire yard, then 100% do a privacy fence. About 17yrs ago we did a wood privacy fence only on 1 side of the yard as the kid next door used to throw shit at our rottie. Me, my dad and a buddy installed that fence and it lasted longer than I thought considering we drank the whole time we installed it.. We didnt wrap the back side or other side for similar reasons. We got along with those neighbors. 3-4 years ago I hired a company to wrap the whole yard in a vinyl privacy fence. What a fucking difference, night and day and its like we now have our own little resort if that makes sense.

My brother did the same and love having the entire yard be private. I just dont want my dog to never get to play with the neighbors. :bowrofl:

Plus the price I got just for the back fence about gave me a heart attack, I imagine the entire yard will be crazy.
 

Shawn1112

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My brother did the same and love having the entire yard be private. I just dont want my dog to never get to play with the neighbors. :bowrofl:

Plus the price I got just for the back fence about gave me a heart attack, I imagine the entire yard will be crazy.
Mine was $12k 3-4 years ago and I was only going to do the side where my wood fence we installed was falling apart. They had a special going though. Pay half cash and they finance the other have at 0% for 24 months. Could not pass that up as we really wanted to do the whole yard but didnt have the $12k to waste and didnt want to charge it.
 
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Fish

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Yeah, if I plan on my car getting done this winter, chain link for a few more years it is. :bowrofl:

Same, but we want to move a section of our fence to open up our backyard some more. Id rather not do chain link, but dont want to cut my arm off to pay for it either. Basically this is what we want to do with our fence since most of our side yard isnt even being utilized and would like it more to be part of the back yard. Especially once we get a shed one day. :roflpicard:

Fence.png
 
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Chester Copperpot

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This fence was the greatest thing I've done to the house besides unfucking the attic/bathroom exhaust.

Letting the dogs out and not giving a FUCK about them running around is awesome. They run around and sniff for 5-10 minutes and then I yell "IN" and they just come prancing inside.

My only dilemma now is that I almost opened one of the side gates with Owen staring at me. I realized what was happening, stopped, then he ran over to the door and started fucking with the latch. :roflpicard: god damnit.
 

Ron Vogel

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Sat down to finish this amp today. I designed the circuit after building different versions of Fender Princeton’s over the years. This last version I started a few years ago, but shelved it for a few years. It was mostly done, but no ambition to finish.
Well now I need an amp to complete a recording project, so sat down with it today to try and figure out where I left off. I got as far as powering it on without tubes after verifying my schematic. Tested voltage points, then threw in the rectifier tube.
Nothing blew up, but I made a mistake in the build. Bias circuit was for my old transformer that had a 50v bias tap, this transformer gets the bias voltage off the secondaries which are 400volts.
so not the end of the world, but I have to wait a week for new parts to arrive for the redesign.

EAC62763-D0C2-4DB0-B198-8D86A0710590.jpeg


DFE32BD1-40D7-49D9-B0B8-98C0BDF8872B.jpeg


A32EE59C-B7FA-46E7-BDB4-63CDF1EF3689.jpeg
 

Lord Tin Foilhat

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Lol those are there to block daylight out of the theater part. They’d rate old posters. I have an idea for how to cover that window.
Do what you did, but bigger frame and do it so it covers the whole window frame. This way it will just look a poster/picture and not a window with an insert put in.
 
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Mr_Roboto

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Sat down to finish this amp today. I designed the circuit after building different versions of Fender Princeton’s over the years. This last version I started a few years ago, but shelved it for a few years. It was mostly done, but no ambition to finish.
Well now I need an amp to complete a recording project, so sat down with it today to try and figure out where I left off. I got as far as powering it on without tubes after verifying my schematic. Tested voltage points, then threw in the rectifier tube.
Nothing blew up, but I made a mistake in the build. Bias circuit was for my old transformer that had a 50v bias tap, this transformer gets the bias voltage off the secondaries which are 400volts.
so not the end of the world, but I have to wait a week for new parts to arrive for the redesign.

View attachment 105250

View attachment 105251

View attachment 105252

estimate your current and then use a capacitor in series with the 400v to create a reactance based drop to give you the voltage you need. I think a pair of .033uF capacitors in parallel or a single .68uF would do you about right assuming you're at about 8mA of bias current. Decrease the capacitance if you've got less current and increase it for more obviously. If you have a 5K 20W resistor you could use that to simulate the load for testing. Add the usual filtering post rectification as well. Don't forget you'll need 400V+ caps too.

Something else I did in the past when Radio Shack existed was use a voltage multiplier with a small 12V transformer.

Wish my shit wasn't packed I probably had something here that would have worked out for you. Neat build by the way.
 

Ron Vogel

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estimate your current and then use a capacitor in series with the 400v to create a reactance based drop to give you the voltage you need. I think a pair of .033uF capacitors in parallel or a single .68uF would do you about right assuming you're at about 8mA of bias current. Decrease the capacitance if you've got less current and increase it for more obviously. If you have a 5K 20W resistor you could use that to simulate the load for testing. Add the usual filtering post rectification as well. Don't forget you'll need 400V+ caps too.

Something else I did in the past when Radio Shack existed was use a voltage multiplier with a small 12V transformer.

Wish my shit wasn't packed I probably had something here that would have worked out for you. Neat build by the way.
I had previously figured this out...found a nifty bias circuit I could pop in. Printed the circuit out and put it in a folder the last time I worked on it...only to find it after I saw what I had wouldn't work. It has a lot more adjustment range, so I can use a larger variety of tubes in the amp. It's set-up for 6V6, but can run 6K6, 6L6, or even 7591's. I love the 7591's...but finding originals is difficult (I've only run across 2 good sets when I used to buy/sell tubes) and new aren't the same.

Basically this is a 6G2 with tweaks, preamp is close to Bassman, with a brown era tone control. I've built a bunch of brown princetons, so I put all the tweaks in this one. I can run a 5Y3, 5U4, or 5V4 rectifier in it...and I added another filtering cap for the preamp section. It's designed to hit the power tubes hard, with cascading gain in the preamp stages.
 

Mr_Roboto

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I have a cache, I should really test them out. I know that some are gassed but I bought em with a Fisher KX200 that was toasted. I have that amp, it's a total the hell basket case but I really should get to rebuilding it. I'm wanting to do something custom, I'm eyeballing doing transformer coupled push/pull with fixed bias driving those beasties up to 45W or so. I've always wanted to do some sort of insane setup with these and then have a sub channel using a quad 6L6 or similar. I'd never be able to really crank it up though, way too overkill for a dude with a wife and a kid. I think building a 2 channel amp or a pair of monoblocks would be wholly adequate. I'm thinking of stuffing them in some Cisco 2500 router cases I have.
 

Pewter-Camaro

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All I fucking wanted to do was paint this room. I take the outlet covers off and a couple blank covers and see a black wire, bare copper stripped end with a little electrical tape partially covering it in a metal box. Get the tester and it’s fucking live. I cut power and pull that out I start to pull out outlets, half of which were upside down, pull out switches. It’s a fucking train wreck. Switches installed with jumpers made of lamp cord and held together with duct tape. A light in the ceiling that was wired with what looked like stranded black speaker wire. I pulled new NM (romex) for the ceiling light, replaced 2 two gang boxes, all the switches, outlets, with new wire nuts and all properly installed. Now I can finally get to painting.

Old junk…
E88B0A15-B887-4534-97E5-FC70891E495A.jpeg


Nice and new…
17F452F4-3A59-45DB-B7FD-F58518762196.jpeg


so much for taking half the day to paint and work in the garage afterwards.
 

SpeedSpeak2me

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This is why I don't want to get an older house, or at least one older than mine. I don't want to inherit someone else's fuckups and shortcuts.

Friend of mine sold his house built in 1978, which he grew up in, knew every inch of, and just had remodeled. They got a 100+ year old house that, and I quote his wife's words, "was recently redone, so we just have to paint."

Four months later the contractors just finished redoing 75% of the house. Yeah, what happened with that "was recently redone"? Oh, that was 15 years ago, we didn't like their tastes. Fucking broad, you just dropped like $50k redoing a house to YOUR exact tastes, only to sell and move into someone else's projects.

Oh, and after doing some deconstruction the contractor found knob & tube that was live in the walls with no terminations.

Yeah, you have nothing to worry about. Oh, and their property taxes doubled. He's now into five figures LOL.
 
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Lord Tin Foilhat

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All I fucking wanted to do was paint this room. I take the outlet covers off and a couple blank covers and see a black wire, bare copper stripped end with a little electrical tape partially covering it in a metal box. Get the tester and it’s fucking live. I cut power and pull that out I start to pull out outlets, half of which were upside down, pull out switches. It’s a fucking train wreck. Switches installed with jumpers made of lamp cord and held together with duct tape. A light in the ceiling that was wired with what looked like stranded black speaker wire. I pulled new NM (romex) for the ceiling light, replaced 2 two gang boxes, all the switches, outlets, with new wire nuts and all properly installed. Now I can finally get to painting.

Old junk…
View attachment 106011

Nice and new…
View attachment 106012

so much for taking half the day to paint and work in the garage afterwards.
man I feel you there. One of the first things I did in the house was replace like 90% of the outlets because of a similar WTF discovery.

Also people....when the outlet stops holding things securely or feeling loose when you plug in/out....REPLACE THAT OUTLET, its DONE
 

blue-sun

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I just swapped outlets out in my basement bar from white to black. The previous owner has Coax cable all over the place in this house that I've been pulling out as much as possible. I did cover up a coax box on this wall. I tried to pull it down but it wouldn't budge, so I tucked it in there an
zkX5j.jpg
d covered it up.

BE343996-94CE-4A93-9BE0-EB4E7FDA0848.jpeg
 

Lord Tin Foilhat

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I just swapped outlets out in my basement bar from white to black. The previous owner has Coax cable all over the place in this house that I've been pulling out as much as possible. I did cover up a coax box on this wall. I tried to pull it down but it wouldn't budge, so I tucked it in there an
zkX5j.jpg
d covered it up.

View attachment 106014
depending on when it was put in, some of that cabling is stapled to the stud. Very common with telephone line (which you dont see much anymore)
 

Chester Copperpot

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The kitchen outlets/appliances took me a full 2 hours to even understand how the fuck they were wired. I tried hooking it up the way I thought it should have been and kept tripping the breaker on the GFCI outlets and the main breaker for that leg as well.

Put it back the way it was and just fucking left it. My brain was toast after realizing why they did it the way they did.
 

blue-sun

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depending on when it was put in, some of that cabling is stapled to the stud. Very common with telephone line (which you dont see much anymore)

in the closet under the stairs you can see coax all over the place, none was stapled. I don't have super easy access to the ceiling over the bar. I did try and pull some of it out, I got some but not all. Either way, not worried about it.
 
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SpeedSpeak2me

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depending on when it was put in, some of that cabling is stapled to the stud. Very common with telephone line (which you dont see much anymore)
I have this problem with old 4-wire (telephony), OTA coax (RJ-59), and they did that with my thermostat wires.

If they hadn't stapled the 4-conductor RJ-11 into the walls I'd have used it to pull CAT5e (this is 10-15 years ago) and replace the jacks, and I'd have swapped out the RJ-59/U for RG-6.
 

Pewter-Camaro

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My place is a weird one. Original section of the house was built 1944. Expanded and added to in 1959, then again In the mid 70’s. The other rooms I’ve worked on have been good except for the occasional worn outlet but was all correctly done. This room I’m painting today was a detached garage and was incorporated into the house and converted to a room in the 70’s but the old homeowners must had decided to do a bunch of shit themselves at some point. Uuugh.
 

Pewter-Camaro

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depending on when it was put in, some of that cabling is stapled to the stud. Very common with telephone line (which you dont see much anymore)

yup. This room I’m working on now had no less than 4 old school telephone jacks. I generally cut them, shove them into the wall, and patch the hole unless I see it’s loose and can trace it back to somewhere helpful to pull network cable Through.
 

Lord Tin Foilhat

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yup. This room I’m working on now had no less than 4 old school telephone jacks. I generally cut them, shove them into the wall, and patch the hole unless I see it’s loose and can trace it back to somewhere helpful to pull network cable Through.
I had a perfect one that would of been great for pulling.... and then find they smashed it between 2 - 2x4s..... I guess that is one way to make sure it doesnt move....or work :rofl:
 

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