Hobby Thread - January 10, 2026 [TRex]

Welcome hobbyists! Pull up a chair and sit a spell with the Horde in this little corner of the interweb. This is the mighty, mighty officially sanctioned Ace of Spades Hobby Thread. We gave the Ace of Spades Wheel of Hobbies (TM) a spin it landed on home building.

What are you hobbying?

As per usual Hobby Thread etiquette, keep this thread limited to hobbying. All (legal) hobbying is welcome. Discussion of current events, religion and politics can elsewhere. Pants are optional. As always, puns are welcome and encouraged.

Play nice. Don't be a troll and do not feed the trolls.

Home building? Is that really a "hobby"? Sure - with a little imagination and artistic license.

Many have built their own homes, with a wide range between tailoring a model and full custom. Many have remodeled, renovated and expanded existing homes. Even if none of those apply to you, most of you have experience living in a house.

Full disclosure: this post is shamelessly designed to obtain wisdom and ideas as we embark on a project to design and build our own house. We are in the early days, but tinkering with floor plans and thinking big thoughts. Your ideas may help inform our plans, so thank you in advance!

No, we do not intend to swing a hammer and pour concrete ourselves. We will have professionals involved but we still need to make the right design decisions.

No, we're not going to post too many details here for OpSec reasons.

Have you built your own home? Share victories, horror stories and lessons learned.

Whether you built your home or not, what unique feature in your home are you most pleased with?

What unique feature seemed like a good idea at the time, but turned out to be too difficult, not worth the money, or something that ended up not being used as you envisioned?

In retrospect, what great idea did you consider and rejected, but now wish you had included?

Do you have any secret doors or hidden passageways (that you can disclose)?

Did you use pre-packaged plans or hire an architect to create custom plans?

Other than the usual pit of despair that comes from change orders and a bruised bank account, what lessons do you have from your experience of building or renovating?

Did you do anything to take care of the workers during your project (like bring coffee in the morning or a cold case of beer at the end of the day from time to time)?

Did you have a big party at the end? If so, did you invite people like architect, contractors and subcontractors?

What was the biggest surprise of the process (good or bad)?

Designing a kitchen:

And picking countertop material.

This is a nice timelapse of a custom home build - with cost for each step along the way:

Fancier but also includes cost breakdowns:

Japanese building techniques:

Nails or screws?

Hmm....

What changed?

Completely different program, but very impressive.

Note: I have intentionally skipped most content from television shows and YT channels on homebuilding, home renovation, home rescue, etc. I don't want this thread to be about TV personalities, clickbait videos, or other manufactured drama.

I have also skipped tiny homes, shipping container homes, and the world of making homes out of airplanes or similar. We're not doing any of that.

Not into homebuilding? How about an online museum of knitted Swedish mittens?

Tumvante is the Swedish word for mitten. This random example is from 1920.

Did you miss the Hobby Thread last week? We did an ice fishing theme. The comments may be closed, but you can re-live the content.

Notable comments from last week:

Words of wisdom:

"Because despite all our troubles, when things are grim out in that wide round world of ours, that's when it's really important to have a good hobby." Posted by: tankascribe at June 22, 2024 07:41 PM (HWxAD).

If you have trouble finding something in the content or comments that resonates with you, contribute your own. Send thoughts, suggestions and photos of your hobbying to moronhobbies at protonmail dot com. Do mighty things.

posted by Open Blogger at 05:30 PM

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