DIY Woodworking, Home Improvement, and Art Projects

I was at my brother’s house over the weekend and we had one task – install 4 new recessed lights in the upper floor of his home that was built in the ’30s (I think.) This upper floor had some windows on either side of a long, narrowish central room. We needed to add some serious light in there to make it a more usable space. Basically when we asked ourselves how to install recessed lighting, we just turned to our dad, who has years and years of electrical experience, for both guidance and help on the actual install. So here’s the situation – our dad is the man, and that’s a thing that gets tossed around a lot – “oh, he’s the man”, etc., well, he really is, and he helped out in a huge way on this project.

Before I got there my brother, Dan, had done all the shopping, so we were ready to roll right away. I had a double-espresso in my belly and had also just scarfed down some breakfast burritos to fuel the long day of home improvement mania ahead. My eyes were wide, my camera was ready, and my laptop was open to start taking notes, and to get covered with ceiling-drywall dust!

My dad has been fiddling with electrons for a long time and he has this ‘magic bucket’ full of cool tools for electrical projects that pretty much goes wherever he goes. There are going to be pictures of the magic bucket later, so keep your peepers peeled. For this project you won’t need every single thing that he’s got in his kit, but here are the essentials that we used on this one. These links will go to Amazon and ToolBarn eventually because I love shopping at both of these places, I have ordered satisfactorily many times before, and you can pretty much find anything you’ll need.

Wire strippers
Wire cutters
Small and large phillips screwdriver
Small and large flat screwdriver
25′ tape measure
Wire nuts of various sizes
Hammer
1/2″ wood staples
Pen knife or small x-acto knife of some kind
Drywall saw
Pencil (not overly sharpened ideally)
Dust mask
2′ x 4′ 3/8″ board (dimensions aren’t important, but it needs to be big enough lay on, and light enough to maneuver in the space above the ceiling, whatever that looks like in your situation)

Other helpful items to consider:
Electrical tape
Compact LED flashlight(s)
Band-aids
Work towels (that won’t ever need to find their way in front of the important-type guests)

I am sorting/editing all the pictures this week and organizing/expanding on my notes, so there will be more posts in this series soon. Until then, cheers!

In my travels across the often-barren Interwebs I stumble upon some cool, useful sites once in a while that are worth more than just a quick link on some list somewhere that will sit and collect dust on some old page, in some forgotten directory, on a wheezing, sputtering old server in the broom closet of an abandoned junior college where the doors are boarded over and the windows have been covered with old newspapers and plastic sheeting.

So, with that being said, I found this site called DIY Guides, and I think it’s worth a visit. Right now many of the articles are about things like repairing plaster walls, wallpaper removal and repair, etc., so if you’re doing a project involving either of those two things, check it out for sure. The articles are pretty easy to follow and written for DIY folk like me and you.

Cheers!

Howdy neighbors – I wanted to share some of the initial color test pictures from 2008 when I was trying different aniline dyes on maple and walnut and oak woods.  This is just a taste of what I’ll be adding more of later as I detail out all the steps in my guiar building project…

[View with PicLens]

Warmoth Custom Guitar Parts – Guitar Home Page

This is one great company here, folks.  I have only made one purchase with Warmoth so far, and that purchase is still not fully realized, but I would buy again from this class outfit any day.

Not only do they have an amazing selection of all the stuff you need to get creative and make your own guitars, they have an up-to-date forum and a tasty customer gallery that is full of inspiration.  I found a lot of great ideas going through their customer guitar gallery.

I did a lot of the work on my guitar build last year, and I have been playing more often again lately so I am in the mood to finish the project this summer.  It got me thinking of where I started in the process, and one of the first places I went was Warmoth.  Check ‘em out.

Cheers!

Bodies, necks, electronics – oh my!

Background

I am an obsessive researcher. Once I get an idea in my head, especially if it’s something I am going to invest a lot of money in, or something I am going to be making, then I seek out as much information as I can on the subject…really anything I am interested in is an excuse to spend hours and hours learning about every possible aspect of it.

I started playing guitar again at the end of ’07 after a couple of years off. I was in school full time and working 50+ hours a week so I wasn’t able to devote enough time to my guitar. So now that I’ve graduated I have many of those hours back. Right now I am playing a vintage sunburst ’95 Epiphone Casino through an Epiphone Blues Custom all-tube amp. I also play a Grand Symphony Taylor acoustic with a Rosewood back and sides, and a Red-Cedar top. Both guitars sound gorgeous and I literally enjoy playing so much more now that I have quality instruments.

I like a variety of music but mostly I tend to find myself listening to singer-songwriters and late ‘60s and early ‘70s music. I like some heavier stuff like old Black Sabbath, and some Indie rock like Weezer, too. I have always loved instrumental music as well; particularly surf rock from the likes of The Ventures, The Shadows, The Challengers, Man or Astro-Man, and Satan’s Pilgrims. The guitar that I needed to complete my triangle of sound was one capable of jangly, tremolicious surf pop sounds, with the ability to turn it up and make it growl when necessary.

So with a particular sound in mind I went searching for the right instrument to produce it. The thing that I noticed right off the bat was that most of the surf rockers used Fenders…typically a Stratocaster or Jazzmaster. I absolutely love the original Jazzmasters. The shape, the tone, the finishes available – all of it – but they are quite expensive and the stock tremolo bridge is suspect. The Strat is an American icon and comes in so many flavors it’s quite a confusing choice.

So after looking at hundreds of Strats of all styles and finishes with an almost infinite combination of pickups, neck contours, and body woods, I realized something. Since I am so damn particular and really wanted this axe to be something special, I decided to not decide, and just make my own.

This is a list of some of the posts to come chronicling my custom build:

• Research:
  • materials and finishes
  • wiring and pickup options
  • hardware options (bridges, tuners, etc.)
  • places to buy it all
• Buying the parts:
  • Where I bought the stuff
  • Why I bought what I did
  • Other purchases along the way…
• Building the guitar:
  • Part 1 – testing finishes
  • Part 2 – preparing the body
  • Part 3 – applying the dye finish
  • Part 4 – applying the lacquer top coats
  • Part 5 – finishing the neck
  • Part 6 – assembling the final guitar and testing

Since the upgrade to WordPress 2.3.3 I have added some spam blocking tools.  I have also cleared out the 15,000+ comments awaiting moderation…all of which were spam.  The impetus behind getting caught up with the comments is I am working on a new project and documenting it here on the DIY Blog.  It’s a surf guitar based on a Fender Stratocaster design.  So for the near term, this blog will focus less on pure home improvement stuff, and more on DIY art and related projects.

I am really excited to start this guitar project.  I plan on capturing most of the process on my new Mini-DV camera as well.  Anyway, please send a comment if you’d like because the flood gates have opened again!  I’d love to hear what everyone has to say about these projects and/or answer any questions you may have.  Thanks for stopping back in!

I apologize for the weirdness around the DIY Blog lately. I have been doing some updates like upgrading to WordPress 2.3.3 from 2.3.1, and changing themes. This is not a simple process because the last iteration of the blog had a bunch of plugins and formatting that I added to the template. So, please be patient–ironic because I haven’t dropped a regular post for about six months anyway–as I finalize the upgrade to the new version of the DIY Blog.

If anyone has any suggestions on improvements, features to add, etc., please let me know – spartacus27 (at) gmail.com. Thanks!

It’s been awhile since I have stopped by and written of any projects. In truth it’s been awhile since I have done anything but think about new projects. We just ordered a new refrigerator to replace the 25 year old Amana that was in there when we bought the place. It has held up admirably, but it is time for it to retire. With a new, sleek, black refrigerator coming on Tuesday, we felt it was time to complete the last big project in the kitchen; Putting a faux finish on the fake-brick wall – say that three times, fast!

The faux bricks are standard dimension, but only 1/2″ thick, and they were installed before we came to the house. They are a typical, bright red-clay looking brick, slightly rounded edges, and they were put up with the same technique as tile, but never filled in with grout. So right now the bricks are floating over a messy layer of gray mud. The idea is to get some sanded grout powder in a different color, mix it up, apply it in small sections, and make sure it is flush with the brick faces. Then I will go back when the grout is dry and use acrylic paint and glazes to give the bricks some variety and make it look like a two-hundred year old wall.

For this project we’re using:

• Cheap plastic picnic table cloths from the dollar store to drape over the counters to keep things clean.
• 10 lb. box of powdered, sanded grout.
• A corded power drill with a mixing extension to blend the powdered grout and water.
• A dollar store bucket to mix the grout that we can throw away later because it is a pain to remove it.
• Regular trowels and metal spatulas/scrapers to work the grout into the gaps between the faux-bricks.
  • Update – looking back on it, it would have produced better results, and been cleaner, to use a baker’s bag to apply the grout.
• A few old rags to wipe away the excess grout from the brick faces while not smoothing the grout too much.

We’ll be taking pictures before we start, and as we make progress, so if I can get off my lazy ass I might show you what it looks like. At this point I probably have 300-400 pictures on my memory card ready to download from other projects. Cheers!

It has been awhile since I have been able to put any amount of time to working on our projects. This past weekend though, I was able to work on the master bathroom renovation on Saturday. We also did some shopping and got a nice vanity light fixture from our local light store (Lights for Less in Brunswick, Ohio if you’re interested – they are awesome!), a storage rack that goes behind and over the toilet, and a European-style towel rack that we’ll install on the wall later.

So the plumbing is fully hooked up now: The toilet is in place and working and the vanity faucet is working. The pipes below the sink though took some adjustments before they stopped leaking. The main thing I found was that it’s best to use plastic piping for the drain trap and extension tubes. I am told it lasts longer, doesn’t rust like brass, and it is very lightweight and easy to cut. You do need to use teflon tape or putty on all of the connections though. This was one thing I didn’t do the first time. There were a couple of connections that I didn’t tape up, and water leaked down through the threads where ends screwed together.

I also got a final coat of tinted glaze on the walls and it really helped to tone down the cinnamon/rust colored glaze that I used before. All in all I put two coats of primer, two coats of Ralph Lauren sand texture paint, one coat of a creamy, off-white color paint, two coats of cinnamon-colored transparent glaze, and two coats of celery-colored transparent glaze, for a total of nine layers! That took awhile, but the effect is sweet! It looks an worn, lime-washed plaster wall in a centuries-old Flemish or Tuscan village. It was definitely worth the effort, and the way it looks with the slate floor and the cinnamon-colored vanity is really cool.

The only thing we have yet to find is a mirror. I don’t know why, but it’s difficult to find just the right style, and just the right size, for this bathroom. Other than that, we just need to install the light fixture, prime and paint the ceiling white again, install the baseboard molding, and install a mirror. Just gotta keep on movin’!

Cheers!

Thanks to the mountain of spam comments that have been flowing in here in recent weeks, I have disabled the commenting option on this blog.  Now, I know what you’re thinking…there weren’t too many ‘real’ comments to begin with!  That’s partially true, but I did appreciate the few comments that there were, and I wanted this thing to continue to grow.  Until I find a suitable way to get rid of all the spam from those assfaces who pummel the DIY Blog everyday, without spending a ton of time manually removing it all, then it will go on sans comments.

Sorry about that folks, spammers ruin another good thing, once more, and all we can do is take it on the chin.