Ep. 019 – Home DIY Introduction

Suburban Folk 0:00
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Unknown Speaker 0:51
I’m looking forward to having some real talk with some real folks.

Suburban Folk 0:57
Welcome to the Suburban Folk podcast. This is Greg Today, my guest is john Capozzi. JOHN, how you doing?

Unknown Speaker 1:03
I am pretty good. Thank you.

Suburban Folk 1:04
I came across you on the parallel passion podcast. We actually had me on an episode recently. And what struck me for your guys conversation is the focus on DIY and all the different projects you seem to get into up into including if I’m not mistaken, your kids science experiments and other projects that sounded super overblown that I might have you tell the same story that you told on that episode? Among other things,

Unknown Speaker 1:35
yeah, I’m happy to hear that sounds awesome.

Suburban Folk 1:37
So since I came across you on parallel passions, and for those that have not listened to that podcast, the idea is for people that are coders, developers in the tech world to highlight the other interests that they have. So let’s real quickly start there for you. What is your day job?

Unknown Speaker 1:54
So my day job, I am a staff software engineer at GitHub. I don’t know how helpful million people are with good however, how far into that I should go. But GitHub is a code hosting platform that a lot of companies use to host their code and collaborate on their code together.

Suburban Folk 2:09
Okay. Yeah, I’m familiar with it. As far as being, is it an open form or open source platform?

Unknown Speaker 2:17
So a big part of what GitHub does is it supports open source software, which we can also talk about that if you’re interested, but open source software. And then also businesses pay GitHub to be able to host and collaborate internally on their code. So there’s private code and public code. Here was a question sort of putting a couple concepts together that I had around the tech piece and later on what we’re going to get to for DIY, do you feel like people that get into the IT side of any given business correlates to things like home projects? Or are there any other dare I say, stereotypes that come along with people that you tend to interact with on the technical side of things. It’s funny, you should say that because for a long time, I’ve thought, definitely the people are crossing over dry. I know for a long time, there’s a connection between things like for example, math and music connects pretty well. I’ve also noticed, I think we’re probably going to talk about rock climbing at some point in this. So I’ve also noticed that a lot of people that are rock climbing tend to be the puzzle sort, you know, like, leaning technical, not necessarily in an IT background, but definitely in a job that requires them to like problem solve. And that connects very strongly to like what rock climbing is at its core.

Suburban Folk 3:32
Funny, you mentioned that with problem solving and math. One of the reasons I put rock climbing on my list is because my son is five and, you know, pretty young for figuring out what he wants to do activities wise, but we somewhat randomly tried rock climbing and he took to it and he also very young was into puzzles. Super into Legos. Maybe that does explain why rock climbing out of the gate was something that he was interested in. Because it’s that same side of the brain that that people use.

Unknown Speaker 4:07
Yeah, say in rock climbing, they call, they call when you’re climbing, they call them problems, right? So you’re walking, you’re going up the wall, and you’re solving these problems and even they like in their verbiage and nowadays, like acknowledge that these are problems on the wall, but you have to work through

Suburban Folk 4:23
this. So picking one of the other items that you mentioned that go together and with problem solving puzzles was music, and I have played music since middle school and up through college. And my understanding similar for yourself sounds like maybe even similar types of bands that you played in like punk rock bands. Can you talk a little bit about your drumming and in what you what types of bands you played in?

Unknown Speaker 4:50
Yeah, I’d be happy to. So I started when I when I was very young. I guess when when they give you an instrument I chose the trombone. I wanted to pick the drums. I wasn’t allowed to pick the drums because my parents didn’t like the noise. So they pushed me in the direction of trombone, which like, I don’t know if they understood that that’s also super loud. But we did that we did trombone. And trombone is an awesome instrument, but I really still wanted to play the drums. And then my parents were divorced. So at one Christmas, my dad decided to get me a drum set to have at his house. So we had it upstairs. And I would go to his house on the weekends, and I would play this drum set. And I remember sitting down at it and like, almost being afraid to like to hit them, like, and then my brothers, my older brothers would come in and they would just, like, go insane on this drum set like, and I was like, stop, you’re like, give ruin in them. That’s not what they’re for. And then I remember like, going to see a band play and like they were playing like my brothers were playing. Like obviously they had skills that my brothers did not have, but it was like, Oh, you’re supposed to just like you supposed to hit these things. So then I started like getting more into the drum set and I ended up starting a punk band. I think I started the band probably when I was like, I want to say like 10 or 11. We were pretty young. We were definitely not real punk. You know, like we were. It wasn’t until later that you know, we evolved in that in that sense. But we started playing and we were one of the first groups in our schools to be playing music and we had practice after school. And we were just like hang out and play. We ended up recording a small EP and then that kind of went into the next band The way that bands normally work. I’m sure you can relate to this. It’s like one band kind of leads into the next band you find that maybe there’s someone that was in a band that you played with often and maybe like you are spending more time with them and you’re spending with your own band or maybe like you end up having a jam session on the weekends that goes pretty well. And then you end up starting something separately. Even even professional big bands. You can see this you can like draw, you know lines between few take rancid like came from operation Ivy, you can draw lines all the way down. Unlike those lines are still going now. That’s just like how bands evolve. So through many many evolutions, I was probably in 10 different bands throughout the years. Everything ranging from just like playing in our spare time jam band to like recording an album at one point we shot a. We took a couch to Asbury Park beach and put the couch in the water and had like a professional photoshoot on Asbury Park beach. So that’s like the, I guess the most professional we got, if that is professional

Suburban Folk 7:33
pictures came out good. It sounds like

Unknown Speaker 7:34
they’re there. They’re amazing.

Suburban Folk 7:36
It’s like I would like still I go back and look at the pictures and I’m just like, what were you doing? But they’re they’re very cool. I was not quite as young as you were starting to play in bands because it was maybe more of the beginning of high school. But yeah, there was definitely a sense when you run out like the Volunteer Fire halls and stuff like that, like who could be the heaviest who could You know, get get more people going even though it was supposed to be a community there were still a little bit of that competition,

Unknown Speaker 8:05
like going on. And it seemed like the heaviest band was the winner. We entered it at some point, there’s this battle. I don’t know why I’m telling the story. But I guess this sounds supposed to go. But we had this.

Unknown Speaker 8:16
We had this battle of the bands, and there is this guy in the battle of the bands that he was like, kind of organizing the whole thing. And he was he was older. But he was an amazing bass player. And when we were we were playing for some reason he like really took to me and we, we had like a, like, we spent more time together and like he doesn’t what kind of was a mentor as far as the bands go. And still, when I see that guy, like he plays in a band now called shorty long, which is a cover band that kind of goes up and down the East Coast. They’re amazing, amazing bands still when I go to his concerts like he’ll, he’ll, like stop what they’re doing. And they’ll be like john, the second, the middle of playing a song. So I just like the amount of people that you meet, and they like the things that you can do it band is just such an amazing experience to like have to be connected to these people. And I don’t know, I loved it

Suburban Folk 9:06
and fast forwarding to today, are you still playing music, whether it’s in a original punk band or cover band or any other form,

Unknown Speaker 9:14
I haven’t played it probably in the past two years. But it’s something that I think about pretty constantly. And I have thought, I have a in my basement, I have a my full drum set still set up. And it’s pretty loud, obviously, because the drum set. And so I don’t get to play it as much as I want to. And I’ve been thinking about getting an electric drum set. But one problem there is like, I feel like by getting the drum set, I’m admitting to myself that I’m not going to be playing out anymore, that I won’t be taking my like real drum set out. So I think that’s what’s stopping me from like making the final jump. So it’s like, in one sense, I want to do there so that I can play more. But I know that by by doing that I’ve been in myself that like this era of my kind of musical time is over.

Suburban Folk 9:54
As a guitar player. I didn’t really have the same reservations, but it makes sense for what you’re saying. I have the same consideration actually, for my amps, right, I still have the half stack and you know, a couple different heads. And I find myself looking at some of the practice amps like that would be a lot more reasonable and probably even make me pick up my guitars more, because it’s not such a issue getting everything out and everything set up. But like you said, then you’re admitting that, Oh, I’m never going to use that equipment that you need to have to go play out somewhere. So

Unknown Speaker 10:26
I’m right there with you. I have in my basement also a setup for I have I played guitar for a bit and I played bass for a little bit and I have setups for both of those and some mics in the basement. And it’s fun now because like sometimes friends come over and we play and that’s a good time and my kids they like to come down and kind of watch us

Suburban Folk 10:42
remind me the age of your kids in Are any of them playing music right now.

Unknown Speaker 10:47
So I have four kids, which is wild, but it’s like wild to think that I’ve gotten to hear, but it’s there. 10 eight, four and one, and the oldest one has started playing an instrument in school. They made her They pick an instrument just like I got to pick the trombone. She wanted to play an instrument. So we actually ended up having her pick the trombone. So she’s playing trombone, too. And so she’s getting really into it. And we’re noticing you kind of notice very quickly what a child likes. As far as music goes, what we’re noticing that she really likes to sing. So trying to steer things in that direction, thinking about getting vocal lessons for

Suburban Folk 11:24
what age was she when you first started exploring the instruments,

Unknown Speaker 11:27
probably about a year ago was when we first like, started pushing it. She took piano lessons briefly, but that didn’t work out. So I think there’s nothing worse than like having a kid that wants to do something like piano lessons, and then it’s not something that they like, and you force them to do it. I think a lot of parents do that. And it probably drives kids away from music.

Suburban Folk 11:47
Yeah. And speaking of things that I have to force myself to do, let’s get into so the DIY projects. Like I said, this is something that I’ve wanted to get some episodes In on and folks that really enjoy doing certain house projects, how you go about it, what your experience has been, I like to complete a project and I’m the type that when I started, I’m ready to go in the middle of it, you know, as issues inevitably come up, start wondering, why did I take this on but then once it’s over, I feel good about it again, and you know, sort of gives me enough energy to go on to the next one. So I thought to maybe get a basis for us. Can you tell me what type of home you currently live in maybe even a little bit of history of maybe prior homes that you’ve lived in and where you got your basis for home DIY projects?

Unknown Speaker 12:44
Yeah, I’d love to. So I we lived in northern New Jersey when I left college and that’s when my wife and I got together and then we we moved over to northern New Jersey, different part of northern New Jersey near my Claire for those that are familiar with the area, and we bought a house there. And when we bought that house, I knew nothing about DIY, anything I knew nothing about, about fixing homes other than what I had learned from my grandfather growing up, which was, I guess, like a fair amount, but he never, he wasn’t letting me do the projects like he was doing them and I was kind of helping so you when you’re there by yourself all of a sudden and you’re like buying your first drill. It’s a lot more intimidating than when your grandfather like brings all of his tools and is ready to have you work with him. So you know, some basics, you know, things like you turn a screw to the right and it gets tighter but maybe you don’t know like how to start if you want to replace a door. So we didn’t go very far in that house because the house even though it was built in like 1920 was pretty sturdy. You know, like it’s funny when you’re in a house, maybe your first house you you see all these problems that you have and you think like Oh, I wish I had more space or I wish I had You know, maybe within the first year, I think we had a leak in the basement and we had to get it fixed. And it was pretty cheap to get it fixed. And it’s not until after you leave a house that you typically can look back and say, like, you know, that like that house was pretty good. Like that house was pretty sturdy. The floors didn’t Creek, and we walked around. And anyway, this house was built in 1920. And it was it was very sturdy for what it was. So then we left there, and we moved to Brooklyn. And when we moved to Brooklyn, we couldn’t afford to buy a place, for obvious reasons, because Brooklyn is expensive. So we rent in Brooklyn. And then at one point, while we were in Brooklyn, our landlords decided that they were going to sell our apartment, and we had not signed a lease. So we had signed a lease but their lease had expired. And we thought like, Oh, this is great. Like we we don’t have a lease anymore. So we were just going month to month and we we have the power here but actually what that meant is that when they want to sell the place that we basically have no, no say in it. So then we’re ended up looking for a house, kind of on a rush and Rather than look in Brooklyn, we ended up looking in New Jersey again, we found a house in Monmouth County. It is a single family house. We have like I said four kids. So we have a five bedroom house. We have one guest room, two kids share room. And then we have a master bedroom. It is on 1.2 acres of land. And I guess that’s pretty much it. Yeah, it was built in 1972. I don’t think if I mentioned I mentioned that. Oh, and it’s and it’s built on the land that has every house has septic and well. So I think a lot of people don’t expect that for New Jersey. But that has been interesting.

Suburban Folk 15:36
Yeah, I might have to have you expand upon septic and well because actually I in our home search, which was about four years ago. The neighborhood that we really liked. Most of the homes were septic and well it just so happened now we did not end up in this house but the one we really liked was one of like five maybe in the neighborhood that It was not it was all on the city sewer. But I know there are specific considerations having to deal with that. Have you had to just sticking with the DIY Have you had to deal with anything yourself or just having people come out

Unknown Speaker 16:16
I refuse to DIY on the on this epic stuff. So we ended up getting a replacement septic system when we first moved in the house was everything passing the special inspection but the septic system failed a septic inspection. And so we actually use that to get some like leverage to get some amount off the house, which was great and then the septic system instead of felling was fine for like a couple years. And then we had some extra money that we knew we would have to do this like pretty soon and we didn’t want a septic it’s the kind of thing as you probably imagine that if you like leave it being a problem, it’s just going to be more of a problem. So we had it replaced recently. Obviously, if you read online about I did read about like septic DIY To see like what that wouldn’t involve it’s it’s a lot of work. So I mean even seeing them come they dug like, like a 15 foot deep hole because we’re on a hill so they definitely a 15 foot deep hole and filled it with sand. It’s just like, probably out of the realm of at least my DIY.

Suburban Folk 17:16
So 1972 this is kind of a guess as far as what you would potentially be dealing with. I’m thinking maybe not grounded for electrical, that would be a consideration. At that point you’re into drywall is you’re not having to deal with like plaster or anything like that. When you think of 70s houses, there’s certain layouts that come to mind. I don’t know, what kind of layout are you dealing with? So we

Unknown Speaker 17:42
have a Center Hall Colonial is one of those and it was the it was actually built by His name is Zubur. He was like a, I guess a master builder in Monmouth County. People still like look for the houses made by this guy because they were apparently very well built which I think I don’t know, I guess I haven’t haven’t left the house to be able to reflect on how good the house is yet. But I, I do think like, it’s pretty well built for what it is, I think like the 70s is, and the 80s even more so are typically like an area where construction practices kind of like, we’re not as great as they had been previously. So I think we got lucky to find a house that was built in that era that was built correctly.

Suburban Folk 18:25
And the Floor Plan I’m imagining is probably a pretty classic floor plan. For example, what I was gonna say for 70s is like split levels can come to mind and you know, that that can definitely cause problems depending on what people are looking for with their floor plan. So at least you’re not dealing with that out of the gate like, I don’t know moving walls or whatever you could even do there. Yeah, it’s

Unknown Speaker 18:47
a pretty classic floor plan. If you imagine the house the typical house with like a typical Center Hall Colonial with like a front door. There’s essentially like two windows on the bottom level and then three across the top. It’s like that but like a little bit wider than that. normal one. So inside of that there’s like a living room, dining room, den and kitchen, all four corners of the house. And then upstairs is all the bedrooms

Suburban Folk 19:09
you mentioned, which I also totally agree that there is a difference between having your grandfather or father, somebody walking you through a needed house improvement versus you’re on your own both tools as well as potentially knowledge. Where did you start from ground zero and then build up your knowledge? And then yeah, like you said, we’ll get into tools.

Unknown Speaker 19:33
I did small things growing up. So at one point, I wanted a skimboard. And so I made a skimboard. And it wasn’t very good. But it was like something that I could look at and say, like, I made that. But the first time that I was doing something for home, I remember, I wanted to build a sandbox. So I had to go build a sandbox, and I didn’t have a circular saw. So I went and got a bunch of wood and I brought the word home. And I remember looking at the word and just being like Well, this is not the right size. You know, like I got a bunch of like two by sixes. And I was like, well this is not you can’t build the sandbox with like just this size would. So I was like, Okay, I remember like the way you have to cut a two by two by six is with a circular saw. So I went back to the store and I bought a circular saw and a drill and I still have them actually those those ones that I bought because they’re they’re pretty good came home and you cut up the wood for the the outside of the thing and I wanted to have a cover on it as well. So I bought some some plywood and was cutting out with the circular saw. But I always like I said this on the other podcasts are on parallel passions as well. But the I think that the first time that you take something like a two by six and you cut it with a circular saw, that’s like a superpower I mean, it’s a superpower even if you did it with a handsaw your ability to take this thing that was one size and turn it into another size. And then if you like want to fasten those four things together, that’s another sort of superpower is you can now drill a hole that you can put a screw in to take two boards and Awesome them together. And that’s that idea carries itself all the way through all the other things that we’re going to talk about here is just like a series of looking at something and being like, how do I do this, and then doing some research and finding out that there’s some superpower that you can obtain either a new skill set or a new tool to do the thing that you want to do. And sometimes, eventually, you’ll realize you’ll want to do a particular project and you’ll look at all the superpowers in your arsenal. And they’ll be like, wow, I have everything I need to build this thing already. And then you just build it. And like, that is an amazing feeling. It’s an amazing feeling to get to the point where you’re not learning something new or buying something new to build something that you have in your mind. So I built that, that playpen with the top. You have to have the top to keep the cats out and then that kind of like got me started. Then I took a break from it for a while while we moved away and it wasn’t until we got this new house that things really took off because finally I had a two car garage that I could start fiddling with things. And at the same time, my grandfather got pretty sick and was getting rid of all of the tools that he had. So we moved, I got this two car garage, I brought the couple tools that I had. And then I was able to bring the kind of full collection of tools that my grandfather had, where he said, his whole life he had said, like, oh, someday, like, you’re going to have a lot of stuff to dig through. And like he was right, there’s, there’s just so much stuff. Not even tools, but he kept like, like they’re just like buckets of bolts like you would see. Maybe at your grandfather’s house, you know, like there’s just like, a bucket of bolts and a bucket of washers and like sorting through that and trying to figure out like, what here is good, what do we keep? How can we organize these things so that they’re able to be used? Was was a process but definitely worth it because now I have a shop that is like ready for me to build anything that I needed to build. And obviously it’s expanded in a million in different ways since then, it’s been about maybe three and a half years since I started, like formally building out the shop.

Suburban Folk 23:06
Oh, cool. So you’re using the garage, like exclusively for a workplace like as soon mentioned all of your tools.

Unknown Speaker 23:12
Yeah, cars. No, come on. Yeah, it’s fully a workspace at this point. And that’s because we will, I’m sure we’ll talk about the projects. But it’s because the things that I’ve started building have become a lot bigger. And the DIY projects that I have are a lot bigger. I think your amount of tools and your amount of ability to process things has to grow with the size of the house, because obviously like, house is a lot larger now. So there are a lot of more things that fail.

Suburban Folk 23:38
Yeah, we I’ve definitely dealt with the same quick anecdote to go along with what you’re mentioning for inherited tools. And you get them from again, grandfather, Father, whoever. My father in law has tons and tons of tools and he can’t use at this point and I had to replace a kitchen sink and everything was Just rusted and so on underneath the sink, and he had every wrench possible. Luckily for me, because I only have maybe a couple of vise grips, a very standard wrench set and all sort of a standard length, you happen to have these real stubby ones that would fit right up where you needed underneath the sink and made the job way, way easier than if I just had what I had amassed up to that point that was actually just, I don’t know, maybe a month to month and a half ago. So it is nice when you can get some of those extra things. I’m curious though, do you have any rules of thumb for when you need to get a new tool that may be just a little better for the job that you’re doing versus looking at what you already have and something that might get you by?

Unknown Speaker 24:49
Yeah, Yeah, I do. My general rule of thumb is that if there’s the right tool for the job, and I don’t have it that I go pick it up, and I add it to my arsenal, and like I We’ll use that thing in the future. Like one example recently to talk about a sink actually is behind the sink, you have up near where the faucets are, you need to be able to get the nut that kind of retains the individual handles if you have individual handles on. And there’s a particular tool to do that there’s a tool that is a wrench that can kind of flip to the side so that you can twist it from the bottom. And typically they can extend and you can twist it from the bottom and not have to try to get like a wrench up in that tiny little space up near the sink. So I didn’t have one of those. It is so so so frustrating to do it without that tool. And then you put the tool in there It costs $20 and it is so easy to do. And you can get it tighter like you can probably a lot of the reason that there was rust under your sink is because there was a minor leak going through or someone didn’t use like plumbers putty underneath the faucet handles. So like that’s even more reason to make sure that you have the right tool to be able to get it down to the right, the right torque or whatever. I’ve also noticed that I go Father had a lot of so a lot of his tools were or are focused toward a particular use, right because he his tools are going to be kind of based on what he was doing. So my grandfather was a garage door repairman, which is a pretty good general use tool thing, but then was very into boats. So there are a lot of tools that he had that are for working on engines or are for like pulling spark plugs that I don’t have a use for. So what I’ve done with those, I think a lot of people would either throw them away, or more likely would put them on their tool chest and like let them take up all the space. And that’s what I did for a long time as I just had like this really overflowing tool chest full of tools that I didn’t really know what they did. And just recently, I went and I took everything in my tool chest and anything that I didn’t have an immediate use for. I put into a second tool chest in the basement. So it’s a tool chest down there like all the tools that I’m not using at this time, or I have some kind of like weird sentimental attachment to and then in the garage, I have just the things that I’m I’m ready to News. Or if I have duplicates of something, I’ll also put that in the basement. So if I need something that I don’t have, I just go down there and get it. And I kind of am letting the tools in the basement kind of build the tools at hand. So that the tools that I have in the garage are reflection of what I’m actually using instead of a reflection of what he was using.

Suburban Folk 27:17
And you could almost compare it to what you hear about wardrobes, right? If you put everything to one side of the closet and then when you put on one of the outfits, then you move it over to the other side and whatever never moved after a month, maybe it’s something you just need to get rid of, or like you said, put it elsewhere so that it’s not cluttering up the stuff that you are using on a regular basis.

Unknown Speaker 27:38
But but to think that like every tool that you had was like like that he had everything or that every tool that he had was the perfect version. Like I could force myself to use for example, like his hammer, but probably a modern hammer is going to give me like better impact and it’s probably worth having like a fiberglass handled hammer. So I keep the tools when they make sense but then if there’s Like a better modern equivalent, I will get that. And it’s also like a lot of people say like, my grandfather didn’t have a lot of tools, or he didn’t have a lot to give me or I didn’t get the thing. A lot of times what I’m also doing is I’m going to things like garage sales and trying to like buy out boxes of tools and sorting through them to figure out what is right and wrong. Sometimes those things are rusted. So then sometimes you get to do a little bit of like, a rescue on the tool, which typically just involves putting it into like a bath of solution like evapo rust, to get it clean, and then cleaning it up a little bit. But there’s a lot of tools out there that you can get for really cheap. That is

Suburban Folk 28:35
an interesting point. I don’t know that I’ve ever looked for tools at a garage sale, but it would make sense do you typically get like hand tools? Or do you have you even picked up like electric like saws or some things

Unknown Speaker 28:48
like that I mostly go for hand tools at garage sales. I guess a lot of the saws and things that you’ll find where you have either been like badly mistreated or where the budget version of what they were, and I think on electric cool tools in particular, safety has come a long way recently. And also you unless you know a lot about how these electrical tools are put together. For example, I bought I bought a table saw when I was first getting started, I went and purchased a table saw on Craigslist. Now I could have just started using it. I think actually the first day I did cut a little bit of stuff on it. But it became apparent pretty quickly that like the table saw had been kind of cobbled back together by a couple different previous owners. That’s fine if you know them and you can trust that the table saw was safe. But it’s also scary to imagine that like there might be a bolt that supposed to be holding on the arbor that’s not like fully tightened down with that could become a really dangerous situation. So what I ended up doing was taking the table saw fully apart into its pieces, cleaning all the different pieces, and then reassembling it using a copy of the manual from when the song was first made. So I knew that the song was put back together exactly how it was supposed to meaning like every bolt had. It’s like lock washers on and make sure that it’s not going to just like throw us off. That may, which I definitely don’t need to face. So I think electrical tools are are a little bit scarier because like, there is a power there that is not just here on hand. So you just really have to be careful when you’re taking electrical tool.

Suburban Folk 30:13
And going back to what you mentioned of the super power. In that is correct, you’ve by extension, making yourself able to do things that of course you couldn’t do on your own. I even was a circular saw, I can definitely get butterflies, you know, when I’m getting ready to make that cut for all the reasons you mentioned. That is a really good point that it’s even a heightened level of being cautious if somebody has done something to the tool that you don’t know about, but even the regular tools themselves like you mentioned, maybe budget versions of some of these tools may have plastic pieces that could fail or things like that emphasis on safety. Certainly when when using saws drills, all that kind of stuff.

Unknown Speaker 30:58
My grandfather’s question of One of the kind of few electric tools that existed in it was he had a, I guess, a handheld router. So a router is think of it like a drill. But a drill that spins more faster than a normal drill. And on the end of the drill, there’s a bit that has a certain profile on it. So instead of just being like an up and down, like drill bit, it is maybe a roundover, or like, like you would see on the edge of a tabletop or a chamfer, which was like a 45 degree, like a bevel that you would put against a piece. And when you what you do is you bring it up against the edge of a piece and you move the router, and it’s been super fast and it cuts that profile into the edge of the world that you’re working with. So he had a router. And this router was an old Craftsman router and perfectly fine router but it had a problem where the engine would get hot and then when the engine or sorry, the motor got hot, it would lose In its grip on the bit, so the bit would start sliding down. And what’s what’s annoying about that, too, like intro learning what a router is, john, is that you’re cutting something into a piece of wood and then you step back from it and you realize that the, the cut that it’s making is vertically going down as you move through the piece. So that’s like, that’s my immediate reaction is just like, I want to throw this tool in the garbage because it’s just, it’s not doing the one thing that it’s designed to do. But then years later, john, looking back at that is like, wow, that was probably really dangerous, because if the bit fell far enough, it was gonna fly out of the tool 15,000 RPM, which is not great. It’s like, so you don’t want to put yourself in a situation where kind of your lack of knowledge about a tool causes it to be dangerous. So definitely just like, you know, research things a little bit beforehand. And I would say if you’re looking at an electrical tool, have someone that knows what they’re doing with that tool, if it’s a new tool to you, take a look at it before you start. using it.

Suburban Folk 33:00
And you mentioned whether or not folks know what a router is maybe even stepping back even further from that. You said your first couple of purchases were a circular saw, and a drill, which I would certainly agree are essential to any starting tool kit. If you were in front of somebody that didn’t have anything was starting from scratch, what would be the first five or six? Let’s say things you’d say you have to have these.

Unknown Speaker 33:28
Yeah, I think someone just starting probably would benefit by having a jigsaw as well. So jigsaw, I guess for those of you that don’t know jigsaw is a blade that comes off of a tool that is you hold in your hand that the blade goes up and down, kind of like rapidly. And you can cut what the benefit of it is that you can cut odd shapes into a piece of wood. So if you need to cut something like a curve, you can cut that with a jigsaw you can’t cut a curve easily with a circular saw because of the kind of the length of the blade. So as soon as you start to turn What’s going to happen and you think about this a lot in woodworking is that the back of the blade will make contact and bind with a piece of wood which could result in a kickback situation. That could be pretty dangerous to the person holding the saw. So, a jigsaw does not have that problem because the blade goes up and down instead of instead of rotating. And because the blade is is tiny, instead of you know, six inches wide into the wood, so jigsaw drill, I would say definitely get some clamps and probably like a good maybe rafter square or similar. A lot of the circular saw like a lot of tools becomes a lot more useful once you pair it with some with tools like a like a square. A circular saw by its own is kind of trusting the user to be able to like guide it straight. But things like a square you can hold with one hand and then run the circular saw next to them. A lady create a perfect 90 degree cut to like the reference circle just by running the search Saw along the along the square. Similar with clamps like if you want to cut like a long strip out of a piece of wood, you can you can clamp something like a two by four to the piece that you want to cut and then run your circular saw against that. That’s how you get straight cuts with a circular saw. A lot of people think like you just have to be good with it. But kind of the more you get into woodworking and DIY, you realize that a lot of being good with tools is actually just having proper setup, not necessarily being good at using them. Do you

Suburban Folk 35:30
have a certain size square that you would recommend for the first one somebody gets?

Unknown Speaker 35:36
Yeah, I think a six inch square is pretty typical. You can go a little bit bigger a six or nine inch square are pretty good for like for home use

Suburban Folk 35:43
going back to the quality of a particular tool. We don’t necessarily have to name brands you can if you want to do you go with maybe not quite the most expensive thing in a particular category, but certainly don’t get you know, the lowest Or do you try to go for the the most expensive quality thing you can buy

Unknown Speaker 36:05
for a while I, I was on the, I guess not lower end but the middle and so am I allowed to name a brand? Sure. So for a while I was into rigid tools, because they’re they’re a pretty good kind of middle ground tool. I’ve recently been replacing my tools with higher end versions of the originals. A lot of times that is not because I want a better tool but because I want a battery powered version of the thing that I have. Especially with DIY projects, I find that battery powered tools are really helpful to not have to like carry cords everywhere. I recently got another example is like a nail gun for example, is really annoying because a nail gun has to be hooked up typically to a pneumatic source so you have to have something like an air compressor hooked up to it. So that means anywhere you want to use a nail gun if you want to use it on like trim upstairs you have to bring an air compressor with you And you can get one of those squat air compressors but I don’t have one of those I have a taller air compressor. I was always trying to like lug this thing up the stairs and recently I got a battery powered nail gun and it’s just amazing to be able to like take this nail gun. Anyway the reason that I ended up with the nice tools is because I don’t want to have more than one battery platform ideally I don’t want to have like 10 different batteries and have to figure out which one’s the right thing for a tool right so I ended up picking one brand and just buying all of them

Suburban Folk 37:28
similar for me not necessarily as much with those kinds of tools but with the outdoor tools. I did the same thing picked a brand that would have the same batteries and even for like weed whacking when I don’t need the full on gas trimmer. I can get away with a battery power one for for just regular clean up and the blower that goes with it.

Unknown Speaker 37:51
I guess in addition to that, I also have some like very large tools and those large tools I tend to to buy I tend to wait a very long time in by a very nice version of the tool, because I’ve reached like a point where I know that this is my future like this is a big part of what I’m going to be doing over the next 10 or 15 years. And it’s just like it’s worth investing in quality, the difference between my original table saw and the tables I have now it’s just, it’s just infinitely better in every possible way. It’s amazing.

Suburban Folk 38:24
Are you doing projects for other people? Or do you mean just for your own use?

Unknown Speaker 38:28
So I, I do some projects for other people. And I’m doing some projects for inside my house. And I do projects for just like weird things that I’m interested in. And I’m also I’m working on my 2020 resolutions now. So this probably will be out in 2020. Right? But I’m going to be trying to get some of the work that I’m doing now into like a small museum exhibit in 2020. So kind of starting to build out a portfolio that would help me in that direction. My dream is, you know, there are companies That make interactive displays for, let’s say you go to a trade show or something. And there’s like an interactive display to like, describe a certain concept. Or maybe there’s like a thing that kids play with the teaches them a certain idea. I want to build a side business in making things like that. I think people typically call it experiential. But it’s basically the idea of someone coming to me and saying, like, this is the idea we’re trying to get across, please build us something that illustrates that idea. And I want to just have the kind of freedom to make it that’s where I want to get to. So I’m kind of plotting my course and we’re going to get there.

Suburban Folk 39:35
That’s really cool. I would have no idea where to start with something like that. But if I

Unknown Speaker 39:41
if I could look at me a couple years ago, saying this thing now I would say that I was crazy like it did. It happened. The way it happened was those superpowers kind of kept evolving. Like I kept having one thing and then saying like, oh, man, like I now I can cut iron pipe, but I wish I could thread the end of it and like You end up like buying pipe threader. And like you end up doing all these things to be able to, to make the next piece of what you want. And then eventually, you get to something like these coasters that I made the other day where we had this idea for a coaster. And we were able to produce fully the coaster like in one day with only things that I had laying around the shop, which is amazing. I know, coasters are pretty simple. But these coasters are these coasters are great.

Suburban Folk 40:24
Maybe, maybe you’ll send me a picture of it. And when we post our episode, we can put it on Instagram. Yeah, I could do that. Yeah, because I’m just thinking through where I would be starting now. And I would be completely lost. I guess like anything, like you said, you sort of build on what your experiences and get a little bit further and get a little bit further. And I’m assuming things like YouTube and obviously I’m sure different blogs and so on. Where do you get most of your information for new projects that you haven’t really tackled a particular piece yet,

Unknown Speaker 40:52
a lot of my projects these days are inspired by projects that I did previously on one project that uses a certain component and then Will, that that tends to give me an idea for the next thing I want to do. And so I know at least one piece of it, and then I spend the rest of the time kind of looking at it and saying, like, well, I need to, like move water through this thing quickly. So I need to figure out how pumps work. And then I need to take that pump and I need to build a hook it up to the Raspberry Pi. And like, pretty much everything about how the Raspberry Pi in the pump interconnect is, is like fairly straightforward and laid out in like the diagramming that comes with the pump. So like, that’s pretty easy. And it’s really just like, the important part for doing stuff like this is to be able to break down and this is important in life is being able to break down a problem into like a subset of smaller problems. So you look at something that seems really complicated. And instead of looking at the whole thing, just say like, Okay, well, I need to build this tube that gets hit by this hammer. So like, what we’ll do it correctly, you know, like, what will that look like, you know, so and I just figured out one piece of the problem. And work on just that when then maybe stepping

Suburban Folk 42:01
back again, because the things you’re working on are, I would say pretty advanced and you know, really remarkable. If somebody is starting out what type of projects would you say start with this? So let’s say electrical, for example, we talked a little bit about plumbing as far as the sink or you mentioned, trim work for baseboards or something like that. What would be your advice for somebody just getting into a home project?

Unknown Speaker 42:31
Yeah, in a home project, I think like, there’s got to be something in your house that annoys you something that you kind of constantly look at. Maybe it’s trim that that doesn’t quite meet the wall. Or maybe it’s the caulking in your showers, not quite holding together the way that you want it to go find that thing and find just that one thing, not some large projects like redo a bathroom. Don’t start with that. Start with just the one thing and do it yourself. And if you do that one thing yourself, you’re going to start building up this arsenal of tools and you start building up this arsenal of knowledge and also a guarantee. Even if you don’t think you did it well that you probably did it well. Why just guaranteed so I have to that you will do it better than then a contractor that you would hire to do it because you’re going to hire a contractor and that contractor is not going to care the way that you do. Also, you’re going to be kind of overly cautious about how your work goes, you’re going to be constantly looking at your work and saying that’s not doesn’t look that great. It’s not it’s not perfect, there’s like this line is not perfect. Just go to somewhere else in your house where a contractor did some work, look at what they did, and find the flaws in their work to try to put yourself in the mindset of, of everyone’s work having flaws and not just your own because I know a lot of times I get in my own mind and I’m like, like, Oh, it’s not perfect. I need to get a contractor in here that knows how to do this. But then if I look around at what a contractor did, like, they don’t care they just want to get out of their contractors don’t typically make more money. By by doing a better job, doing a better job is like kind of it that’s an advanced move for contractor because that’s you have to be thinking far enough ahead that you’re thinking by doing a good job, I’m going to get myself more business. But that’s not how contractors make more money, the way they make more money is by having faster deal flow. So you will make more money quicker as a contractor having 10 jobs than doing eight jobs. Well, meaning like, you know, a job might give you an extra hundred dollars for spending more time. In that time, you could have just had another job, you would have made more money. So a lot of contractors are in that mindset. That’s great

Suburban Folk 44:36
advice. I also would second that, I think I came to that conclusion with landscaping, because you’re not typically dealing with anything that has to be too precise. Like for example, even just something as simple as grass cutting. There’s a lot of folks that live near us that hire a service and I say, you know, I know I’m going to do this better, and I’m not going to You know, go behind somebody and grumble that I paid for something that I could have done better myself anyway. And yeah, taking that same concept like you’re saying to the home projects, and maybe even marrying that together with some of the other things we’re talking about with the tools, even though there are costs associated when you first start doing this projects, getting the tools, that they may not be much cheaper than a contractor, once you have those tools, and you don’t have to keep ramping up to get them. You’re going to save even more money than hiring the contract.

Unknown Speaker 45:33
Yeah, the cost savings are amazing. I mean, I now it’s at the point where it’s like, I, some contractor gives me a price on maybe doing trimark in my house, like for the price that they want to charge me for that trim. If I’m not factoring in my own hourly time, which I don’t do projects, then like, I could mess this up like eight times, you know, and it would still be cheaper, you know, so get that mindset. And I promise you the first time you do a DIY project, someone’s gonna come over your house. They’re gonna look Look at it, and they’re gonna say like, Oh, that looks great. The contractor did such a good job there. And then you’re going to be like, you know what, I did that and then then freak out. And everyone’s going to think that you’re, you know, like that you’re so handy and like it, it doesn’t really even take that much. And it’s like, yeah, you might mess up. That’s a learning opportunity. And then you can do it again, because the contractor is obviously charging for their time, that’s the edge you have, like, it’ll always be cheaper for you to, to do it. And it’s just a matter of, like you said, getting past the hurdle of find the tools that you might need to do it.

Suburban Folk 46:34
I also think that if you do run into a project that you just are not comfortable with and you do need to bring in a contractor going through the process of any DIY project helps you talk through what the contractor says they’re going to be doing and I hate to say this, but calling them out if something just sounds like they are either a glossing over it because they don’t want to give you the details. For Whatever reason or be or even making something more complicated than it really is. one that comes to mind for me is we have an irrigation system. And they said that the one I had was about to stop working like the the main controller, and I don’t know they had one for like 200 $250 you go to Home Depot and the things like 50 bucks. And all you have to do is look at the way the last one was wired, take it off the wall, put the new one in, you know, test it out, and you’re good to go. So yeah, I think it helps be able to call out a contractor that’s almost intentionally trying to speak over your head, just so you’re further convincing yourself that you can’t take it on yourself. I mean, I probably do some DIY that

Unknown Speaker 47:46
I shouldn’t do. Like, I think a lot of people would say you shouldn’t do like electric, you shouldn’t do gas. I do all those things. Sometimes I like fire file file permits for the work that I’m doing even pretty often. I Even if you’re doing DIY work, you can often file permits with the town, they’ll come out it’s good to have a second set of eyes on the work that you do especially if you’re doing something like gas or, or water or electric and that doesn’t mean you can’t do it a permit is not like a reason to not do it. It’s just I don’t know a benefit of doing it because like someone can come like we had someone comment they said like, what electrician did this work? And I’m like, and the guys like you did a pretty good job. It’s like, you know, like having having someone come by and be a double check is is nice and that’s a don’t start with gas. Don’t start with electric. But don’t don’t limit yourself either. Like you can get pretty far like you said like you might end up buying a tool to double check your work. Like for example, when I do gas work, I a normal gasoline. plumber is not going to use a sniffer to be able to figure out whether there’s gas leak, they’re going to trust that they know how to do it. However, I’m not a plumber. So when I do it, I want to be safe. So I turn off the main Turn it back on. I use a sniffer I get super paranoid, I have the inspector come by and make sure everything’s okay. So just kind of know your limits, you know, know, know what you have to do and honestly just have a good time. Like I like we’re at the point now where with this stuff where there’s some stuff that I don’t want to do in my house that I’ll have a contractor come by. And I’ve at some points been like, Hey, what do you get to that part? Can I can I join you on the work? Can I like come work with you on this? That’s another option. We had a contractor A while ago, who came in did some work at our house. And as he was leaving, I was like, hey, do you have any interest in having me come by and and go on a couple of jobs with you? And they were like, yeah, that sounds great. So actually, I got a I worked with this contractor for a while and went on jobs with him. I did flooring jobs and siding jobs. If you have an opportunity like that, or a contractor that is looking for help, that’s always a good way to learn things. And now on someone else’s time, you get some extra money.

Suburban Folk 50:04
I hadn’t even really considered doing that ad hoc. It makes sense if you can shadow somebody that way, and if they’ll pay you all the better.

Unknown Speaker 50:12
Yeah, talking to him, and he was like, Well, you know, just meet me tomorrow morning at this deli, and then we’ll get breakfast and then we’ll go out. So I met him at like 787 am the next morning. The first job I went on was a Florida job we we went into a house, tore out floor, put it back in. And it’s amazing because like the like, this is another pro for not working with the contractor. But like, you are looking at the job seeing all of the problems with how you did it. When you show the homeowner or you show, even if you do DIY work at your own house. No one’s going to see all those problems. So you’re going to see the part of the trim where it doesn’t quite hit them all. No one sees that or you’re going to see you know that the paint has a little bit of like brushstroke in it. Like when’s the last time that you walked into someone’s house and saw those problems you know, so a lot of times you you glance right past them, it’s like if a wall is painted, you go, Oh, that’s, it’s done. Like, so don’t be too hard on yourself. This is another similar tip,

Suburban Folk 51:11
we are all our own worst critic is true.

Unknown Speaker 51:14
Yes. And I’ve recently been giving a little bit of my DIY work away to contractors so that I can focus more on this kind of like general making thing that I’ve got going on that I it has been really, really fun. So I’m going to describe the what I can describe the whole the recent thing that happened. So my daughter has this had an expert fair at school. An expert fair is like, it’s like a science fair, but you pick a topic. So my first oldest daughter had chosen gymnastics as your topic. So she had this trifold board and there was like, This is what gymnastics is and this is the different moves you can do in gymnastics. So We traveled to Italy the next year. And my daughter is one year behind that daughter. My second daughter was we traveled to Italy. And we were in the part of Italy where the Leaning Tower of Pisa is. So we stopped by pizza for a day, or like an hour, which is like all you need, I think in pizza. So we saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and my daughter gets back, it’s time for her expert fair and she chooses to do this Leaning Tower of Pisa for her expert fair project. She goes to school says she wants to do learning therapies and she comes home crying. And the reason she’s crying is because the kids at school were making fun of her and calling it the leaning tower of pizza. I don’t know if that’s making fun of her, but like she took it as an insult. So she was super upset that they were calling it the leaning tower of pizza. So she she was like, Can we like build a Leaning Tower of Pisa? Can we like make the project more impressive so that like they, you know, I can tell them that it’s cool or whatever. So I was like, yeah, we’ll build like a Leaning Tower of Pisa. We’ll we’ll work on that together. Why don’t you came home and she was like I, I told them that we’re going to build Leaning Tower of Pisa and moontower pieces going to be like as tall as you. But you know I wanted to to help her and also like, it sounded fun. So I ended up building this leaning in our pizza, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is an eight and a half foot tall, and I’m not eight and a half foot tall, but the leaning tower pieces eight and a half foot tall, just to kind of add a little bit of flair. I think we can link pictures to this too, but when just add a little bit of flair when you hit a button at the bottom of Leaning Tower of Pisa, it leans over, so it leads to four and a half degrees. And it’s like looking electronically, and there’s a linear actuator underneath the tower that is like 190 pound linear actuator that lifts the tower into position. So everyone’s like, why isn’t it leaning and then you hit the button and it plays a song and it leans so we built that a little bit together but honestly like I did a lot of the work because obviously like it’s eight and a half foot tall tower so we built that together. She Kind of like saw the process of how it was built, which I think is super important for kids to like, even if they’re not being involved in making the thing to be like, into how it got made to see like what it takes to build something like that. And just to see, most importantly, like we were talking before that, like, it’s just a collection of pieces, you know, like the entire piece. When you look at it, it looks like it’s finished, just like the wall, the perfectly painted wall or whatever. really all it is to the maker is like a collection of pieces. Like I know that people see a Leaning Tower, they don’t see that there’s a linear actually underneath. Obviously, as the person who made it, the magic’s a little bit ruined because I know what’s going on. But being able to break problems like that, like that down is super important. How heavy is the piece? It’s probably about 150 I would guess. And that includes the bass and the actuator itself. The actuators pretty light, but the base is pretty heavy, but it’s funny. We brought it there all the parents are like what what are you doing? Like, why do you have this thing here? And they’re like, they’ve been like five years. It’s later after they’re all like, Why do you have this name? They’re all taking pictures with it. Like, no other booths had a crowd like we had, I mean, every kid wanted to hit the button. And obviously, I’m a software engineer. So I built in like, I built in D bouncing to the button, which is a software term for when you I guess, when you hit something a bunch of times, making it so that it doesn’t that you don’t want the tower to like, try to flip back and forth and back and forth. You want it to just go once so we have software that does that.

Suburban Folk 55:28
Did you have to bring it in a couple different pieces and then put it together? I hope

Unknown Speaker 55:34
it’s to scale so I think that works out to something like three feet wide. So we had to go through like a back access to her and I had to come in on a like a dolly in three separate pieces that we put together.

Suburban Folk 55:45
Sure this goes without saying but you mentioned four degrees is that the exact speck on the Leaning Tower of Pisa?

Unknown Speaker 55:52
It’s not it’s not exactly four degrees, but the one that we did matches exactly to the real tower.

Suburban Folk 55:58
What did you do with it after The project is over.

Unknown Speaker 56:01
But as a great question, so we took the base off of it, we permanently leaned it. And then we we put little nets and have the like the cats can, can climb up. And so now it’s like a cat house.

Suburban Folk 56:17
Actually, that’s a great way to repurpose it all piece of art plus the cats have a place to hang out. That seems

Unknown Speaker 56:23
like two for one. For a while the library in town was was trying to they wanted to have it like as a piece. But we never, we never ended up working out the details, but they wanted to have it like in the lobby, which maybe maybe that’ll happen maybe we’ll wind up putting it back together.

Suburban Folk 56:38
Also, when you mentioned having your kids watch the process, even if they can’t complete it. A little bit similar vein, something I have earmarked for myself maybe the next five to 10 years. I’m not super interested in real estate property from the investment standpoint of it, but I really keep considered Getting one, just as something to walk my kids through a just even some of the investing piece of it and, you know, sort of version of owning a business, but be depending on what would come up for things breaking and so on having them walk through those processes of potentially helping get them corrected and fixed and so on. Because it certainly is a life skill that as we’re talking about, they would need whether it’s when they become a homeowner themselves, or just being self sufficient. And again, going back to the problem solving, like you’re talking about,

Unknown Speaker 57:34
I think that’s a great idea. And I think also, like, I think you alluded to showing them the investment piece and that you can make something like like that this isn’t something reserved for just the people, you know, at the top or whatever like that you can you can do this thing

Suburban Folk 57:49
together and like produce value, you know, like that, that anyone can go do this thing. I think it’s an important lesson for kids because I think a lot of times even with tools, people might look at tools and be like That’s something super interesting to me. But that’s reserved only for people that do tools or whatever, you know, like showing them that house is just like anything else. I think even I fall into this trap sometimes of thinking that I can’t do something because I’m not like an expert, but showing them that like, everyone starts somewhere and that this is how you learn to do things. Also, like getting some practice in I think is great. So I have this this truck that I started building, right and people are restoring and people come in and they’re like, oh, like Where did you learn about trucks? And I was like, I’m like, I didn’t you know, like, this is it right now we’re doing it like you know, I didn’t know what all the parts of a front suspension were. And now I do because like, I took it apart and now we’re putting it back together. So you have to figure things out as you go. There’s a lot of like knowledge to be had. It’s really just like picking the direction you want to go and not bucketing yourself. What you were talking about with the tools at a garage sale. I think that mindset sticks with me for anything car, really lated that stops me from getting too far with it that, like you said, a saw that, you know, can be very dangerous if it’s not well maintained. That’s where my mind goes for a car, but then I take it unfortunately, in the other direction that like, I don’t want to be the one responsible for this thing, hurling me down the road 60 miles an hour and if I missed a piece or missed something else, so that that’s where I do definitely get nervous with some of that, but at the same time, really the same rules apply that you’re saying for a contractor. You know, there are mechanics, they learned it just like you would learn it. There is plenty of material out there to figure it out, get the right tools, you know, be thorough, etc, etc. And probably you could have the same argument again, that you had for the tool and, you know, making sure all the pieces are there and rebuilding, there’s a good chance that you’ll be more meticulous about the final result because you’re the one riding in the car. You’re the one that is going to be the most concerned learned about the safety for yourself and certainly for your family. So maybe I need to Mason taking the car apart and just being like, it definitely was not together correctly. Before I took it apart,

Unknown Speaker 1:00:12
you know, like, you’re like looking at the manual and you’re like, Wait a second, there’s supposed to be a bolt here and there isn’t, you know, like, I think you’d be amazed that not to say, I mean, mechanics do amazing job and like, they are able to work on a wide variety of vehicles very efficiently. But things get missed, you know, like, especially when they don’t pay the care as much as you would. The amount of fail safes that exist in a car, especially a car of that age. I’m not saying you can’t hurt yourself, but there’s a good chance that by the time that you are back on the road in a fashion that could hurt yourself that you’ve learned enough by doing that process that it’s probably it’s probably fairly safe also like cars. You know, when you’re working on a car, one of the first things you learn is that bolts on a car have torque specifications, which is like how tight the ball is supposed to be. Also Like if there are very important bolts they typically there are typically multiple of them in such a way that they they can fail to each other certain situations where something could go super super bad like the holds the wheel on. There are. They’re called castle bolts, so their boats that have a thing called the cotter pins stuck through them so that they can’t undo themselves. So like, there are fail safes. It’s not just like you miss one bowl and you die. Yeah. And that’s that’s like, I went, I think through these. I have this crazy theory on life. But I, I don’t know if I know my crazy theory. But I think that there is this. There’s this thing where first you look at the car, and all you can see is a car. So then you’re like, well, this is a whole car. And now I’m going to get in it and I’m going to push the pedal and it’s going to go somewhere and when it breaks, you’re not thinking like, Oh, this part of the car broke or this is what the problem is. You’re just thinking like, oh, the car broke, you know, like something like, let me bring it mechanic and then you start taking your car apart and you start working on a car. And all of a sudden your mind flips in the other direction. And you’re like, Wait a second, this isn’t a car. This is just like some bolts, like I’m driving bolts. And like at any point, anything could go wrong. And then through the process of putting it back together, it doesn’t quite ever get back to being a car because you can’t, you can’t unsee the parts, but it does stop being a collection of bolts, and it becomes a systems. I don’t know, does that make any sense? It does it. I think it’s

Suburban Folk 1:02:29
the overarching theme that we have for problem solving. And like you said, breaking it down, almost the opposite of what you’re talking about with the Leaning Tower of Pisa project where you couldn’t get past seeing all the parts because you put it together. It’s almost the opposite effect when you aren’t the one that put it together that you just see the big final thing because at first experience of it, you don’t know what went into it. But then as you are able to get further and further into it. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 1:02:58
it breaks down Yeah, I mean, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa like I can’t, I can’t unknow that there’s a linear actuator underneath. But I, when it was finished, could step back and be like, Oh, of course, that’s really the entire piece. Like, it’s just, you know, like, you kind of forget, you put paint on things and you forget that, like, the pieces are what make it up, I can definitely relate to that. It’s funny when you when you start making things, you start DIY, or you start, like making, you know, objects. How much you, like I was saying before, that people come into your house typically won’t notice, like mistakes. But the more you do DIY, the more you will be able to recognize them. And it’s not because you’re looking at the thing and able to just spot them like your eyes different. It’s more that, you know, you know where the seams are, if that makes sense, like you know where to look for how things are put together. You know, so like, now I’m at the like, when I go to a restaurant and there’s like a nice looking table. I’m not. I’m not at the point anymore where I can look at the table and say like That’s a nice table. I’m always at the point where I’m like, Looking underneath it to be like, Okay, how is this put together? How is it going to be sturdy? You can have a different appreciation but the like the magic, it’s almost like the magic is ruined. But through the magic you see the work and the work is almost even more important.

Suburban Folk 1:04:16
I think that is a fair assessment. And I would say similar for Lucky for us, the house we moved into now just had better workmanship in general. So I can appreciate some of those things again, even like the moldings, like like we’ve had a couple times for certainly easier even when you have to go fix something because you know, it’s more predictable what you’re going to find, which also makes it a little bit easier. Well, maybe moving on to just so we hit all the things I talked about in our intro, some some quick hits, for rock climbing, actually, before we go to there. Yeah, I think there are plenty of more things you and I could talk about. So officially open invite if you ever are able to come back on and we can continue to hit some of the DIY a and whether it’s It’s things that I focused on, or I would definitely be interested to hear how your projects are shaping up. But just to hit, like I said, we said the rock climbing So what was your background and getting into that? And then like I mentioned, I’m curious of your perspective on getting kids into rock climbing since it seems like my oldest, has some interest. Okay, so

Unknown Speaker 1:05:22
the rock climbing, my background in it is right after right after college. I went a few times. And then we started going, my wife and I pretty regularly before we had kids, and then when we had our first when she was about three years old, and at this point, I was still going like, in the mornings I was going climbing had like a group of friends climb with but when she was about three years old, we started her, which is super, super young. Like, I think that’s probably like the minimum age at the gym that we were at at the time. That was the earliest that you could go. So I think probably three years old, like you have to be able bodied, three year old. I know that Like my kids are all kind of different levels of like physically aware at different ages. But you could that’s like kind of the earliest you can start most gyms like the gym that I go to now doesn’t start kids until they’re five years old. These are indoor bouldering gyms. And then we also climb outdoors sometimes so we’ll go somewhere for us the closest place is the gunks which is which is in New York. So we will go there and obviously they can climb at any age then so we had on a recent trip or maybe a couple years ago we had our our son who I guess would have been like one and a half or two on a top rope. Obviously he’s not like going to the top and he’s if you get scared, you want to take him down immediately and you want to be super duper safe and you want to have a helmet on him but I think climbing is just such a good there are so many sports that you can do. You can kind of like hand someone a victory for you can say like you were part of a team and your team did this thing or here like I’m going to tell you You that you’re good at this, but kind of like let you let you learn by, by telling you that you’re doing well. rock climbing, for me is the kind of thing where like you will do it. Kids at all different ages can do it adults can do it at all different ages. And when you do it, you are the reason that you got to the top of the wall like you climb to this thing. And that sense of accomplishment for me is addictive. And I think like for kids, it’s such a great feeling to have that they can they can climb to the wall and know that the only thing that got them up there was their arms and legs. Awesome. Also for kids like I mean the kids of mine that have been really into climbing, spend a lot of time like climbing on chairs and super dangerous ways that

Suburban Folk 1:07:41
resonates with me as well.

Unknown Speaker 1:07:44
And that’s a good point about whether or not they succeeded or not in the activity because even with your standard team sports, soccer, baseball, basketball, you could argue that even if they did their team does When they could well blame a teammate, potentially, or even blame a referee, to say, Oh, well, it’s that person’s fault because I didn’t do whatever thing and then obviously, other individual sports come to mind where you have judges, whether it’s dancing or skating or things like that. But yeah, to your point with rock climbing, there’s not someone like telling you that you didn’t do well or someone that is like, it’s hard to even compare yourself for someone else in rock climbing because like you’re obviously you can see if they climbed and you didn’t, but you can’t compare your feeling of what your body is doing what they’re doing. So not waver rock climbing is also very progressive meaning like that it can get as hard as you want it to be able to get so I think for kids, that’s also super important that there’s not there’s not tears that you have to meet in order to play this game. Well, you don’t have to like be able to jump up to the next year. You don’t have to be able to go you know to the next level or beat this like other team that might be like some unknown level of good or, like there’s no there’s not luck involved like it’s, it’s like slow preparation and kind of get as much out of it as you want.

Suburban Folk 1:09:07
Well, it’s an interesting one for me because I’ve gone rock climbing, maybe three, four times at some local places while I was growing up and I always had a really good time just wasn’t something that my family as a whole was into. And I didn’t really know I guess where to get started, or even that it was a thing to go on a consistent basis or even have competitions, which I just recently learned part of what you can do with rock climbing, the way we even tried it for my son is there was a Groupon for local place. And, you know, I think it’s like three or four times something like that for a discounted rate. And he really took to it. And I’m like, you know, yeah, I always had a good experience with it before, obviously. Yeah. And he’s young enough that we’ve got plenty of time for him to figure out what he’s into. But it’s interesting that he’s taken to it a little bit more than at least the concept of some of the Other team sports. So it’s definitely something that I’m interested in exploring and, you know, is an option that I hadn’t really considered before, like you say, not necessarily a knock on other activities that are out there. But I think it’s worth acknowledging for somebody like myself that didn’t really think of it as an option that, hey, it is an option of a particular activity that you kids can get into.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:21
Yeah, and one that you can spend the day outside with their family. You can go right, I can take some lunch, and I think it’s just all around this perfect. And for kids my age,

Suburban Folk 1:10:30
the local place here has a sign that says, we make kids tired.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:35
Definitely.

Suburban Folk 1:10:37
So like, for example, baseball was what I always grew up with. And I’m like, Well, yeah, it’d be fun to share baseball with my kids, but they’re not burning off a lot of their energy sitting in the outfield, right and

Unknown Speaker 1:10:51
let’s get them into something. I used to play baseball like stand the opposite way and like play with us like Definitely not.

Suburban Folk 1:10:58
Yeah, I feel like it’s it’s sort of stands alone is a particular sport. Either you love it or you hate it. And you definitely can tell back to like we said, with music, you can tell the kids that that’s what their families just do. And so they got signed up versus the ones that maybe chose to do it themselves. Well, I do want to go ahead and wrap us up. Like I said, there are a lot of things that you brought up that I would love to have some follow up conversations on so we can chat offline and see if we can maybe even schedule another episode to go through some more, you know, suburban life things and the DIY projects for sure. But I’d love to spend some more time about making I could talk about travel for a bit too. That’d be really fun. That’d be perfect. Um, before we go, do you want to go ahead and give contact info or any projects that make sense for you to point people in your direction pretty much everything as you can follow me on Twitter Instagram at see john run as EJH and are you in? Perfect? Well, john, again, I really appreciate it. I had a lot Fun. Hopefully you did. I did and we will be in touch.

Unknown Speaker 1:12:02
Okay, talk soon. For

Suburban Folk 1:12:04
definitions and explanations of some of the tools discussed in this episode. Go to Suburban folk.com for examples and recommendations of tools that you can purchase. Suburban Folk is part of the pod all the time podcasting network. Hi there,

Unknown Speaker 1:12:19
it’s Mo, and chip and we’re the hosts of the deep dark truth podcast

Unknown Speaker 1:12:24
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Unknown Speaker 1:12:30
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Suburban Folk 1:12:53
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai