New England B.S. Thread

"Quirky tools" @crashngiggles

 

Does my vibrating butt plug count as a quirky tool?

 

Definitely falls under the category of a tool, but what's quirky about it might require some explaining lol

 

I mean it shot lasers out the back in the shape of a heart. You could give your partner a "sexy backdoor light show". I would think a laser capable buttplug makes it quirky. But who am I to judge.

Oh and I think it was remote controlled. I can't remember if it was bluetooth or had a dedicated remote control.

My favorite was the Amazon help chat.

 

I'd forgotten about this...that episode was hilarious

 

Hahahaha "Oh no not again"

 

I'm headed to Moose River Plains in the Adirondacks with one other truck/driver for a week at the end of July (7/27-8/4) if anyone is interested in taking the trip with us. Neither of us have been over there camping before and we don't have much planned, find a nice campsite, maybe do some paddling (I'm bringing a pair of folding kayaks), a bit of hiking, and just spending a week in the woods chilling.

 

@Brownmatthall

 

That’s my neck of the woods (not really but roll through there often) but I’ll be in Newport and Lyndonville most of July with two separate trips to Winnipeg Manitoba (work).
Keep me posted, maybe I can sneak away for a night and catch up.

 

I might have a Saturday night for that, but I might be out of town as well...

 

Been wanting to check MRP out regardless

 

My buddy gave me this for Christmas one year.

$93 Wera 056490 Tool-Check Plus Bit Ratchet Set with Sockets - Metric

https://www.amazon.com/Wera-056490-Tool-Check-Ratchet-Sockets/dp/B00I8MYMT2?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER It sits in my center console.

When I moved into my house there wasn't a ton of drama as far as what they took, outside of a plant or two (I think). They left me some goodies which was nice, a 37" Plasma, a working lawn tractor and a dehumidifier. They wanted to leave the fridge (and it was there when I did the walkthrough) but it was old and gross. I suppose I could have kept it as a garage fridge, but I wanted nothing to do with it.

It wasn't until after I moved into the house I learned all the oddities about it, things I'd never even notice on the original walkthrough.

 

I think I’m heading that way like a week before you :/

edit: yeah I think I’m doing Vermont with my BIL 17-19 then 20th-whenever will hit up the dacks and do some hikes and not sure if I’m gonna go for a third area but probably try a few different camp areas in the adks. I really like the st Regis area

 

I had an Isuzu Trooper and couldn't do the rear disk brakes because the pistons had to be screwed back due to the stupid parking brake set up. I liked that SUV, but it turned into a POS at about 125,000 miles. I put more money into trying to keep it running than I really could afford. First new car and I learned a lot about that.

If I hadn't sold my ancient set of brake tools, I could still do a drum brake replacement because even with all of the stupid springs, they aren't overly difficult to do.

 

Being at least semi retired, I had plenty of time on my hands and a plan. The plan was to spend time and money getting the house in "saleable" condition. That involved fixing all of the things that kids tend to break like doors, walls(!) and even ceilings. It also included things that just wear out, like plumbing fixtures, electrical outlets, pain (ugh), trimming back bushes and weeds, replacing bald spots on the lawn, broken sections of fence.

Ii had half assed plenty when the kids were younger and I was working full time, so I went back and did it right the second time out.

It turned into a multi year project as I could only do so much outside each year. Even after the house was on the market I was still finding and correcting small issues.

When our realtor did the pre listing walk through to tell us how much to ask she told us that given the age of the house she was expecting it to need a lot of work, but she was pleasantly surprised and told us that the house needed nothing to be ready to go on the market.

It all paid off in the end as we got well above ask, which was a pleasant surprise.

Of course the buyers planned to remodel the kitchen, remodel the upstairs bathroom, expand the down stairs bathroom, finish the basement...

Not my problem we left them a good house to start with.

 

If it's any consolation, when we walked through our house at the open house (and even in inspections and whatnot), we had grand ideas of knocking out walls, putting in beams, doing this that and the other thing, a whole HOST of ideas and projects.

So far we have

• Repainted the kitchen and done a backsplash, it was rough....
• Painted the bathroom and added some shelves

We had a lot of ideas, but holy hot damn the house was in great shape from the prior owners, so it's kind of a double edged sword. It isn't NOT working for us, so why poke the bear?

We need to sister up the joists and do some crawlspace work. Couple hose bibs, etc. But we've been in the house since Sep '17. Shockingly, some small things need some attention. The joists have been neglected, we knew that on move in and have been dragging our feet.... We're sitting on the list for a couple more weeks and then we can decide if we (a) stay here long term (b) rent this out and move into a new house or (c) pitch the house as is and move. All three of those options have different to do lists and priorities.

 

Ran out of thread at about 90% done. Just a few seams to go and attachment of the rolltop.

This was made by laminating Gucci jacquard onto 500D DWR coyote brown Cordura, with a full grain leather bottom and suede accents. Tuckable shoulder strap. All the materials other than the jacquard/suede/leather are salvaged/surplus milspec.

Random detail / progress shots:



The dog tag is on a suede velcro patch sized to fit a standard agency name patch, and the dog tag itself is a genuine Gucci sterling silver dude with the client's name hand stamped (defaced lmao) with letter punches.

The client is a fellow who has earned the right to flash an extremely loud range bag at the appropriate facilities.

 

Consollation not needed. It's their house now to do with whatever they want. I talked with our former next door neighbor. It took a while, but he and his wife have met them and are on good terms. Our neighbors are great people and one of the few things we miss. He and I would help each other out when needed. I kept his snow blower and lawn mower running, he did various things that required a ladder because he's used to working on them. We wished that we could pack them up and bring them with us.

Anyway, the buyers seem like good neighbors, which we of course had no control over, but it's nice anyway.

We've put a lot of money into the new house down here even though it was in good shape when we moved in. The only thing it "needed" was a new roof due to it being original to the house and having had some repairs from hail damage. We also replaced the HVAC system since it was also original to the house and we didn't want to risk it failing during the Texas summer. Last big project was a whole house generator because we had one in Stoughton and it was very convenient to have power during the winter if Nat. Grid did it's usual bang up job keeping the system up. (/sarc) Down here it's keeping the AC running during the summer that's the issue. We haven't had a power outage yet, but once summer gets going it's more likely.

My wife loves the layout, big bedroom, huge walk in closet, two full bathrooms, and is learning how to cook with a gas stove.

One thing I will say is that the build quality of the 60 year old house we sold is better than the 20 year old house we bought. I'm told that the build quality on the houses going up now is really cheap.

 

Build quality is awful in general these days. I've been in the guts of "high end" custom homes and it seems like the number one culprit are all of the labor saving practices/materials. I was helping a friend with a very expensive custom build place and a lot of the stuff was just something else - the mechanical quality of fixtures from plumbing to electrical, the way stuff was routed as far as electrical and plumbing, almost unbelievable. Quick to slap up and difficult to repair/retrofit. With no other information, I would much rather buy a house built in the 1950s than the 90s onward, and anything beyond about 2010 deserves serious scrutiny regarding the materials and construction style. This zipboard stuff with the integrated foam has really started to take over, and it's a real pain in the ass to deal with once it's up - you're pretty much locked into using same-brand same-SKU materials. Yeah, it goes up quick, but you better hope you never have to get into it again.

 

Mrs. Spruce Mica enjoyed seeing this even more than your picture frames, and she loved those