What home improvement work did you do today?

So my dad always wanted a water feature, but my mom was worried about him killing her plants, so he never got around to it. He bought an old hand pump that he wanted as a fountain for his feature thats been hanging out on their patio. He died about 5 years ago, and 2 years after he passed, the huge maple that he loved that shaded their patio died too. It was probably 200+ years old as the original foundation on the house is circa 1760s, and the current house is circa 1840s. Anyway, the maple came down, and my mom had the stump removed which left a 10' wide and 4' deep hole, which i turned into a jellybean shaped 2 tiered pond (roughly 10'x16') for my mom. Today I finally got around to hooking up my dad's fountain. If he's watching he would be laughing and loving it.

 

Just needs some ducks and turtles now.

 

It's only about 2k gallons, so too small for either. Also, ducks would fowl the water.

 

Ahhhh. It does look nice though...I like it!

 

Condolences on the loss of your Dad. I'm sure he is proud of you and smiling at the completion of your project. Nicely done!

 

That is really nice. Sorry to hear about your dad.

 

Cut down 37 Trees and had some guys spend 5 days blowing up the front yard. Now some other guys are making it into a huge mud hole. Hopefully this will be a garage one day.

 

Finally wrapped up this living room renovation for my client.

Before


After: Framed out a 2x6 wall clad with ledger stone. 85” tv with Bluetooth soundbar and sub, 100” Dimplex electric linear fireplace wired at 220v for something like 8500 BTU of heat output. Added recessed lights in room, patched in white oak in missing spots on floor under old cabinets and had it refinished.

 

looks great!

They need to get a bigger soundbar, lol.

 

Not judging, cuz I don't care what other people do, but that TV reminded me of my situation. I'm not a fan of TVs above fireplaces. For one, too warm of a spot for expensive electronics but mostly because I like the TV and sound to be at eye/ear level while sitting. So, when I designed my house, I put the fire place on one end of the living room and the TV on the other. With the idea that it would be 2 separate, back to back sitting areas. I pictured either sitting by the fire OR watching TV.
My wife approved the drawings (2D and 3D) and when she came to see it for the first time in real life,.....told me she didn't like the idea of back to back couches/sitting areas and the whole room looked smaller than she pictured.
I will die on this hill. I am NOT moving the TV to above the fireplace.

 

Yes!!! Might I suggest the Yamaha YSP-5600 Digital Sound Projector. We have one paired w/a sub and it is

 

Thats a lot of speakers in there.
Last year we went with samsungs flagship soundbar (a stupid amount of channels, like 11.1.4)....thing is amazing!

 

This situation is definitely aesthetic. They have it on now at night and it’s over 80 degrees now. For a heat source, it’s just a space heater with a blower.

 

This was a fun yet tedious one. The wife wanted to add some functionality/ambience to this large bare wall in our living room. So we started with a fireplace, then framed for an air stone surround (the air stone was the tedious part especially around the fireplace trim) and then added some wall cabinets on the floor with butcher block followed by live edge shelving on either side.

 

Nicely done!

 

Lawn was lookin like the Amazon so mowed the front and back yard and the rains made the weeds so thick it was bogging down my trimmer so gave it a nice tune up to make up for the abuse.

 

Weekend "Honey-doo's" where you actually have say in what plant material and Con actually bought into the idea of using "Music wire" to

hang her Airplants

And the "New addition" Con's Rav4

 

Wife put something caustic on the bath counter. it's eaten into the surface. I took a razor to see if it's on top, it's not, its in there.
Any suggestions on how to fix this? Pretty sure it's quartz.

 

I’d make sure to neutralize it with a lot of water first and see what it looks like. Then try some basic dish soap. There is a mild abrasive called Bar Keepers Friend that would not harm the quartz. We’ve used it to remove a ”ring” left in the quartz from the counter installers. If it actually dissolved the material, someone may have some other ideas.

 

Sure looks like a natural marble. If the material is marble and it is etched, there was a chemical reaction between something acidic and the calcium in marble. Minor etching can be polished out. There are some DIY etch remover kits out there that use polishing powder and lots of elbow grease to get the shine back.

An extreme example would be leaving a puddle of pure lemon juice on the surface for a whole day+. I’ve seen it eat away the marble and leave a depression. There was no fix for that unless it was filled with epoxy.

 

Thanks, yeah she's been reading internet home brew cleaning stuff and I think she got something mixed and let it set.
Not sure I want to epoxy over this then we'd have dissimilar materials and I could see that pealing up at some point. I guess I'll be sanding in the future! Thank you!

 

Stained some beam covers for the opening between the kitchen and living room we made. Still have some trim and the column cover to sand and stain. Column cover is standing up in the left hand side of the image.

 

Started working on a kitchen countertop replacement. We had granite but, it cracked right in front of the kitchen sink. The installer told my wife about led lights for under the slab. I was not happy about getting all of the extra time and work (on me) to install the leds. Here are some photos of the work in progress.

 

I've seen that and considered it. my luck, i'd have issues with the diodes and would be fighting that a lot.
looks good though!

 

thats a bad ass night light!

 

Where’d you get those? Need to do mine, brackets and all.