Yeah briney that is some serious landscaping there, trying to make us feel bad...

X, I have wired 2 car system installs, that car is gone now though, I have a VW jetta and a Jeep Cherokee.  Sadly I have had to replace brakes and front suspensions on the Jeep before moving down, now I have a list of stuff for both cars.

Bob, that garage looks awesome, I wish I had something like that for the work I do from time to time.  Knob and tube sucks to replace inside walls, I hate using fish sticks and fish tape and various other things to push, pull, and twist your way though some 100 year old walls with terrible design... bah.

I will take some shots of my next car jobs and put them here.

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Spanky I will have to inquire about some of your car knowledge if I get in a jam, I forget you know quite a lot about cars.

That looks nice, I imagine the dashboard was quite the pain.

pez

Thats pretty nuts man! I can't imagine that every screw was the same... how the balls did you remember all that for reassembly?

Quote:


bob, was that a Clarke and Dawe reference?

I went to go comment on this thread about home improvements and hacks I've done....but I just am so distracted by Spanky's one photo (the one where the front fell off):

Is that a Little Mermaid sleeping bag hanging over its side?

Cait

Here's my sink/disposal installation that I just wrapped up last night. I don't have before pictures but there was a double bowl white sink and no disposal. When we bought the home there was a microwave over the range but my wife is a bit of a tin foil hat kind of person and decided that we should take it out straight away. So I replaced it with a stainless steel range hood. The microwave was on a run of it's own so now that all those amperes were free'd up, I spliced into that run and wired in the switch to the outlet under the sink. I thought the location of my switch was pretty nifty. The wife wanted the switch under the sink for some reason. I was thinking a push button switch in the sink hole next to the fosset since the fosset is the spray type. But ya know, she's kind of in charge.

Here's the album
http://imgur.com/a/xaJL2

BTW, working under the sink sucks!

So I am back with some more stonework to post. I seem to be addicted to it.

The front of our house was pretty boring when we got it. Any areas that had once had retaining walls were removed by the previous owner.



We have this area to the left of the house that once was a nice garden. We weeded it a few times and made pathetic attempts at growing things. But the yard was pretty much taking over.



So it was time to reign that lawn in!

I decided to match the flowing lines of the previous retaining walls at other areas around the house. After looking at it for a few weeks, I decided to just get started. Once that first shovel breaks ground, you can't stop!

Like before, I dug deep into the ground, laid in some gravel/paver base, then some leveling sand and placed the stonework on top.



The sidewalk I was laying stone next to has a straight edge, so I didn't start curving until I hit the end of the concrete. Because of the gentle curve, the stonework sticks out into the yard a bit, but that is ok.



Worked my way over to the other side.



The digging is the worst part. Luckily I have a heavy pickaxe which rips through the yard very quickly. At this point I was also finding treasures from the previous owners. Popcans, wrappers, charcoal, heavy plastic landscape liner, tin pieces (no idea), and electrical wire were found all over the place.



Here is an example of the steps I used to lay in the stone. This is the leveled out sand sitting on top of gravel (use a 4+ foot level for more accuracy/speed) . I gave myself some leeway so I could adjust the curve of the stone where I wanted it. I then backfilled behind the stone with more gravel for drainage and soil expansion, and then added the second layer of stone.





The far side is finally dug out! That was a real pain, and this whole area is lower than the rest.



Robby the Robin was hanging out with me the whole day. He got as close as 2 feet (when I didn't have the camera of course) stealing the worms/critters as I dug up the ground.



I had to add a lot of gravel here to make sure everything was level. For good measure I tamped everything down.



Done!





I also decided to add some stone along our walkway.





And since I already had dug out along the sidewalk for the stone... I decided to install low voltage landscape lighting.
Each light is about 11w, and I have a 200w transformer. I have 14 guage wire, because I plan on adding a few lights down the road. These guys are reaaaallly easy to install and I highly recommend it. The digging is the hardest part. You just run the cable, and the lights basically have an attachment that pierces the cable in an enclosure. Boom, done.

And very nice results.




I bought 4 low power floodlights to hit our pillars for funsies. Susie didn't want full fill lights on the house, so I kept it subtle. Looks very cool from the street.



That's it for now, I suppose. Next on my list this summer is burying the overhead power line and cable line, and finally getting that deck built. Let me know if you have any questions!