this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2023
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Do It Yourself

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Make it, Fix it, Renovate it, Rehabilitate it - as long as you’ve done some part of it yourself, share!

Especially for gardening related or specific do-it-yourself projects, see also the Nature and Gardening community. For more creative-minded projects, see also the Creative community.


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

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What project are you embroiled in? It's it going well? What hangups are you running into? And, dare I ask, are you having fun with it?

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[–] StringTheory 9 points 1 year ago

The Toilet From The Deepest Pit of Hell.

…or maybe I should call it The Toilet of Theseus.

I’ve replaced so many parts, solved so many leaks, reseated the tank, yada yada yada. It broke again, this time the lever arm. Off to the hardware store again, looking for an indestructible lever arm. Sheesh.

I’m just about ready to get a big bucket and some sawdust and slap a seat on it and call it good!

[–] Hexorg 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I’m building a 90s themed arcade in my shed. My friend wrote a proxy to the Wayback machine so that you can navigate to, say yahoo.com and our windows 98 computer will display it as it was in 1999. Virtually any site we could remember works! But I’m also wanting to keep my workshop in the shed so my plan is to add a second floor first. I’ve never done construction before, so I’ve been looking up building codes and “building” what I have and want in blender. here’s the stair case: I also 3D scanned my shed and can super impose new structure into it: . Now I’m ready to order building materials.

[–] Inspectigator 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Alright, like... every part of this is awesome. WaybackMachine proxy, photo scanning your shed... this is GREAT! I would like to recommend using something like OnShape instead of blender, though. I've never found blender to be super helpful when trying to put together diagrams and such. I used SketchUp for a bit, but found it too restrictive.

Lastly, another web-tool I've found to be ENORMOUSLY helpful with optimizing building materials purchases/usage is opticutter. It was hugely helpful for my most recent cabinet building project

[–] Hexorg 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you! I would describe myself as intermediate at blender, so after a quick search for construction tools just decided that it’d be faster to use blender than learn a new tool and potentially be limited by whatever it supports. I’ll definitely check out opticutter though!

[–] Inspectigator 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Please send me an update as you move along and/when you're done! I'd love to see it develop!

[–] Hexorg 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Currently I’ve been scouting Craigslist for 90s tech and along with just some crt Tv and monitors found the commodore 1702 display, and a really good collection of essentially all 90s classics laserdiscs.

[–] SkepticElliptic 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can still find good stuff at thrift stores. I found a working Laser disc player I think I paid $30 for it.

[–] Hexorg 2 points 1 year ago

Nice! Yeah I keep trying… have a toddler and an infant though so travel is limited.

[–] lamentforicarus 2 points 1 year ago

Yo! This is going to be so dope! I can't wait to see the progress.

[–] Frederic 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's outside, it's replacing all grass in my backyard with 3/8 river stone, adding fountain and shrubs and flowers etc. It's pretty cool and almost finished. I don't know if I should have done it 🤣 but once it started, I couldn't stop in the middle!

Also no more mowing!

[–] Wigglet 6 points 1 year ago

My whole life is a serious of diy projects lol. The most pressing issue is our dead solar battery array that needs replacing. They were expired when we got them 6 years ago so we knew it was coming but we don't have 20k to replace the batteries, change charge controllers, upgrade the inverter etc.

So it's been a very dark winter with limited running water to daylight hours.

Besides that I have a green house half finished and posts for a new washing line we need to put in. I just keep getting sick so I haven’t had the strength to do much beyond the smaller things

[–] backseat 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We went a bit mad.

Moved into a bungalow in 2007. Lovely location; ugly, cold, poorly-extended, horrible house. Last December, after years of talking about it, we knocked it down. Right now the replacement house is being built, estimated to be finished at the end of August.

Looking forward to moving back in!

[–] Inspectigator 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Woof, that's a pretty intense decision! A house nearby us wanted to put a 2nd floor on the home. When they investigated the footings, the found they were vastly insufficient (read: nonexistant) to support the weight of a 2nd story. When they opened up the walls shortly there after because of carpenter bees, they realized damn near the entire house's frame had been infested with carpenter bees and termites. The place was barely holding itself up...

So they tore the entire thing, foundation and all, down. They got the new foundation in place, and then COVID hit, and lumber prices went ABSOLUTELY INSANE. It's been 3 years since they took it down, and they still only have a foundation, and are living out of a (at this point very well insulated) garage.

I hope your project goes dramatically better than that.

[–] backseat 2 points 1 year ago

Ha, we hope so too! On target so far...

[–] 114145 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Leveling floorbeams in preparation for casting a concrete floor for a new bathroom! It's a lot of work..

[–] Inspectigator 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Dang, yeah it looks like it. Best of luck to you.

[–] 114145 1 points 1 year ago

😆 thanks!

[–] lamentforicarus 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't know if it is ridiculous but the whole ordeal feels ludicrous. Basically, we've moved into a house that had been previously flipped. I am not sure who the previous owners were, but they absolutely used their yard as a trash can. We found an entire mattress hidden beneath a large pile of brush. The ridiculous part is our futile attempt to clean up all the glass! I think the only way to get rid of it all would be to dig up all the grass and replace it, but we are renting and I am not upgrading the home for them, so we've just been slowly picking it all up as we find it.

[–] Inspectigator 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

oh god, that's awful!! :( No barefeet... or doggies, I guess.

[–] lamentforicarus 3 points 1 year ago
[–] CmdrShepard@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can you contact your landlord and ask them to have it cleaned up? I can't imagine the legality of leaving a bunch of potentially dangerous junk in the yard for new tenants to deal with. Maybe it would be more persuasive to talk to some landscaping people and get quotes for cleanup using whatever method they recommend.

[–] lamentforicarus 2 points 1 year ago

I'm not sure about the legality of it, though that's something to look into. I am actually fairly certain I am my landlords very first tenant as they don't seem to know what they are doing, and they bought the house all of a month before I moved into it. They may not even be aware of the issue. I should probably talk to them.

[–] Gormadt 4 points 1 year ago

I've been most of the way though the planning stages of a new desk, 3D printing cabinet, and air filtration system now for 6 months.

I'm close, I can feel it.

[–] leetnewb 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't know if this qualifies as a house project. but my veggie garden is ~10-15 feet of elevation above my garden hose spigot. My understanding is that I would theoretically need a very expensive backflow preventer if I was to pressurize a line up to the garden, and I don't have a convenient way of burying a line anyway. I'm getting a little too worn down to lug 5-10 gallons of water uphill.

Plan 1 was to put a rain barrel at the top of the hill with a rainsaucer...but the rainsaucer company went out of business a few years ago and I haven't found a suitable alternative.

Plan 2 is to put a bucket at the top of the hill and use my hose sprayer to fill it from a distance. Won't be super accurate, but it doesn't have to be!

[–] Inspectigator 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My first reaction is like you, put in a rain barrel. Then maybe you could put in one of those perforated hoses, and you can just stick a 1/4 turn valve in the base of the rain barrel and you could just manage the valve when you want to water it?

[–] leetnewb 2 points 1 year ago

I'm on board with the rain barrel concept - and I think if I raised it a couple of feet above the elevation of the garden, it would generate decent pressure sticking a valve at the bottom. Would need to do some math about the pressure needed to feed drip lines. But if I'm not mistaken, rain barrels generally feed from gutters that feed from a roof. I need something wider, which is where the RainSaucer concept came in. Maybe I could DIY something out of a tarp.

[–] petrescatraian@libranet.de 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@Inspectigator I'm kinda working (on&off) on a Christmas sock, left from the previous tenant. It's so hard to paint socks, tho. It always seems that the paint gets absorbed by it. Not to mention the design I chose does not really fit the sock's pattern (i.e. the sock has lemons all over with a turquoise background, and I want to draw a Christmas candy cane on each of the sides, on a white background), so I kinda needed some large amounts of paint to cover it. It is taking shape tho.

[–] Inspectigator 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

With all due respect, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Maybe a picture would help? :)

[–] petrescatraian@libranet.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Inspectigator 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Alright, that's definitely a sock. I guess I've just never heard of painting socks. Have fun with it, I guess! :)

[–] petrescatraian@libranet.de 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@Inspectigator Glad to know my project is ridiculous enough then 😂

Thanks!

[–] Inspectigator 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did a quick google, and yeah, painting socks is a thing! Cool! Whatever keeps your mind busy and expresses your creativity is good enough! :)

[–] petrescatraian@libranet.de 2 points 1 year ago

@Inspectigator@beehaw.org wrote:

Did a quick google, and yeah, painting socks is a thing!

For real? I gotta dig deeper into this, lol.

Whatever keeps your mind busy and expresses your creativity is good enough! 😀

Thanks! 😁

[–] Inspectigator 3 points 1 year ago

Personally, I'm building a set of room dividing cabinets with a TV lift built into the middle of it, so I can have my TV when I want to see it, and hide it away when I'm done. It's been challenging and difficult, but super fun and rewarding!

[–] pushka 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Edit Oops I can't read - not house related (I mean I'll be in a house..) Textiles/making-clothing

I haven't really started but I'm making a kind of cast away minimal Grecian skirt and sash , inspired by Zelda tears of the kingdom in grey and brown for 2 dress up parties in 3 weeks ~

I have the material and ribbons / elastics and I've made a kilt and some other costume things before ~ just ruminating on it thinking of the best way to approach everything - shoukd be pretty simple ~

[–] bear_delune 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That'll be so cool! My boyf and I are thinking about doing Link and Ganon for halloween~

[–] pushka 2 points 1 year ago

Yessss ~ post photos here when it happens ! ⚡

[–] beardedrhino@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

Finishing my basement office. I work from home, so I've been working in a construction zone for 6 months now. Walls were dry locked, wires moved, foam board insulation put up, walls framed, new wires in, and insulation is mostly done. Still need to put up the drywall, wire in the outlets, paint, and install flooring. At this rate, I may be done by fall 😂

[–] Girlontheinterweb 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

We’ve just finished building a pod in the garden. It’s been a lot of hard work but the finished structure is identical to the original that we loved in the pub garden (lots of time spent drinking beer so we could taking measurements & photos to make a cad plan). We’ve enjoyed making it, including the few designs tweaks we’ve made as the build went on & it cost about a third of the price of actually buying one retail.

[–] coys100 1 points 1 year ago

Started a couple of months ago a Home Automation Project. All DIY, No ready made accessories. For instance ESP32's, ESP8266, relay boards, diy PCB's, making movement and light sensors, pressure pads for stair lighting- you name it im making it for all round HA!!!! Even door locking/unlocking with fingerprint and voice sensors!! The only thing i bought to control everything is 3 5th generation Alexa's and Phone apps