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grover
Jan 22, 2002

PEW PEW PEW







UltraRed posted:

Haha, I looked at that pic and the first thing I thought was "you have kids". Seriously, though, your wife is awesome for how much she's helped you with this. Most wouldn't do much more than fetching the tools or providing an extra set of hands, if that.
Thanks We're really good at splitting the effort and playing off each of our strengths. For the stairs, she assembled the return on the left side of the treads (biscuit joinery, clamped, and sanded) and painted all the risers and skirts, while I'm doing the actual measuring, cutting, trimming, shimming and glueing/nailing. Once I'm done, she's going to put in the dowel to hide the screws, and all the sanding/painting/staining.

We ran into a number of problems with the first couple treads- I ended up having to rabbit & dado two risers in order to make them fit without sticking out too far. The real problem is that @$#^$!@#% stair people only stock 11.25" and 11.5" stairs, assuming homeowners are ONLY putting in code-minimum 10" run stairs regardless of proper design formula that, in my case, worked out to 11" run. Interestingly enough, code requires 11" minimum for commercial applications, but we couldn't find ANY treads designed for that. (Code requires 10" stairs to have a .75-1.5" nosing; 11" stairs don't require any nosing) Needless to say, 11.25" treads on an 11" wide staircase gives a .25" nosing look rather dumb. Home Depot's treads were 11.5" wide, giving a half-inch nosing that still looks dumb, but was the best we could do. Unfortunately, that doesn't give much room for error...

So, here's where are are tonight. The skirts are up along the wall, all the treads are assembled, and most are sanded and ready for final trim & install. We have 3 completely installed, waiting for final finishing:


Steps 14, 15 & 16, glued and screwed in place.

grover fucked around with this message at Oct 8, 2007 around 20:20

King Nothing
Apr 25, 2005

Ray was on a stool when he glocked the cow.

I guess treads are the tan-colored wood pieces on the top, and nosing is how from the stair they stick out (towards you, as you're walking up the stairs)?

Why is there a code for how far the nosing should stick out on a 10" stair? I don't see how that would matter at all.

let it mellow
May 31, 2000



Dinosaur Gum

King Nothing posted:

I guess treads are the tan-colored wood pieces on the top, and nosing is how from the stair they stick out (towards you, as you're walking up the stairs)?

Why is there a code for how far the nosing should stick out on a 10" stair? I don't see how that would matter at all.

Going up, you don't want your toes to catch, leading to tripping. Going down, if you have a 10" stair and a 2" nosing, you have an 8" effective stair.

grover
Jan 22, 2002

PEW PEW PEW







jackyl posted:

Going up, you don't want your toes to catch, leading to tripping. Going down, if you have a 10" stair and a 2" nosing, you have an 8" effective stair.
Actually, it's quite the opposite. If you have a 10" stair with a 2" nosing, you have an effective 12" stair. The nose-nose distance is still 10", but there is 12" of tread to walk on. Which is nice for narrower (<11") stairs; the code requirement basically is that you always have to have 11" treads, even if your stairs only have 10" run. The nosing allows your toes to go under it for balance when walking up; it has no effect on walking down.

And it really is amazing the difference between 10 and 11" treads- it doesn't sound like much, but it's a BIG difference to walk on.

let it mellow
May 31, 2000



Dinosaur Gum

But going down the steps, if they were all 12", and you have 2" of nosing, doesn't that leave only 10" directly below your feet (with 2" of the lower step effectively blocked by the upper step)? That wouldn't be so bad, but say you had 4"... That's what I always assumed for the requirements.

let it mellow fucked around with this message at Oct 9, 2007 around 17:00

SpeedyCow
Oct 7, 2001

I luv the itty bitty Phillies!
I luv the itty bitty Phillies!
I luv the itty bitty Phillies!

grover posted:



And it really is amazing the difference between 10 and 11" treads- it doesn't sound like much, but it's a BIG difference to walk on.

I had a class that was heavy on the OSCA codes, and this was my favorite. Try walking up stairs and dragging one of your feet behind you. The little nose keeps you from losing your balance or getting your foot caught. OSCA - Letting gimps walk up stairs for over four decades!

grover
Jan 22, 2002

PEW PEW PEW







jackyl posted:

But going down the steps, if they were all 12", and you have 2" of nosing, doesn't that leave only 10" directly below your feet (with 2" of the lower step effectively blocked by the upper step)? That wouldn't be so bad, but say you had 4"... That's what I always assumed for the requirements.
With 10" run? Yep, well, you still only have 10" between treads, but there's an extra 2" for your toes to go before they bang into the riser.

Here are two quick sketches with stairs using the same 11.5" tread. One is the code minimum for residences (7.75" rise w/ 10" run) and the other is what I'm building in my house (6 11/16" rise w/11" run). In my case, the rise was dictated by the height of the 2nd floor- 8'3 + 14" I-joists + 3/4" sheathing. 15 stairs would have been a bit steep, so I went with 16. One of the books I have had a set of tables for the ideal run for each rise so as to be comfortable for most people- in this case, it worked out to close to 11" run for 6 11/16" rise.

(Edit: oops, drew it at 8" rise on the left, but max is 7.75" IIRC. Oh well, you get the picture)

grover fucked around with this message at Oct 10, 2007 around 16:26

fuckingtest
Mar 31, 2001

GODDAMN YELLOW CAR!
FUCK YOU!

Grover, people like you are a dying breed. I have several largish books by LIFE on building additions, cabins, even motherfucking wooden BOATS from the 1950's and I'd be afraid to attempt half of them.

It's insane that DIY'ers are so few and far between these days. I haven't quite built a house...yet, but it amazes me that there is so much information with the web being what it is and despite this people still can't be bothered to learn how to even put together Ikea furniture.

This thread is inspirational to say the least, and I'm glad that you decided to share your DIY project.

clockworx
Oct 15, 2005
The Internet Whore made me buy this account

fuckingtest posted:

Grover, people like you are a dying breed. I have several largish books by LIFE on building additions, cabins, even motherfucking wooden BOATS from the 1950's and I'd be afraid to attempt half of them.

It's insane that DIY'ers are so few and far between these days. I haven't quite built a house...yet, but it amazes me that there is so much information with the web being what it is and despite this people still can't be bothered to learn how to even put together Ikea furniture.

This thread is inspirational to say the least, and I'm glad that you decided to share your DIY project.


One unfortunate reason may be how many locales place restrictions on what work you're allowed to do. I'm currently gutting and rehabbing an old city rowhome, and would love to do everything on my own. Unfortunately, the city requires permits for electrical, plumbing, and HVAC, and right there you've got a lot of the "meat" of your project.

Due to the fact that I have a rehab loan (very similar to a new construction loan), the bank also requires me to have a General Contractor. So I really get to do almost nothing on my own. In instances where I've had to hire subcontractors on my own, I've had good experiences, but requiring one top-level GC to oversee them all is just a pain in the ass, and either is prohibitively expensive for the top-quality ones, or I end up spending just as much time harassing the mid-tier GC's that I can afford to do their job.

Of all the headaches of the project, nothing has been worse than that requirement to have a GC. I spend lots of time researching what is going on, and usually end up spec'ing how things will be done myself anyways. All in all, it has still been an interesting experience. Perhaps I'll post my own thread sometime:

"How I gutted and rebuilt a house, doing none of it DIY"

Congrats to you, Grover....you're living my (sort-of) dream

Modus Man
Jun 7, 2004



Soiled Meat

My congrats to your awesome addition, I love to see that kind of stuff. It's the most rewarding work, and it's also the only way I could afford to buy a bunch of land and have a house on it. I'm still in the middle of building mine but here's the transformation from "Vacant Land For Sale" to "Hey it looks like a house from the outside". Now we have to work inside on all the guts.


end of winter


end of spring, waiting for the land to dry out to dig


steel is heavy and engineered floor joists are awesome


got gaps? use a bigger hammer


never build a house without the right tools


now it's close to weatherproof, time to relax and get married and come back to work on the inside.

I have never built a house before, I really have never built anything before save for a bookshelf or something. It's a lot to learn but as long as you have the ability to acquire the knowledge you can use it. I am fortunate to have a father in law who built his own house and a brother in law who built his own house as well to help me along the way.

When I finish the house I plan on making a nice step by step on the computer, but thats a good 6 months away from now.

shorty round
May 22, 2005

by elpintogrande


why is life so awesome? seriously this thread just reminded me

JulianD
Dec 4, 2005


Grover, your addition looks beautiful. My parents made some additions to their home about two years after I moved out to go to college (makes sense that they need extra space for fewer people, right? ), and they did most of the work themselves. They added a new master bedroom, extended the garage, made the back porch an all-seasons room, and built a deck with a hot tub installed. All told, they spent about as much money and time on their project as you have on yours, so I know how much time, effort, and devotion go into an undertaking like this. Congratulations on a job well done (so far!).

Mr Creosote
Apr 30, 2004

rawr

I hope this hasn't been answered yet, so if it has I apologize. What are you going to do with your pre-addition house after you're finished with the addition? Are you going to spruce it up as well?

Great work on a project I would be afraid or just plain lost at undertaking, Grover.

grover
Jan 22, 2002

PEW PEW PEW







clockworx posted:

One unfortunate reason may be how many locales place restrictions on what work you're allowed to do. I'm currently gutting and rehabbing an old city rowhome, and would love to do everything on my own. Unfortunately, the city requires permits for electrical, plumbing, and HVAC, and right there you've got a lot of the "meat" of your project.
Permits and licensing are two different things- in my area, any homeowner can pull a permit to do ANY work on their own home, but no work in anyone else's home without a contractors license. And no advertising without a trade license.

The permit is part tax, part documentation, and part inspection fee. So, how it works is if you want to do electrical work, you pull an electrical permit, do the work, and then call for an inspection- then the inspector comes, tells you it's all wrong and to rip it out and try again.

grover fucked around with this message at Oct 10, 2007 around 17:03

grover
Jan 22, 2002

PEW PEW PEW







Mr Creosote posted:

I hope this hasn't been answered yet, so if it has I apologize. What are you going to do with your pre-addition house after you're finished with the addition? Are you going to spruce it up as well?
We're going to live in it The new living room will be the new family room, and the "old" living room will become a formal living room... well, at least in theory- for the time being, it's going to be the kid's playroom. The old kitchen will either become a butler's pantry (EG, fix the sink and leave the cabinets there) or be remodeled into a new master bathroom, not sure yet. The latter will take lots more time and money, so I'm not terribly enthusiastic about it at this point Even the butler's pantry will be a pain, since I have to move all the light switches now that we moved the door 10' down the wall... We'd like to put up a bunch of shelves in the old dining room and turn it into a library of sorts. But aside from the master bedroom (the bedroom right by the butler's pantry in the 3D graphic, which has a lousy master bathroom and a stupid shape that's too small for a king-size bed), the rest of the house is in decent shape, and we're just going to leave it alone.

The house is connected by a very long hallway right now which makes it feel very large, but also provides a great amount of separation between the living spaces and sleeping spaces- we can make all the noise we want in the kitchen and family room without hearing anything in the bedrooms in the old part of the house; whereas before, it was awful- I couldn't so much as open the silverware drawer in the kitchen without waking my wife up. And the living room noise carried right into all the bedrooms.

grover fucked around with this message at Oct 10, 2007 around 17:08

grover
Jan 22, 2002

PEW PEW PEW







Got a lot done in the last few days! Here's how it looks today. Next big hurdle is how to do the landing; gonna be tricky, but I think we have a plan. I broke out the grinder I got for christmas last year, sharpened my chisels, and cut out 3" of the nosing on the 8th tread to accept the landing newel post. Still have a bunch more work to go. This is really a PITA!

Oh, the newels in the photo are just standing there, they're not trimmed or fastened, but they're stained- the whole staircase will be stained like that and varnished


Almost all the treads & risers in place, along with the landing tread along the balcony

grover fucked around with this message at Oct 13, 2007 around 20:46

grover
Jan 22, 2002

PEW PEW PEW







We've been making steady progress on the stairs- today, we finally finished the landing and got the last tread up (which we had to finish the landing before we could do). The post in the picture has a big chunk let out of it, as does the tread; fits exceptionally well, I think! It's not fastened at this point- my wife is going to stain and varnish all the oak before we fasten the newel posts and start putting up the railing. The small circles drilled along the edge are for the iron ballisturs.


All treads complete!

We used finish screws, set into the treads with a 1/4" fornster bit. Then used a 1/4" plug cutter to cut oak plugs to fill it. Turned out extremely well- most of the screws blend in perfectly, and the rest will likely disappear once stained.


Can you see all 3 screws in this photo?

I got the first bit of railing cut, drilled, and dry-assembled, too!


First piece of railing, dry-assembled.

And, in case anyone is wondering exactly how you connect pieces of railing in an over-the-post design so the connections are absolutely invisible, it's a real pain in the ass. Come final assembly, it will be glued with wood glue, final adjustments made, and the bolts tightened. The fancy fittings were made in china and shipped over; the railings were milled down the street from me. They're very close, but will need some sanding to match perfectly...


Rail bolts

grover
Jan 22, 2002

PEW PEW PEW







I need some opinions- we mocked up the first section of balcony railing, and 42" is just plain high. 42" is the minimum commercial height; in homes, it's permitted to be 36". I've built everything else with these stairs to conform to commercial requirements- 1" longer treads, 1' wider treads, etc. 42" would certainly be safer as it represents the CG for the 95th percentile male (coincidentally, I'm the 95th percentile male) but would it look dumb? Does anyone have 42" railings in your homes, or are they all 36"?

I've seen photos both ways and I don't think it looks out of place at all.

macx
Feb 3, 2005



Most other CG features are nice in a home, but I can't quite get around how wierd a 42" rail would look, though 36" always looks a bit low to me. My personal take is somewhere in-between.

clockworx
Oct 15, 2005
The Internet Whore made me buy this account

grover posted:

Permits and licensing are two different things- in my area, any homeowner can pull a permit to do ANY work on their own home, but no work in anyone else's home without a contractors license. And no advertising without a trade license.

The permit is part tax, part documentation, and part inspection fee. So, how it works is if you want to do electrical work, you pull an electrical permit, do the work, and then call for an inspection- then the inspector comes, tells you it's all wrong and to rip it out and try again.

So far as I know, only licensed plumbers and electricians can pull permits here. I don't think homeowners are allowed to, though I may be wrong. Pulling my own permit and doing inspections would be fine by me.

Drighton
Nov 30, 2005



Awesome thread. I'd lost track of it back in Jan/Feb so it was a nice read to see the progress.

My dad is a DIY-er but has slowed down on that as he's gotten older. But when he and my mother were first married he saved them a lot of money by making repairs and taking care of other things himself. He just had a patio cover added to the house and a fence installed, both contracted jobs, and afterward I helped him mix and pour concrete to extend the patio. Still, I wonder if he would have done it himself if he were his younger self (he hurt his back doing the concrete). I think I may have inherited some of that from him, since I usually get a nagging desire to pick up carpentry (I like Norm Abram )

Anyway, I echo everyone's sentiments Grover: your a dying breed, great work, etc.

Radd McCool
Dec 2, 2005

by Y Kant Ozma Post


I gotta say, this is pretty motivating. Work was done on our bathroom and I'm feeling like even more of a sucker for not having done it myself, heh. That said, good thread!

grover
Jan 22, 2002

PEW PEW PEW







Thanks guys Well, I'm celebrating tonight! I was so very very worried about the railings- it's probably THE most technically challenging part of the entire addition, even moreso than the kitchen or the plumbing or the HVAC, just because of the difficulty not only of design and technique, but also adding in the tweaks and the imperfections and trying to make it all fit perfectly despite no clean angles or points of reference- but when we cut and fit the last 2 pieces of railing tonight, the straight sections that go at an angle along the stairs, it all came together perfectly! I cut both pieces 2" too long, and I must have trimmed the long one 6 times on both ends trying to make it match perfectly before I was happy.


The angle of the dangle is the inverse of the square of the hypotenuse. Or something like that. Hard as hell to cut right.

Honestly, the secret to attempting something like this is planning, planning, planning and patience. Maybe some more patience, too. The railing will be stained the same color as the stairs & newels. But first, we'll dismantle this all tomorrow and glue & reassemble it, then once it's up, put the rest of the screws in the newels to permanantly fix them into place. (The lower 2 are loose to allow connection of the railing.) Then, probably 2-3 days of sanding and 2 days of finish.


Railing, 100% dry-fit in-place!

Two of the iron balisturs are up, too, as I wanted to check and make sure we could fit them in after-the-fact *before* we glued the railing in place. The upper hole is ever-so-slightly overdrilled so that it slides up into the hole 1/8" too far, then drops down into the lower hole. They'll all get cut and glued in later. Still have to drill the ones along all the stairs. Those will be difficult...

Oh, also, Home Depot called today and our carpet is in. With any luck, we'll be done-done with the stairs AND carpet by next weekend and moved on to trim

grover fucked around with this message at Oct 26, 2007 around 13:04

djhaloeight
Jan 23, 2007

techno mafia.

awesome job! i just finished reading all 10 pages and i must say you have a lot of skill and patience to pull off a project like this. i've done some demo/remodel work with a buddy before, framing basements etc but i couldn't imagine trying to build a house from scratch! kudos!

MarshallX
Apr 13, 2004


I don't think i read this - how tall did you end up making the railing?

grover
Jan 22, 2002

PEW PEW PEW







MarshallX posted:

I don't think i read this - how tall did you end up making the railing?
42". We figured it was easy to cut 6" off the newels if we didn't like it, but hard to put it back on, heh. We both liked it at 42", so that's good. Also, I looked back at the CAD drawings and realized that, due to the geometry of the rail-over-post transitions, it had to be at least 40.5" tall, or else the smooth transition would have to be a mitered angle. (As it is, it was already too short to use a rail bolt, so I ended up having to drill and glue up the fitting with dowels.) One of the homearama houses we looked at used mitered angles, and it looked terrible, so we left it at 42".

grover fucked around with this message at Oct 26, 2007 around 23:30

Zygar
Aug 6, 2005
I LEIK TRAINZ!!!1

Holy shit, great work. I remember reading the first couple of pages of this thread when you first posted it, and then completely forgot about it. Great to see that it's still coming along very well, building a house is an incredibly involved project. (My parents are currently involved in developing some small units for elderly people, and we built our own house - though not at all in the sense that you did!)

inkblottime
Sep 9, 2006

For Lack of a Better Name


That railing looks incredible. I can't wait to see the finished product.

grover
Jan 22, 2002

PEW PEW PEW







We've been busy this week- got the railing stained and varnished, window trim, door trim, base molding and carpet in! So, the new living room, hallway and guest bedroom are pretty much completely done. I joke that the last thing we still have to do is install the 73" plasma


Railing, all stained & varnished. (We put the window trim on later this afternoon.)


Carpet & trim in the living room & hallway


Carpet, trim and railing with half the balisters dry-fit

BlackRhino
Aug 9, 2005


Is that paint used for the ceiling, or did you use some texture based "design" to do that, got a better picture of the ceiling too?

I saw one of the new houses that was built and they had this stoneish wall but it was some wacky form of paint that had grooves, cracks, basically has depth to it. It looked awesome and I wish A. What is it called, and B There are more of them around so I can steal the general design.

CrowT.Robot
Aug 30, 2004

"That's where I almost lost my virginity!

I just spent an hour reading through this whole thread and was really quite sad when I got to the end - I wanted it to be like the TLC shows, dammit! From start to finish!

Honestly, it's pretty incredible the amount of work and patience you've put into this. Can't imagine how annoying it must be to have the unfinished part of the house not technically finished for permanent inhabitance yet.

If I may ask, how big is the land around your house? I'm guessing a good bit...one of the reasons projects like this don't happen in the suburb subdivisions.

grover
Jan 22, 2002

PEW PEW PEW







BlackRhino posted:

Is that paint used for the ceiling, or did you use some texture based "design" to do that, got a better picture of the ceiling too?

I saw one of the new houses that was built and they had this stoneish wall but it was some wacky form of paint that had grooves, cracks, basically has depth to it. It looked awesome and I wish A. What is it called, and B There are more of them around so I can steal the general design.
Yes, that's textured with swirls. "Drywall" that most places get anymore uses mud & tape over drywall joints and nailholes, and gets sanded down flat. We opted for plaster finish instead, in which a thin (1/16"-1/8" or so) of plaster is spread all over the drywall in 3 coats; 1st to cover nails and joints, 2nd to coat it all, and 3rd for the texture. The prices are comparable, but plaster is far more common in this area than others. Plaster is difficult to get smooth- it's actually a premium for smooth plaster walls as it adds a couple steps. There are 3 main choices for texture. We have "Sand Finish" (swirls) in every room in the addition on the walls and ceiling:

Sand Finish:


There's also popcorn finish, where they blow these little balls of plaster all over the wall, and knock-down, where they do pretty much the same thing, but then flatten them all with the trowel. I like knock-down better, but the whole rest of our house was sand finish, so we stayed consistent.

CrowT.Robot posted:

I just spent an hour reading through this whole thread and was really quite sad when I got to the end - I wanted it to be like the TLC shows, dammit! From start to finish!

Honestly, it's pretty incredible the amount of work and patience you've put into this. Can't imagine how annoying it must be to have the unfinished part of the house not technically finished for permanent inhabitance yet.

If I may ask, how big is the land around your house? I'm guessing a good bit...one of the reasons projects like this don't happen in the suburb subdivisions.
It is annoying to look around and have stuff undone, but the bits that were most important to us at the onset of the project- the kitchen, garage and storage rooms- were finished a year ago, so we've been content to relax. We're out of money again, but within a few hundred bucks and a few weekends of the finish line, now! Most of the effort from here on out will actually be cleaning up all the crap piled in the sewing room so that we can move in

Of course, then, there's the old kitchen which we still haven't touched- the new plan is to turn it into a new master bathroom, but that's time and energy we don't have right now. Maybe a few years down the road, we'll see.

As for my neighborhood- we have a 1/4 acre lot on a 1950s era subdivision, the kind built on a grid where the houses are separated evenly, instead of smashed into wedge-shaped lots designed to minimize the cost of road construction and utility installation. None of the lots across the street are developed and are just covered with trees, so it feels country, but the developer that put in city sewer is planning on building several houses there in the near future. Honestly, the cost of buying a bigger house vs the cost of the addition was an absolute no-brainer, regardless of lot size! Our new house is comparable in size to all the new houses going in; maybe a slight bit bigger, but still comparable.

grover fucked around with this message at Nov 3, 2007 around 07:51

squirrellypoo
Feb 7, 2003


ooh, the new living room and the stairs look fantastic! The recessed lighting really helps, too. When are you moving the furniture in?

grover
Jan 22, 2002

PEW PEW PEW







squirrellypoo posted:

ooh, the new living room and the stairs look fantastic! The recessed lighting really helps, too. When are you moving the furniture in?
As soon as the room is finished- and it won't be finished until we get that 73" 1080p plasma HDTV installed probably feb or so, with the tax refund. For now, it's a nice big room for me to fly my RC helicopter in

jazz babies
Mar 6, 2007



It looks incredible. I can't wait to see the finished product. This thread really gets you thinking about how little people realize exactly how much goes into putting something like this together.

LEZ BE FRIENDS
Oct 15, 2006

Merry fucking Christmas.

I'm always excited when I see this thread pop up on the first page again. I love seeing the new pictures put up and reading about it. I've never been so interested in someone else's house before, haha.

Great work! It looks fantastic, and I wish that I had your dedication.

the Steve
Dec 21, 2004

I see what you're doing there.

Looks like a great project. I think we have very similar kitchens:



We have an island going in too - quartz as well.

grover
Jan 22, 2002

PEW PEW PEW







Was busy again today, templating in CAD, marking, measuring, sitting there with the level, and grinding, drilling, griding, drilling, etc. The drill bit overheats with the first cut, so I've been drilling a hole, measuring, marking, grinding the balister to length, repeat.


Got all the railing balisters dry-fitted


Making progress on the stairs!

Home Depot's restocking system sucks. When we bought the rest of the stairs, they only had 1 single-twist iron balister. I went back today, and they only had 38. Unfortunately, we need 46 Bought 2 kinds of glue to see what we like best for gluing them in place.

On a side note, got the cable TV in the garage hooked up today so I could watch Penn State while working, heh.

Daylen Drazzi
Mar 9, 2007

Why do I root for Notre Dame? Because I like pain, and disappointment, and anguish. Notre Dame Football has destroyed more dreams than the Irish Potato Famine, and that is the kind of suffering I can get behind.

Grover, all I can say is you are the Man! Honestly, in the 10 years I've been working in the construction industry as a roofer, handyman, truck driver, project specialist, kitchen designer, pole barn designer, estimator and now Helpdesk Specialist I have never seen a DIY'er put forth so much effort and achieve such wonderful results. Looking over all the detail that went into your remodel I have to admit that I am a little envious - the largest project I've gotten to work on personally was helping my best friend finish off his basement (I designed it using his wife's guidelines and did the materials take-off too, so that was cool).

I think where you succeeded where so many other DIY'ers failed was the planning. I'd love to see all the designs and prints and notes and stacks of books and videos and website searches you used, because honestly it is preparation more than knowledge that brings about a successful conclusion. When working on my friend's basement it wasn't uncommon for us to stare at a wall for a couple hours and think through everything - the final result was worth it, though.

Congratulations on a job well done!

Vincent Van Goatse
Nov 8, 2006

Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.



Smellrose

Goddamn that's thoroughly impressive work, grover.

The closest I've ever come to anything like a DIY project is assembling the IKEA shelves I bought for my new apartment. I feel so insignificant.

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