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As of June 23rd, 2023, I will be officially be a first time homeowner. I'm sure this will be wonderful and come with no unexpected costs or headaches! I am unbelievably excited for a great many reasons, but the main one is this - I will finally be able to start work on many of my more ambitious projects that I just haven't previously had the space to previously work on or store. (It also means I can finally reclaim several previous projects from the houses of family and friends who have begrudgingly held onto them for me "until I get a more permanent place to keep them, I promise it won't be long") I've really enjoyed documenting some of my projects here on the forums before (although none in this particular subforum), and so I plan on documenting at least the more interesting ones here! Here's my current list of proper project ambitions to start this year: - Free Ice Cream Truck Project - Haunted Wifi - Wifi Redux: "Guest Wifi" - Hole in the Wall - Hole Redux: Wearable Hole - Sauna - Cat Course - Functional Tensegrity Project - Gardening aka "What's the best way to grow lots of Dogsbane anyway?" - Halloween Costume with the Legs That Do The Thing (working title) And some more that I almost certainly won't get around to this year but am still excited to start and will need for next summer: - Fire Stage - Elevated Walkway - Exploding Bubble Generator - Perspective Sculpture - Rotating Thing That Definitely isn't Sliding Then we have actual important improvements to the house itself, things like: - Adding gutters - Replacing many tanks and pumps - Installing the Ceiling Grid And finally the boring stuff that needs to be done to make the above possible that I might also partially document but will definitely be needing advice for: - Workshop construction/expansion - Needlessly complicated inventory tracking software - Probably other stuff Anyway, I need to go and actually work on move prep now, but drat am I so excited to get started! GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Jun 20, 2023 |
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Jun 18, 2023 14:16
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| # ? May 5, 2024 17:50 |
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Free Ice Cream Truck - Day 1 Project One will be the Ice Cream Truck (although it's really more of an ice cream cart)! I actually need this one for an event at the beginning of July since I broke the previous Ice Cream truck last year. This one will be pretty simple, basically just figuring out how to reattach the old bits a new base if possible, but I'm still excited to get it up and running again. The old cart and paneling:   This is the new cart. It's very, very different from the old one.   The good news is that it's almost the right size for my major functional component, which I'm choosing to call The Box. The box does a few things - it holds the small and larger metal pans that hold my scoop, water to clean it with, and ice cream cones. I also use the area under the lid of the box for storage of small items, so it's held in place by relatively strong magnets but can be lifted out to access what's underneath. Unfortunately, the height and width are both a bit off. We can fix that, and more besides.  I attach some new boards underneath the old ones so I can shift the hooks down, and add some wood panels to the sides which makes the box a lot sturdier and adds exactly the right amount of width. There's some unsightly gaps around the top, still, but we'll worry about that another day. It's snug and stable and I'm happy with it.  At the same time, it became clear very quickly that reusing the old side paneling was not going to happen. No amount of modification would make them look good on this cart, and all I'd accomplish by trying is ruining the old panels, which I've been using in place of proper decorations in my bedroom. So I decided I'd just make some new custom fit panels from scratch. I asked my parents if they had any spare wood (this is being done at their house for now, until I move into mine) and my mom said no, thought for a few minutes, and then said I could feel free to repurpose the old "desk" that had been taking up space on her table saw all winter. Ah, the "desk".  Last summer, my son (then 7 years old) had decided to make his own project - he wanted to build a new desk for his favorite teacher at school. Now, he was extremely confident in his ability to do this, and in the proud goon tradition decided to eschew any advice, telling us to go work on our own projects because he could figure this out on his own and didn't need any help, except with the cuts which he would allow me to do after he marked them. This is the result, after several rounds on his part of tinkering and improvements. Each leg is attached with screws AND nails, for extra sturdiness! At which point we realized that I had absolutely no way to transport it to his school or his teacher - this wasn't fitting in my vehicle at the time. Having exhausted his own passion for the time being, he said we'd worry about that part later and ran off to go for a swim in the pool. And then we completely forgot about it until today. He had no more interest in it, and the "legs" had become molded through so it was garbage. Except the top of the table, which surprisingly was still in good condition, and the perfect size to cut into panels to wrap around the cart. After removing an absurd number of screws and nails, I extracted the single good piece of wood and cleaned it up. It really was the perfect size after being cut - 1 panel for each side and the back. The only remaining puzzle was how to attach them. I needed a means of attaching the panels that was both rugged and long lasting, that didn't render the cart less useful, that could be created relatively quickly, and allowed the panels to be taken on and off easily. I considered punching holes in the cart and bolting to the sides or zip-tieing it (that was the method I used for the old cart), but I wasn't sure I'd like how that looked and also I didn't have any bolts small enough to not cause problems for the stuff inside. I considered hanging it from the edges, but I needed it secure enough it wouldn't hit the wheels. I even considered straps that went all the way around the outside of the cart. I settled on velcro. I don't see any way I regret this decision in the future, no matter how many weeks of inclement weather and many miles of rough, steep terrain I have to drag this thing across. It was exactly what I needed - and it looks so nice! I did not remember to take a picture of any part of this process, so here's your before and after pictures. I also decided to throw a nice panel on the front of the Box that was left over from a different project. The best part about it is that the whole thing still folds up pretty well! Only the back panel needs to be removed, and there's a leftover space that's basically perfect for it to fit into.     So that's it for today - tomorrow I start painting them, if the weather holds! I'll be going with the same color scheme as the old panels, but I'll be using some new iconography. Gotta work Aušumbla in there somehow. Once the panels are done, I figure one more day to work out how I'm hooking up the sound system so I can blast the theme song from the hit 1983 video game Mappy, and then I'm done! Future Thoughts: If all goes well with the move, I'm looking forward to making a few more sets of panels so I can swap out different designs depending on the event and my mood. Outside of taking it to festivals, the plan is to make trips around the neighbourhood a couple of times a week and distribute free treats to all the children from my vehicle. I'm sure it will be a great way to make new friends and work my way into the good graces of the current residents! GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Jun 19, 2023 |
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Jun 19, 2023 05:41
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