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StormDrain
May 22, 2003

Thirteen Letter

MrLogan posted:

I have literally never heard anyone say something good about love sac outside this forum. I think it's an echo chamber effect.

When I've sat on their stuff in stores it seems like complete uncomfortable garbage.

I had a co-worker who absolutely loved his, so I think they are loved. I guess the implied part of your statement is that people outside of the forum don't like it?

I just think they're not very good looking for the money and it's too big for my space anyway.


GlyphGryph posted:

This isn't that absurd, surely?


... maybe a little bit?

Y'all make constantly feel like a huge loving weirdo, and you're all goons to begin with, which... well, that's a bit worrying. I'm apparently definitely doing home ownership wrong.

Does that have a beater brush? My experience with the shop vac's i've owned is that they move a LOT of air and blast that out the back so it's likely to disturb a bunch of dust.

Unrelated to that really but a fun life hack I have, I now empty my roomba in the garage and I have my shop vac mounted to the wall, so after I dump it I turn that on and suck all the dust out of the container and filter. Cuts down on the dust.

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EPICAC
Mar 23, 2001

We’ve had a Dyson stick vac for about 10 years, and have been happy with it. I buy that it’s a so-so vacuum, but the convenience of the form factor in our small space is more useful than a better vacuum.

We mainly use it on the hardwood floors in the kitchen/dining area and living room to clean up after the kids who spread crumbs everywhere. Having something that lives at the top of the basement stairs and is easily accessible for the nightly vacuum is the biggest consideration. Having a better vacuum for the one carpeted room in the house isn’t worth it to us.

Democratic Pirate
Feb 17, 2010

Love sacs are more than the giant bean bag blobs that spawn in 40% of apartments inhabited by college kids?

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe
My issue with bag vacuums is that my dog sheds inordinate amounts of very fine fur. It's extremely lightweight, and thus not realistic to sweep with a broom, but generates a lot of volume. A bag-using vacuum will fill the bag basically instantly, such that I'm constantly having to open up the vacuum case, remove the bag, throw it out, and install a new one. Bagless vacuums tend to be much easier to empty out, and you aren't generating extra trash when you do. That's a worthwhile tradeoff, for me, for reduced vacuuming efficiency.

MarcusSA
Sep 23, 2007

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

My issue with bag vacuums is that my dog sheds inordinate amounts of very fine fur. It's extremely lightweight, and thus not realistic to sweep with a broom, but generates a lot of volume. A bag-using vacuum will fill the bag basically instantly, such that I'm constantly having to open up the vacuum case, remove the bag, throw it out, and install a new one. Bagless vacuums tend to be much easier to empty out, and you aren't generating extra trash when you do. That's a worthwhile tradeoff, for me, for reduced vacuuming efficiency.

This is why I have a robot vacuum that does kinda a poo poo job but picks up quite a bit every day.

It was like $100 and helps a lot for keeping my dogs hair down.

Hed
Mar 31, 2004

Fun Shoe
I have a corded and cordless. I have three small children though and use the cordless multiple times a day. There’s no contest between cleaning the whole house and picking up cracker crumbs between the kitchen table and counters.

Also I had a friend I trust who hated the lovesac. Normal build guy I think he thought it was cheap garbage. That was enough to keep me from considering them. I will note that site for when our Axis from C&B needs new foam.

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

MarcusSA posted:

This is why I have a robot vacuum that does kinda a poo poo job but picks up quite a bit every day.

It was like $100 and helps a lot for keeping my dogs hair down.

Get ready for a bunch of people who haven't long-term used daily robot vacuums to tell you that their dog sheds too much, and/or "I used one for two weeks can it couldn't keep up :rolleye:", even though it takes ~90+ days to catch up with the backlog of fur

MarcusSA
Sep 23, 2007

Hadlock posted:

Get ready for a bunch of people who haven't long-term used daily robot vacuums to tell you that their dog sheds too much, and/or "I used one for two weeks can it couldn't keep up :rolleye:", even though it takes ~90+ days to catch up with the backlog of fur

Yeah it legit took over a month for mine to get it under control.

It works well enough and for $100 (ish) it’s worth it.

Tiny Timbs
Sep 6, 2008

I got a Roborock s7 max ultra and I basically have to run it twice a day to keep up with three dogs

I did a lot of traditional mopping to get the wood floor to the point that the robot’s pad could do the job

PainterofCrap
Oct 17, 2002

hey bebe



George H.W. oval office posted:

Is eucalyptus that much worse vs teak for outdoor furniture? We started down the path and good lord was that some sticker shock. We have some fantasies that we'll become outside lounging people but I know deep down that is absolutely not gonna be the case.

I built my wife an adirondack chair out of mahogany...not sure how that suits cost-wise, but it's held up well since 2005 with only a couple of sand & refinishes with spar varnish.



Built a picnic table out of framing 2x6s for the legs & underpinnings, and a surfaced with cedar deck planking.

Waited a year too long to refinish the table:



Comes back well, though

MarcusSA
Sep 23, 2007

That’s a good lookin table and chair.

GlyphGryph
Jun 23, 2013

Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.
Yeah, those look really nice!

Beef Of Ages
Jan 11, 2003

Your dumb is leaking.

PainterofCrap posted:

I built my wife an adirondack chair out of mahogany...not sure how that suits cost-wise, but it's held up well since 2005 with only a couple of sand & refinishes with spar varnish.



Built a picnic table out of framing 2x6s for the legs & underpinnings, and a surfaced with cedar deck planking.

Waited a year too long to refinish the table:



Comes back well, though



drat you and your talents I clearly do not have.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe

Beef Of Ages posted:

drat you and your talents I clearly do not have.

Both of those projects are pretty approachable for a beginning woodworker. The real trick is having access to the tools, space, and time to use them.

Toaster Beef
Jan 23, 2007

that's not nature's way

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

Both of those projects are pretty approachable for a beginning woodworker. The real trick is having access to the tools, space, and time to use them.

I see so much woodworking stuff I know I'd have a blast doing but yeah, the barrier to entry is ... sizeable. I just don't have the money or space to make it happen.

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

Toaster Beef posted:

I see so much woodworking stuff I know I'd have a blast doing but yeah, the barrier to entry is ... sizeable. I just don't have the money or space to make it happen.

Honestly it takes less space than you'd think, and the money for a project is frequently less than you'd spend buying the thing you're making.

I built a pretty sizable table a couple years back. Dining room table sized, just used junk pine 1x6's from Home Depot along with some 1x2s for trim. The legs were 4x4s and the feet were 2x4 offcuts. The only power tools I used were a circular saw, an electric drill/screwdriver, and a belt sander. I needed to buy the belt sander as I didn't own one yet. There were a few other sundry small things I needed to buy, like saw horses to have the table up on when I was working on it. This was all doable in a fairly small ~10x20 workspace in a small garage.

From the first cut to the final poly coat and sanding I spent about $700, and maybe $200 of that was fuckups because I'd never done anything like this before. A fair bit of material I bought that I didn't need because my initial design was dumb and I changed it part way through. Some straight up cockups that led to me repeating work, including sanding off the entire initial stain and re-doing it. Plus maybe $100-150 in tools I didn't own yet. If I did the whole thing again I could probably do it for $400, certainly $500.

And that's for a pretty big project. If you just want to make a little bedside table? That's doable with hand tools on the tiny 2nd floor porch of a lovely apartment. I made a fair few things like that when I was too poor to afford furniture but not too poor to afford cheap wood.

This is all super basic stuff. My table looks pretty OK from the top, but there are park benches with nicer legs. If you place a high priority on things looking nice and professional yeah, that's going to take years of practice and really dedicating yourself to the craft. But if you just want something functional you'd be amazed what even an unskilled idiot (me, for example) can knock together fairly cheaply.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe

Cyrano4747 posted:

This is all super basic stuff. My table looks pretty OK from the top, but there are park benches with nicer legs. If you place a high priority on things looking nice and professional yeah, that's going to take years of practice and really dedicating yourself to the craft. But if you just want something functional you'd be amazed what even an unskilled idiot (me, for example) can knock together fairly cheaply.

This bears emphasizing: it's not hard to make practical, useful furniture that looks decent from a specific angle. It's a lot harder to make elegant, artistic furniture that looks good from all angles. And the kind of bullshit masterpiece "carefully cut every joint to .01mm tolerance" work that you may see online is a ridiculous extravagance and wholly unnecessary. Even highly-prized antiques from 100+ years ago have bodges where you can't see, like the insides of panels or the backs of pieces that normally back up to a wall.

My TV stand for years was a piece of Home Depot 1x10 pine that was attached to two other pieces of pine with 90-degree angle brackets. No finish. Tools required were a hand saw and a screwdriver. Total cost to me was, I dunno, maybe $20? It was very "ex-college-student" furniture from an aesthetic standpoint, sure, but it worked.

GlyphGryph
Jun 23, 2013

Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.
I can and did make basic furniture in my lovely timy apartment, even though my neighbors probably hated it, I just wanted to say that that table and chair looks nice and is better than anything I have made.

Square is a lot easier than curved and both of those things have good looking curves and I definitely dont have the skill to pull those off right now.

PainterofCrap
Oct 17, 2002

hey bebe



Going from memory

The table materials were about $100-$150. Had no plans: I copied a(n eventually) rotting redwood table given to us by my in-laws in the mid-1990s (this was around 2005) noting how it was put together.

You will need:

Two 10' 2x6 for legs (cut in half, and you lose some more to the angled ends)
One 8' 2x4 cut in half to make the leg anchors attached to the underside of the table. Actually get a 10', as you'll need a spreader at the apex of the legs, to tie them together

30-LF of good (unwarped, un-split) 1x1 or 1x2 to tie the table deck together, and maybe

Eight 8' lengths of 5/8" cedar deck planking.

For hardware: carriage bolts for the legs; 4" ones to tie the legs together at the apex & on through to the 2x4 spreader; 6" to tie the legs to their anchors on the underside of the table deck (you're drilling through the width of a 2x4 as well as the thin plane of the legs)
1-1/2" deck screws

Tools:
Corded or cordless drill strong enough to run a 1-1/2" hole saw. Also for drilling & screwdriving.
Circular saw or miter saw
a GOOD jigsaw.
Wrench for carriage bolts
Set of drill bits 1/8" for pilots & 5/16 for carriage bolt holes
1-1/2" hole saw

The most challenging part was cutting out the rabbets to lock the legs in a cross pattern. That required a lot of measuring & scribing, then used a circular saw & made a million cuts, then cleaned them out by running the saw sideways, then sanding away whatever was left. I may have used my neighbor's 10" table miter saw. It would have gone a lot quicker with a rabbeting blade, but that cost half as much as all the hardware, and time is free.

Making the table circular was simple: attached all of the cedar, cut roughly to length, to 1x1 / 1x2 ties by screwing them in from underneath (pre-drilled holes in the 1x1 first, countersunk them a little so I could use 1-1/2" deck screws) set it right-side up, sunk a screw in the middle, ran a string to a Sharpie, scribed a circle, and cut it with a Bosch jigsaw.

I have an umbrella hole in the center.

If anyone wants to try their hand at it: it's only difficult if you haven't tried it. Making errors is to be expected and they are cheap to remedy on a project like this. I can create an actual spec sheet & instructions. I copied an existing table, but made it 1' larger in diameter. Took less than a week.

I have to build new legs for it this spring, as the ends exposed to weather through the gaps between the surface have rotted down far enough that the wood around the carriage bolts is getting soft, preventing me from tightening out the wobble that's developed...so I can update y'all on how rabbeting out new joints goes. Think I had beginner's luck in '05.

The adirondack chair I designed from looking at a variety of styles out in the world & had my wife pick the one she found most appealing. I built it for her but made it large enough for me (I was pushing 400-lbs at the time). I had access to a very good lumberyard (Diamond M Lumber in Southampton NJ)that had mahogany in a ton of different thicknesses, and, at the time, the materials weren't $200 (this was 22-years ago). just drew up a plan for the s-shape on the legs onto thick cardboard & used it to mark off, then cut it out with a very good jigsaw, clamped the two pieces together, and sanded them with 80-grit until they matched. Almost all of the rest of it was straight cuts; one bevelled & angled cut that I ruined 3-pieces of mahogany on until I got it close. Used a router with a 3/8" round-over bit for the seat slats. I was anal & rabbeted out the rear sloped legs for the front legs. Glued & screwed it together. It has stayed solid.

I am not sure that i could build another one.

I partially disassembled it in 2022, during COVID, to sand & re-urethane it properly.



It & the table took five coats of urethane, with steel wool smoothing in between.

PainterofCrap fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Feb 27, 2024

Kefit
May 16, 2006
layl
I spent around $700 on a Miele canister vacuum with an electric nozzle when I bought my home because I was getting nice carpet installed upstairs. I'm not sure I'd be willing to spend that much on a vacuum now, but $700 seemed like peanuts during the timeframe when I was spending half a million on the home and low five figures on basic renovations (flooring, interior paint, window treatments). I'm glad I did buy this vacuum though, because it makes my carpets look brand new every time I use it.

Back during my apartment living days I bought a cheap cordless stick vacuum off Amazon. It's garbage at cleaning carpets, but it's decent enough for cleaning hard surfaces. I replaced the stick with a short plastic nozzle and still use the thing as a handheld vacuum for quickly cleaning up small dry messes on the hard floors downstairs.

The cheap stick vacuum is bagless, and emptying its dust canister is a really terrible experience. Dust and grime explode everywhere as soon as you open the thing. Changing the bag on my Miele a couple times a year couldn't be an easier and more pleasant experience in comparison.

Re sofa and couch chat, this informative site maintained by a retired industry expert has already been linked, but it's worth linking again:
https://insidersguidetofurniture.com/worst-and-best-sofa-sectional-reviews-for-2023-2/

What I learned from this site changed my approach to sofa shopping completely. After many months of researching my options, I finally spent $6000 to order a couch from a well regarded custom couch shop in Seattle. This is far more than I've ever spent on any other piece of furniture, but the hope is that I'll love sitting in it for many hours and that it will last forever. I'll find out when it gets delivered in a couple months (or longer, because I know how these things usually work).

GlyphGryph
Jun 23, 2013

Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.
drat, it is so, so nice to have properly working plumbing and a properly attached and sealed kitchen sink, and the new faucet is just worlds better than the old one, and it feels SO drat GOOD to know that I'm the one who fixed it all and made the most miserable part of my home to use into one that is pleasant and functional.

It was a huge headache especially with everything else, but having a fully functional kitchen thanks to my own efforts... its everything I dreamed home ownership could be and more. I feel genuinely accomplished and like my actions matter.

I'm gonna go celebrate by chopping up a tree.

Motronic
Nov 6, 2009

Hell yes, you are the Gary now, so you know the gariness in your sink. Welcome to homeownership.

PainterofCrap
Oct 17, 2002

hey bebe




Feels good man

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

loving congrats man, literally one of the most pain in the rear end yet best parts of home ownership.

Plus, the next time something fucks up you're going to be way less willing to just live with janky bullshit because you know you can fix it. Which, you know, also a blessing and a curse.

Jenkl
Aug 5, 2008

This post needs at least three times more shit!

Cyrano4747 posted:

loving congrats man, literally one of the most pain in the rear end yet best parts of home ownership.

Plus, the next time something fucks up you're going to be way less willing to just live with janky bullshit because you know you can fix it. Which, you know, also a blessing and a curse.

First time I had to make a repair, and I had both the tools and materials on hand, I felt like a god.

EPICAC
Mar 23, 2001

I need to replace a few deck planks (1x6). Is there a best type of wood for this? I assume it needs to be pressure treated, and would therefore need to dry before I can paint it to match the rest of the deck.

As for drying, is it best to install and let it dry outdoors, or can buy it now and store it in my basement to dry (dehumidifier usually keeps at an RH of 40%) until it’s warmer out? If I dried for a bit without installing is warping a concern?

Hadlock
Nov 9, 2004

The best? Teak, or Honduran mahogany

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams

Jenkl posted:

First time I had to make a repair, and I had both the tools and materials on hand, I felt like a god.

It cannot be understated the feeling of power when you have the tools and knowledge to do the thing, whatever that thing is. Make a plan, go get supplies, the tools on hand make it go quickly, and you're done. Struggling through and solving a problem brings its own type of satisfaction, but there's nothing quite like a smooth project from start to finish.

PainterofCrap
Oct 17, 2002

hey bebe



Home repair, restoration, construction in all trades; working on cars since 1976. These learned and developed things came about because necessity is the mother of invention, and, if you're broke and desperate, you'll try anything.

Some folks simply do not have the aptitude for these things, Most people, actually, and that's OK, everyone has their strength and aptitude somewhere.

I've been very, very fortunate to have the aptitude, and to have come of age in a time and place where it could develop, and where the disasters and mistakes were not hideously expensive if colorfully catastrophic.

None of this would have happened, though, if I was not willing to try, and fail; learn, and try again. Automotive and household repair was the first precinct in which I actually developed self-confidence, by doing things that almost no one else I knew could do. Before that I was an emotional & psychological mess.

It's good to be skilled. It's excellent to have so many fellow-travelers.

Jenkl posted:

First time I had to make a repair, and I had both the tools and materials on hand, I felt like a god.

Ain't it great?

Lawnie
Sep 6, 2006

That is my helmet
Give it back
you are a lion
It doesn't even fit
Grimey Drawer
Being the person your less-handy friends ask for advice is also a nice feeling.

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

PainterofCrap posted:

Home repair, restoration, construction in all trades; working on cars since 1976. These learned and developed things came about because necessity is the mother of invention, and, if you're broke and desperate, you'll try anything.

Some folks simply do not have the aptitude for these things, Most people, actually, and that's OK, everyone has their strength and aptitude somewhere.

I've been very, very fortunate to have the aptitude, and to have come of age in a time and place where it could develop, and where the disasters and mistakes were not hideously expensive if colorfully catastrophic.

None of this would have happened, though, if I was not willing to try, and fail; learn, and try again. Automotive and household repair was the first precinct in which I actually developed self-confidence, by doing things that almost no one else I knew could do. Before that I was an emotional & psychological mess.

It's good to be skilled. It's excellent to have so many fellow-travelers.

Ain't it great?

Aptitude is a thing but you don’t need any to do basic home repairs. Any idiot can patch dry wall or replace a toilet or put in a new faucet.

The reason I point this out is a lot of people are intimated by stuff they don’t know and assume they don’t have aptitude in it, like they didn’t spec for plumbing in a dumb RPG.

All it takes is a willingness to make mistakes and learn

PainterofCrap
Oct 17, 2002

hey bebe



Cyrano4747 posted:

Aptitude is a thing but you don’t need any to do basic home repairs. Any idiot can patch dry wall or replace a toilet or put in a new faucet.
...
All it takes is a willingness to make mistakes and learn


From my experience, there are folks that should not keep doing things. They do not learn.

I have a close friend who cannot paint. I showed her 25-years ago how to do it, but to this day she loads the brush to the crimp and blops it on.

Watch "Just Rolled In / Customer states" to see mechanical examples of this.

Or PO / Garys in this thread.

George H.W. Cunt
Oct 6, 2010





My mother in law visited our house for the first time last night and somehow managed to get the toilet running for 3 hours and waste 200 gallons in that time period :wtc: She had only been here for 4 hours!

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

PainterofCrap posted:

From my experience, there are folks that should not keep doing things. They do not learn.

I have a close friend who cannot paint. I showed her 25-years ago how to do it, but to this day she loads the brush to the crimp and blops it on.

Watch "Just Rolled In / Customer states" to see mechanical examples of this.

Or PO / Garys in this thread.

On the other hand, I can't count the number of students I had who would just straight up refuse to try something saying that they knew they were bad writers, or knew the subject was too complex for them. There's a lot of learned helplessness that comes from an unwillingness to try, fail, take on criticism, and do better.

Part of it is taking on criticism, whether from others or just a brutal assessment of your own work. Sounds like your friend falls into that realm of people who refuse to take criticism and do better.

I push back on the whole aptitude thing because I see it used as a crutch a lot by people who are either intimidated by the learning process or just don't want to put the effort in.

Basically there's room to talk about how some people just click with some skills and are going to be way better at it than others. I could work out in a gym every day and practice at basketball 24/7 and I'm never going to be good enough for the NBA. But a basic proficiency is well within most people's grasp if they're willing to put in the work.

Internet Explorer
Jun 1, 2005





Yeah, but people have limited time and energy. I read it more like shorthand for "in the context of life, I don't have the aptitude." Sure, most people can learn most things, but we can't learn everything. I'd be more than happy to pay someone to work on my house, but I'm in a fairly unique situation that makes that difficult.

Same as something like cooking. I don't judge someone for not knowing how to cook. Or use computers. Or whatever. Life is hard and everyone's circumstances are different.

It's easier to say you're not good at it or whatever than go into the details of why you just can't even right now.

[Edit: I do agree with you that it's used as a crutch, though. I'm just saying that I don't think it's one or the other and I'm generally willing to cut people slack.]

Internet Explorer fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Mar 2, 2024

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe
I think it's important not to use phrases like "I can't". Learned helplessness is a real thing, and it's reinforced by how we talk about ourselves. Stuff like "I've never learned to do X" or "I'm unpracticed at X" are better, in that they recognize a lack of skill/experience but leave open the possibility of improving.

Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

Internet Explorer posted:

Yeah, but people have limited time and energy. I read it more like shorthand for "in the context of life, I don't have the aptitude." Sure, most people can learn most things, but we can't learn everything. I'd be more than happy to pay someone to work on my house, but I'm in a fairly unique situation that makes that difficult.

Same as something like cooking. I don't judge someone for not knowing how to cook. Or use computers. Or whatever. Life is hard and everyone's circumstances are different.

It's easier to say you're not good at it or whatever than go into the details of why you just can't even right now.

[Edit: I do agree with you that it's used as a crutch, though. I'm just saying that I don't think it's one or the other and I'm generally willing to cut people slack.]

Agreed 100% and if someone just says they can't be hosed to learn how and just want to write a check to have a plumber unclog their sink, hey that's totally legit. Mostly it frustrates me because when I do see it it's from people who have an expressed need, have the time, but just feel intimidated.

As an example, there's a coworker-turned-friend of my wife's (mine too but really he's more her friend) who is terrible about this. Dude looks at me like I'm a loving wizard for doing basic stuff like replacing a kitchen faucet a few weeks ago. That's not a skill, that's not some artisanal craft that needs to be honed over years of study. That's just unscrewing a few things and tightening some new things down and then running a tiny bit of caulk. If you're feeling anxious watch a five minute youtube. I've told him as much but he just retreats to "I'm not good with my hands." edit: I mention the sink thing because he loving needs a new faucet but is lamenting how much the condo-recommended plumbing company wants to put one in. This is a solvable problem for ~$60-200 at home depot and an hour of your time, but he's just adamant that he can't.

Motronic
Nov 6, 2009

Cyrano4747 posted:

That's just unscrewing a few things and tightening some new things down and then running a tiny bit of caulk.

I agree BUT, having run into a lot of this flavor of person they have learned helplessness'd themselves into having zero tool skills. It takes time and practice to not be a total menace with a screwdriver, especially on fasteners that might be tight, stuck, or otherwise difficult (like because you're going to scratch the faucet if you cam out). These are the same people who literally don't know what tool to use or that scredrivers come in actual sizes to match fasteners. So teaching them how to do something simple to a faucet lie in your example is like teaching calculs to a dog.

Democratic Pirate
Feb 17, 2010

Not because of this thread, but I feel like a chump for having a plumber replace a faucet a few weeks ago. It’s DIY’able but we didn’t have the time or mental capacity for it given ongoing medical/work stressors.

I felt a bit better that the he needed to grab big boy tools from his truck to get the old faucet out of there because of how glued + stuck it was.

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Cyrano4747
Sep 25, 2006

Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

Motronic posted:

I agree BUT, having run into a lot of this flavor of person they have learned helplessness'd themselves into having zero tool skills. It takes time and practice to not be a total menace with a screwdriver, especially on fasteners that might be tight, stuck, or otherwise difficult (like because you're going to scratch the faucet if you cam out). These are the same people who literally don't know what tool to use or that scredrivers come in actual sizes to match fasteners. So teaching them how to do something simple to a faucet lie in your example is like teaching calculs to a dog.

Sure, but that kind of super basic tool usage is not exactly a hard skill to pick up either.

I hold myself up as a big example of this. I'm an extremely white collar ex-academic who as a kid actively avoided letting my dad teach me any of this poo poo because I'd rather play video games . As an adult I stumbled backwards into a hobby (firearms) that got me learning some extremely basic tool stuff, but even that more or less began and ended at not loving up small fasteners. I did some extraordinary light woodworking in grad school, but that was born out of poverty and wanting bookshelves that were a little nicer looking than 2x4s laid on top of cinder blocks.

Basically it just takes a willingness to find out how a tool is supposed to work, and a willingness to gently caress it up and learn from the fuckup. Don't know what tool to use? Great, go watch a youtube. Don't know how that tool works? Great, watch another youtube.

I'll be the first one in line to be critical of some millennial Gary who watched a little too much Youtube and thinks he's a master tiler and can HGTV reno his bathroom easy peasy, but there is a LOT of low hanging fruit for teaching yourself some extremely basic techniques and learning how to do simple tasks.

edit: also a willingness to be a little bit of a fuckup. Example:

Democratic Pirate posted:



I felt a bit better that the he needed to grab big boy tools from his truck to get the old faucet out of there because of how glued + stuck it was.

The faucet I replaced was stuck on there loving GOOD because the threads were a bit buggered towards the bottom of the bolt. I got it loose enough to raise the old faucet up enough to just sawzall the fucker off. Did I mar the sink a bit? You bet your rear end I did. But 1) it's hidden a bit and 2) whatever I'm hiring someone to gut that kitchen in the next few years anyways. Also 3) I smeared a thin coat of caulk over the scar and it mostly went away. A lot of people get tripped up on expecting perfection when loving up a bit and having some flaws you're aware of is fine if you learn from it and can live with the final product.

Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Mar 2, 2024

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