BudDIY Podcast – Episode 28 – Future 2020 Projects

With more than the year half over, and the 4th of July over it is time to get back to work.

I spent sometime over the holiday thinking through the things I really wanted to get done, and I am going to over them in this episode. A few of the projects are going to really stretch me.

Other projects I am just going to have to gut out and get done. With that said it will be a fun and productive last half of 2020, and I am ready to attack it.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the 28th episode of the BudDIY Podcast. I’m your host Buddy Lindsey, and today we’re going to talk about future projects that I want to do around the house and things that you’re going to see on social media and on the website, and even some videos on YouTube, because I’m really enjoying doing that and I want to kind of do a few more of those. But before that, if you haven’t visited the website in a while, please feel free to do so at buddiy.net. If you’re not on the email newsletter, sign up for that please. And if you’re listening on YouTube/watching, feel free to hit that subscribe button and that notification bell, so you know when you episodes are released.

And we are available on most major platforms for podcasts, so do feel free to subscribe it there. And on that, let’s jump into the episode. So what’s going on around here? Not really a lot. It was a holiday week and kind of was relaxed a little bit, had one key project that I wanted to finish. Actually, I guess two. One is I wanted to finish the video for doing the mobile chicken watering station, and I finished that video. Got it done and I’m ready to post it up this week. It is great. It is my first attempt at a narrated video kind of doing the whole thing. I think there are a lot of problems with the video, but I showed it to a few people and I’m told it’s a decent video and they haven’t noticed too many problems.

Definitely not the ones that I know about, so that’s great. The second project that I finished is I put in a sidewalk at the house. So currently we have a back porch and I kind of put an extension on it to put a smoker, but there were still like I’d say about eight feet from the extension over to our fence/gate in the side of our house. And so I wanted to go ahead and do a sidewalk there so that we could walk through the gate onto a sidewalk. And I got that done this week. It was interesting to say the least. Ran into a few problems, almost trumped the cement mixer that we were using over into the sidewalk, and then almost dumped all the contents of one of the mixes on the opposite side of the mixer, trying to correct for that.

That was exciting. And then we also were kind of racing against time because while we were on the west side of the house, so we were kind of away from the sun, we knew we had a time. We had a deadline before that sun was right overhead and it was going to be 95 degrees while we were trying to finish it. Fortunately, we’ve finished 99% of it before the sun hit. But that last few times, the smoothing things out was in the direct sun at noon-one o’clock, and whew, I was sweating and my dad was sweating. And it was not fun. But if you want to see updates and progress on that, feel free to visit instagram.com/buddylindseyjr and you can check those out. I’m just glad we got it done.

I only have one more cement project that I’m really keen to do this year and that is to connect the sidewalk to kind of a sidewalk out from our house, so that we can kind of go from the side of the house into the backyard and into the backyard through the side of the house if we need to. We’ve had to do it a few times without having to get through mud and grass and other stuff. Plus, it’ll make it a little easier mowing in a couple of spots. So that was really this week. The other thing is I got to rest yesterday, the 4th of July day. I’ve been doing so much, and we got into a position where I was in a sense forced to rest and to take my time and just kind of not do anything.

So I kind of spent the day on the computer having a little bit of fun, doing a couple projects on the computer. I got to go update a couple of different servers that I have and make sure those were all up to date and on the latest long-term support releases, got all the patches done for those. That does not sound fun to a lot of people, but it’s interesting to me. It’s fun. Busy work that needs to be done. And sometimes you run into a problem and you need to go research something out just like I happen to do this time. So it was kind of fun. Get to exercise that part of my brain. While I do a lot of DIY stuff now and get out and do woodworking, at the end of the day, I’m a software developer. I love computers, and I love messing with them.

I love tinkering with them. I love programming. I love server support stuff. I enjoy it. And so when I get to do it, I enjoy it. So just getting to update servers was kind of fun yesterday and I researched a couple of other things. I also had a couple of products that I had to buy that I had to research to the kind of ends of the internet. I felt like finding random websites that don’t get a lot of traffic, but they had bought a whole lot of stock of stuff so that I could still have one to purchase, so that was fun. And then finally, I spent the last part of the day redesigning the wall cabinet for the Weekend Woodworker Course, and I’ll talk more about that here in a little bit. So it was a fun relaxing day. Got to think things through, got to up my SketchUp skills.

I got to research the Fusion 360 a little bit more. I’ve kind of messed with it and kind of still trying to figure out which one I want to go with. There’s Fusion 360 or SketchUp, pros and cons of both. Maybe I’ll talk about that in a future episode, but with that, I mean, that was kind of this week. It was relaxing. Got a project done. On that, let’s jump to the main segment and that is projects that I want to do this year. And I’m going to go through priority issue of things that need to get done/want to do to the things that I want to do, but I don’t need to get done, and the last few projects or stuff that I’d like to do. But if I don’t get to them, I’m not going to feel bad.

The first project that is the highest priority, and that’s because I’m helping someone, is the MRCOOL air conditioner, the mini split air conditioning system. I want to help my dad put that into his shop. He came out and helped me do the cement sidewalk, so I’m going to go up and help him put in a air conditioner in his shop while it’s 102 degrees outside. It’s going to be exciting. I think one of the interesting things about that is I think he’s getting the biggest DIY unit MRCOOL sells. I think if you go to the next level up for mini splits from them, you have to hire somebody to come in and professionally put it in or else the warranty doesn’t work. So that’ll be interesting.

And I will definitely see about doing a video for that and putting that up on YouTube to see if there’s any different experiences between it and other ones that I see. I probably watched 20 YouTube videos of people installing these things. They don’t seem that hard. We’ll see how it goes when I go to help my dad do his, but that’s really the first project and that’s coming up next week. The second priority project is finishing off the Weekend Woodworker Course. That’s going to require two projects. The first one is finishing the bookshelf, and this is the one I’m hoping to get a jump on this week now that a whole bunch of family stuff is cleared out. I feel like I’m ready to go for the next couple of months and not hit any roadblocks.

We’ll see what happens. So I’m going to finish the bookshelf and then move on to the wall cabinet. That one’s going to be a little interesting because my wife isn’t a big fan of the original design and I’m fine with it, like whatever, but I want to tweak it and find something that she likes. I spent a couple of hours over the weekend redesigning it and tweaking it and things like that in SketchUp. Showed it to her and she really wasn’t a fan of it. So still got to find a design that she’ll like because I want something that we’ll both like. And so I can get that done. One of the interesting things is in order to do that project, I need to fix and dial in my jointer, and so that’ll be fine.

That’s kind of a sub project in all of these projects, so that I can take this giant piece of walnut that I have on the floor down here and get that processed and done well for the project. I might actually need to go buy another piece because what I designed is a little too much wood for what I have. So we’ll see how that goes. So in the fourth project that I want to get done, the fourth thing that is my priority this year is I’m going to hire a permaculture design consultant to come out and spend a day on the property and really taken all of the things that I want to do.

Permaculture is something that I’ve been learning over the last couple of years, not learning it as fast as I would like because my brain is easily distracted in learning so many different things. And I feel like I have a mental block a little bit in areas of permaculture. And when I go to read books and other stuff from people on it, I feel like there’s something that I’m missing and I’m not connecting dots. And I’ve spent the last couple of years trying to learn so that I could do some stuff around the house. I want to get some stuff done, and so I’m going to hire a consultant and I think it’s going to be a lot of fun because, I mean, in reality, he has done hundreds of designs for people.

He’s done some huge projects and he’s done little projects as well. He really knows his stuff. And every time I meet him and talk to him, I’m really impressed by him. And so I really want to learn from him, and I want to pay him to come out and solve some of my problems. I feel like doing that not only will jumpstart my project because in all reality, I mean, if you think about it, if you hire somebody that knows what they’re doing, they’re not only going to save you time. They’re going to save you money and they’re going to save you heartache, pain, and stress because you’re going to jump past a whole bunch of mistakes that you were about to make. So it’s really why I want to hire him to get out because I want to get started on the property.

I don’t want to sit here in five years and be like, well, if I learned that one more thing, I could do my food forest. If I learned that one more thing, I can do my gardens better. I want to jump. I want to get some stuff done, and I also feel like coming to learn something. Permaculture design consultant, getting that done this year. Going to be awesome getting some stuff planted this fall. So the next priority after that, I’m coming around September-October timeframe, and this project terrifies me a little bit because it is going to be a stretch in my woodworking skill and ability, at least at the moment, and that is to build a bunk bed for my girls.

Since we’re having a third baby and we only have two bedrooms in the house besides the master bedroom, got to move both girls into one bedroom and they need a place to sleep. So we’re going to build a bunk bed. Some of the specific things that I want to do I have no idea how to accomplish. One of those specifically I think is going to be really cool is we want to do stairs for the girls since they’re so young, so they aren’t like climbing up a ladder and then falling off potentially. And one of the things that I want to do is I want to be able to turn on the bed, turn on the bed, and the stairs light up.

And so kind of one of the ideas of that is I need to do at epoxy stare cap on it with LEDs in it so that it kind of glows a different color, or specifically I want to do purple for the top couple of steps and pink for the bottom couple steps, one for the daughter that’s going to sleep on top of and one for the daughter for down below. Another couple of things that I want to do is I want you to integrate some LED lights on the underside of the loft bed to point down so that the girl down there can turn on a light and can have something to use and read underneath. And then vice versa I want to do the same is I want to do a built in desk of some sort on the top bunk that has a light that points up if that’s the one you want to use and it bounces off the ceiling.

And it gives her ambient light to do work on that desk, and then also underneath the desk have a light that points down to the top of the bunk bed. So if she wants to read there late at night and the other girl’s asleep, she can do that as well. Those are kind of features that I wanted growing up in a bunk bed, and I think it’d be a lot of fun to incorporate it for them. Those are just a couple of the things I have no idea how to accomplish and I guess to learn how to do. Plus, I needed to figure out cabinetry stuff. I needed to learn more on specific types of joinery. I needed to learn breakdown furniture stuff, like different connectors and things like that.

Bought a course from Mark Spagnolo on his platform bed where he says he’s going to go into knockdown furniture stuff. Knockdown hardware, that’s the word I’m after, to learn about that. So I bought that recently so that I can watch those and get an idea of how to do different things. A lot of stuff to learn. Probably going to have a few sub projects inside trying to get that done, but that’s a big project I have coming up later this year. And I kind of have a deadline of when the third child was born. So we’ll see how that goes.

The next project, and I don’t know when I’m going to actually do this, it’s something I’d like to get done this year, and that’s a men’s valet, specifically for all my everyday carry stuff, Basically I take my hat off, put it on the dining room table, dump all my stuff in my pockets into my hat, and keep going. I’ve done that the entire time I’ve been married to my wife and I know it bugs her, and we’ve always tried to find a solution. And I remembered growing up, I had this problem where I would just leave stuff scattered around my room and I’m like, I really need to organize this. I really need to do something about this. And I got the idea, what if I have something on the walls?

I walk through the door of my bedroom and I can just pull my phone out and put it in there, pull my wallet out, put it in there, hang my keys up on a hook, and I can also put my checkbook in there. It tells you how old I am, I had a checkbook. Anyway, so I could just put it all in there. Now I know those specific key things are exactly where they need to be and I’m not going to forget about them. I’m not going to lose them. They’re not going to scatter everywhere. And I don’t know why I feel incredibly dumb that about a month ago I was like, wait a minute, why don’t I do that again? Why don’t I something like that again? And so that’s what I’m going to do.

Later this year I’m going to build a valet to dump all my stuff into so that I have it in one spot and it’s not on the dining room table anymore. And I could hang my hat on the wall, actually both hats. All of my hats on the wall right by that spot so that I can easily get to them when need be. That’s another project. So the last few projects, I mean, these are if I get to them, amazing. If I don’t, oh well, whatever, unless something happens and you need to bump up the priority. The next one is another bookshelf. I need to build another bookshelf so I can put in our girl’s room because they currently have a lot of books. And as we need to transition the kids around, we need to move all of their books that are older into their room.

I want to be able to secure it against the wall and then be able to take the little bookshelf that’s in there now, put it into the baby’s room to put all the baby books on, because we love books in our house and I love buying books for the kids. It is something that I feel is a huge priority. That’s one reason I’m building a bookshelf for my office is to get my books out of boxes and onto the bookshelf because I want them to grow up seeing visually all of the books that we have. I want them to grow up seeing visually us reading books. I want them to be surrounded by books, and books are super important to me. I want to build another bookshelf, but I want to customize it to their room and kind of the style that we’re going for in the room.

But if I don’t get to it, that’s fine. A project for my office that I want to do is actually want to do two projects. One is I have a personal Mac and I have a work MacBook. And what I would like to do is some kind of combined holder that I can hold them up vertically and kind of slide them next to my monitor so I have a place to put both of them. Because currently they’re both laying flat on my computer, on my desk and they just take up a ton of real estate. Plus, it’s not very good for cooling. They’re okay, but it could be better on keeping them cool. So if I could put them vertical and basically next to each other, it would be a lot better. And I’ve a couple of ideas on how to do something like that. So that’d be neat.

And then I also want to do a cabinet/bar/countertop in my office underneath my TV and next to my fridge so I can put my electric kettle for my tea stuff. I can put my water filter and other things like that on the countertop, so it’s not on top of my fridge and being really wonky. Plus, I have cabinets underneath for a whole bunch of storage because sometimes you just have a lot of little office stuff. Like I recently got my printer, so now I have printer supplies that I need to store that I don’t have a place to currently store them. They’re sitting next to the printer and it’s very ugly. So things of that nature. So then finally, let’s get to the last two projects, and one of those is cutting boards.

I would like to do cutting boards for Christmas presents, if possible, in a couple of different places family-wise and their cutting boards are terrible. And I think it’d just be a lot of fun to not only make cutting boards for the experience, but give them away as gifts. And then finally, I would like to make a couple of different wooden flags, and you see the American flags. I’d like to make a Gadsden flag. I’d like to make an American flag. And one of the podcasts I listen to, they’re coming up with a flag concept that I find really funny, and I’ll share more of that later. I would like to make a flag of that as well. I think it would be a lot of fun just doing wooden flag. I don’t know.

I really like wooden flags and so definitely want to do one of those if possible this year. I might even just scrap some time and be like, I ain’t doing nothing but building a flag right now for a weekend or something. We’ll see. I watched videos on doing them fairly regularly. They don’t look that complicated, and I really, really to do one. So we’ll see, but that’s another project that I want to get done. So for future projects, I mean, in all honesty, that’s really it. I mean, those are the projects for this year. There’s a lot there. We’ll see how many I can actually get to. Things are calming down around the family home front and things of that nature, so I’m going to get some time back so I can get back into it.

And that leads me to the last segment of the day and that’s the failure, and that has been planning and rolling with the punches. I have no idea how to saw. I think I’ve even talked about it on a previous episode is rolling with the punches sometimes. Sometimes you just get punched extra hard and you have a hard time recovering from it. I made a commitment this year to do a post every day. Well, I made a commitment to do 365 posts on Instagram, the idea being one post every day. I made it really, really good for over six months by getting a post every single day, except for one day. I did really good and then I went on vacation earlier last month.

And that week leading up, I couldn’t get much of anything done because we were trying to prepare to go on the trip, and my wife wasn’t feeling good due to being in the first trimester. And it just hmm, it just nailed me. Just hit me upside the head. Came back and I just had a funeral to go to. I had family stuff to deal with around the funeral stuff and a whole bunch of like personal stuff. I call it paperwork, paperwork of life kind of thing. Think of taxes and dealing with… Just things like that that you have to deal with as an adult, and they just kept coming up one after another, one after another, one after another for the last couple of weeks.

I had to get them done, and so that just knocked my plans sideways all over the place and I just could not recover very well. It’s been a huge failure for me because it’s like I made this commitment. So at some point this year, I’m going to double up and do double posts on Instagram for every day for a while. I was able to keep my commitment of a podcast every single Monday, so that’s great. Yay for that. We’re going to keep going. Lack of planning and preparing beforehand was my failure. What I think that I need to do, and this is something I’m going to try for my next big trip, I think my next one is probably going to be November. It’s going to be a three to four day trip to a conference. That is I need to start literally a month out.

Since I’m not doing content every single day all day long as a full-time job, this is effectively four days a week in the evenings and sometimes a whole Saturday job, then I need to have more time to prepare and plan. So that means I need to start planning a month out before I go on a longer trip. So that’s what I’m going to try, but I definitely need to nail something down for when we have the baby and being able to produce content and get something to float through all of that time. So planning and life just knocked me sideways. I need to find a way to better recover from that. That’s my failure of the week. On that, I want to thank you for your time. I thank you for following along.

What future projects do you have, or is there something specific about one of the projects that I want to work on that you would like to know more about, so I can make sure to cover that when I get to it? So on that, thank you. Have a great day and we’ll see you next week.