Shit you built with your own two hands (picture thread)

[RootSkier]

Too cold to mountain bike, no snow...what to do? Blast tunes, drink beer, organize pictures.

[RootSkier]

My house...sunroom before:



Sunroom/sauna after.

[FreakofSnow]

I designed/built 6 miles of this singletrack in the Big Holes...(I had a few more hands digging, though)



Southbound, Horseshoe canyon

Big Hole, Montana?

[somegeek]

My wiring cabinet...



Coax is only hooked up on so many jacks. Didn't feel like springing for an amplifier or powered splitter. One switch for Comcast LAN traffic, other switch sits behind a Cisco router for a tunneled VPN.

Very nice to have had a five day electrical inspection window to cable out my house before the drywall went up. Cheap too when you DIY.

[carvedog]

My wiring cabinet...

Wow. That is so clean I can't even tell you how much cabinet envy I have right now. Maybe when we do our little remodel I can aspire to this.

[RootSkier]

Big Hole, Montana?

No.


45678

[VC]

Working with concrete is actually pretty easy. The key is building a good mold:



The mold is built with melamine. The black pieces in the middle will form the trough; the table is poured upside down.

Then fill in the mold with concrete, vibrate and trowel. Because the top will be the future bottom it doesn't matter too much if you get it completely smooth.


Then crack the mold, flip the slabs (easier said than done), and polish with diamond pads. You can get it as smooth as polished granite if you want. Seal with food safe sealer and a wax and you're done.

Got a ballpark cost? It looks really nice.

[Tuckerman]

Working with concrete is actually pretty easy. The key is building a good mold:



The mold is built with melamine. The black pieces in the middle will form the trough; the table is poured upside down.

Then fill in the mold with concrete, vibrate and trowel. Because the top will be the future bottom it doesn't matter too much if you get it completely smooth.


Then crack the mold, flip the slabs (easier said than done), and polish with diamond pads. You can get it as smooth as polished granite if you want. Seal with food safe sealer and a wax and you're done.

That's pretty nice. I'll have to try that for my kitchen counters. I wounder if I could put a cutting in there????

[rideit]

http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0WTb_zb0S...eton/teton.gif

[alias]

Working with concrete is actually pretty easy...

Damn deej - that is unbelievably awesome. Nice concrete steez.

Now - I have a project & I need some serious beta - if your willing to share (please share!!!)

1- What concrete mix do you use? (i.e. do you go grab a bag of premixed from the home depot, mix it yourself, details son!)

2- How do you do your vibrate - do you have a concrete vibrator or do you just kind of jostle the damn thing around?

3- do you keep it humid while it dries - how long do you let it cure before you start working it?

4- what kind of (brand, names etc) color do you use?

5- what kind of diamond polishers are you using? Are you using an angle grinder for this, or a specialty tool?

6- What is the food safe sealer you use - what is the wax you use?

7- what other advice do you have? Anything someone who wants to do this this weekend should know?

---Thanks man!!!!

[mcsquared]

Damn deej - that is unbelievably awesome. Nice concrete steez.

Now - I have a project & I need some serious beta - if your willing to share (please share!!!)

1- What concrete mix do you use? (i.e. do you go grab a bag of premixed from the home depot, mix it yourself, details son!)

2- How do you do your vibrate - do you have a concrete vibrator or do you just kind of jostle the damn thing around?

3- do you keep it humid while it dries - how long do you let it cure before you start working it?

4- what kind of (brand, names etc) color do you use?

5- what kind of diamond polishers are you using? Are you using an angle grinder for this, or a specialty tool?

6- What is the food safe sealer you use - what is the wax you use?

7- what other advice do you have? Anything someone who wants to do this this weekend should know?

---Thanks man!!!!

I am sure deej can provide tons of useful info. I have made a couple concrete table tops and a fireplace hearth. I got a dvd from the library made by this guy named Fu-Tung Cheng. It basically goes over most of the questions you ask. There are also a few books out there that describe the process. Here is the link to the guy's website but the dvd and books are probably available at your local library.
http://www.concreteexchange.com/

[72Twenty]

This thread = awesome.

I am certainly NOT very good at building quality shit with my own hands, but I try to use a little ingenuity and recycle old stuff into new useful stuff in my garage.

My workbench is NOTHING compared to what you guys have made, and this photo is a bit old when I was living in my old place. I tried to get creative with the old desktop of a computer desk and use the keyboard tray thing to go under bindings. I built a new frame for it at the height that I wanted:









I would like to eventually get into fly rod building sometime in the near future. Another messy and expensive hobby.

[brice618]

Heres my most recent design work...

[khakis]

7220 your mancave kicks ass

[EarlyWood]

there's so much cool shit posted here.
singling brice618 for a moment... nice, really cool stuff

[khakis]

bump...
rebuilt my front porch a couple of weeks ago:

[khakis]

and built/installed sliders and a tube bed for my rig this weekend...not quite finished

[SorryBro]

I spent last summer rebuilding my kitchen/dining/living room. Took out a huge chimney, bearing wall and gutted everything down to the studs. I put in a couple large beams up in the attic and brand new hardwoods to match the old ones. Only thing I didn't do myself was fabricating the granite counter tops. It took 4 months of weekends to get the major stuff done. I will probably never do it again (or at least wait until I don't have toddlers running through the construction work), but I couldn't be happier with the results. It completely changed our living space.

Before - living/chimney


Before - small ass kitchen


After


After

[deej]

Man, somehow I missed theses questions till now. If you're still interested I'd be happy to help.

Damn deej - that is unbelievably awesome. Nice concrete steez.

Now - I have a project & I need some serious beta - if your willing to share (please share!!!)

1- What concrete mix do you use? (i.e. do you go grab a bag of premixed from the home depot, mix it yourself, details son!)

Quikcrete 5000 works pretty well. That's what I used here and it's been holding up fine. Do not just grab any bag of concrete. I've used other stuff besides the Q5000 and it doesn't polish.

2- How do you do your vibrate - do you have a concrete vibrator or do you just kind of jostle the damn thing around?

I don't have a concrete vibrator, but that would be ideal. I used a palm sander (that vibrates like crazy) and a hammer. Worked OK. Just focus on the corners-- you really don't want bubbles there because they're hard to fill. Bubbles on the flat areas are much easier to deal with.

3- do you keep it humid while it dries - how long do you let it cure before you start working it?

Keeping it moist is a must. Concrete that dries too fast is week and it pulls away from the mold. This was especially complicated for me since I'm in NM. U used a spray bottle to keep it wet and covered the whole thing with plastic. I can't remember how long I let it cure before polishing. I'd say 7days. If you wait too long the concrete will be so hard you'll run through a ton of diamond pads while polishing.

4- what kind of (brand, names etc) color do you use?

I used the crappy quikrete liquid stuff they sell at homedepot or lowes. I know Cheng Concrete makes some quality dyes, but they're expensive and I was just using black anyway.

5- what kind of diamond polishers are you using? Are you using an angle grinder for this, or a specialty tool?

For a grinder I used this. I bet an angle grinder would work as well. For pads I used these. I don't remember them being this much, but I think I only used 3 different grits.

6- What is the food safe sealer you use - what is the wax you use?

Sealer and wax from Cheng Concrete. I'm sure there are cheaper alternatives. He used to have videos up on his site about how to use these products.

7- what other advice do you have? Anything someone who wants to do this this weekend should know?

If you're going to do a big project, definitely rent a mixer. I mixed all that concrete by hand and it was a miserable task.

The most important step is building a quality mold. That's really 1/2 the battle.

Definitely take your time vibrating the mold. Bubbles stink to deal with. If you have some Portland cement laying around you can make a decent bubble filler by mixing some with a little water and dye. It's pretty hard to match color this way though.

If you are looking for bright colors (blue, yellow, etc.) you'll want to use a white concrete. This adds a lot to the cost of the project.

make sure when you polish the concrete to use lots of water. Nothing will ruin your precious diamond pads faster than polishing dry concrete.

---Thanks man!!!!

No problem... sorry I didn't see this sooner.

[deej]

Got a ballpark cost? It looks really nice.

For the mold/concrete/dye it cost me less than $75.

But you need some tools to do this that aren't that common (I already had them for some other concrete projects). Diamond pads ($40), grinder/polisher (over $100, but I bet an angle grinder would work in a pinch), trowels (cheap ones at homedepot).

I think it's definitely worth the cost to have a one of a kind piece. Definitely an attention grabber.

[imadoofus]

features fairly powerful speakers and the largest bra I've ever seen (and one I wouldnt want to see on a woman)

[mdp]

I've been doing network wiring for a living for 11 years now. Cat5/Cat6/fiber/telco/etc. Here are a couple of comm rooms I've built at CWU from a new building that went up last year:






I also built a Mitsubishi Galant VR4 that I've owned since '98. It's a 1991 limited production factory AWD/turbo. Mitsu only imported 3000 of them between '91/'92 just for rally homologation.

Pretty much everything on the car is brand new. It runs high 11's @ 120mph in the quarter mile on pump gas and methanol injection. Not bad for a 3300lb car with a 2.0 liter on stock pistons/rods. I also have a less modded one that I use for skiing and daily driving.




Modified Magazine also did a feature on the car in Oct '07. I had the article laminated to wood:

[Theodore]

Nice VR4!

[crackboy]

deej

what did you use for the table legs (kitchen) i am intrigued.

[carvedog]

mdp that is tight layout. nice work.

Great times for a two liter too. you got skills.

can you believe I just found out about the zip ties with the screw hole in them?

Sometimes I feel like I am living in a cave.