I have a day job – only worked on it about 1 day a week for a few hours each
I built it 3 times – at least the top (polished concrete – 1st attempt was way too thick, 2nd attempt it bent while setting). The base was just once, but I took it slow while doing the top. The top was agony, I will tell you. Not only doing it 3 times, but the final one was quite a few weekends of grinding and polishing. It was brutal work – even with me buying new tools to make it easier. Very messy to polish.
The videos you can find (that inspired me) on YouTube were ridiculous. The videos were 20 minutes-ish each … very deceptive. Made it seem like this would be a weekend project. I curse them all to this day.
A lot of ‘trial and error’. For example, hooking up the gas took me many hours based on just little things. I learned what a thermocouple is and the science of heat measurement w/volts and degrees. Not things the videos really shared.
I couldn’t count how many visits to Home Depot/Lowe’s/Ace I had – if I had to ballpark, I’d say (2-3 times a day x 13 weekends … 40-ish?).
Overall spend … tough to say, too. But a beast like this would run about $1500. I probably spent about $4-500 in raw materials. Plus, of course, my time. But in the end, to me, projects like this are worth it as I come out so much more wise on all involved. For example – if you look at the base … that really didn’t take long as I was using the knowledge acquired by other builds and woodwork and tools that I have acquired. I guess you’d say I’m getting better at this stuff. But man that top was brutal!
Looking forward to using once fall starts kicking in. Next step will be purchasing a wireless projector system (there are ones now that have 4-5 hours charges and can connect directly to YouTube TV) so we can watch games outside in the courtyard.
For the first time in a very long time (in my career), I’m off the week after Christmas and before New Years Day. It’s pretty incredible, frankly.
With the Big Move this year, my other 2 weeks of vacation time were spent preparing to list our former home and the other was spent actually moving into our new home. Since that time, we have been moving in slowly but surely. Still, we have about 30 boxes or so that we haven’t seen the bottoms of. Functionally, we are in and good; however, there are still many loose ends and pieces that we are still putting together.
Yesterday, I spent most of the day completing ‘The Network’ – WiFi extenders, add-on routers and hubs, printers, network drives, etc. I also spent time in my office getting the wiring/monitors/shelving set. Today, I have other things to accomplish around the house (like watching more bowl games), but was tinkering around in some remaining boxes in the office. Then came across this …
Okay – what the hell? I know when we were packing up in the summer, we got a little sloppy towards the end – but this just gave me flashbacks of the chaos. I really don’t remember winding up all of my cords in my old office and tangling everything up. This sucks.
So I guess, ultimately, I am finding what is important and not important as we continue to unpack from the move. But a good reminder, nonetheless, of being appreciative of spending the week at ‘home’ and being able to enjoy our new home.
Well – it’s been a little over a month now for my desktop computer to be alive. With the move, it’s been sitting in a box for some time now – along with a lot of other things. Slowly we are unpacking – tonight the beast was fired up in my new office area of the house.
Looking back at the calendar, I realized tonight that this whole process has been in one state or another since February! Wow. It’s been a long 6 months, folks. Will have more time to reflect as we get closer to the annual holiday update – but for now, we have more boxes to unpack this weekend.
