maltomario

Not sure I was ever considered part of 'the old gang' but I just logged in this morning after a long hiatus. Hello everyone!

I almost bought an evh frankenstein for 7k. its a beautiful yet ugly guitar at same time. cool in person. even with that discount (down from 25k) i couldn't talk myself into it. almost bought a Gibson black widow les Paul. badass looking instrument. when i went back a week later it was gone .

that is freakin' amazing, Mario. you have skills, both on and off the guitar. thank you for sharing all of this! Thanks Ben! I've been keeping a photo journal over the years.. kinda nice to look back and see the transformation. I'm almost in the home stretch (just cabinets/countertop, tile floor in bar area, drop ceiling, carpet/trim and then I'm ready to tackle the bathroom.. ok on second thought I guess I still have quite a bit left to do..

Are you doing all of this by yourself in your spare time? I think it looks great. I especially like the Flintstones bar. Thanks Doc.. Figured you'd dig the stone, being a caveman and all.. =) yep. all work done myself.. which is good and bad - good because I'm saving lots of money and know exactly what is being done every step of the way, bad because I don't have much free time to begin with and its a 4yr+ project at this point.. and its still damn expensive for supplies. .but this past 18months I made considerable progress.. hope to wrap it up by end of this year! I'm going to have pro's measure/install the granite countertop. I don't want to make a $3000 mistake by mis-measuring a dimension.. thats the only part that makes me nervous about this project.

some updates on my man cave progress.. finished sanding, primed and painted walls. grouted stonework. installed man cave required tv (home theatre speakers/components waiting until basement is 100% done)..

rear corner - this was a BITCH to do.. lots of cuts. and the $2 cutting wheels only last for 3 cuts.. lots of dust too. did the cuts outside the edge of stone floats over drywall.. kinda like the effect prime coat for walls ran out of paint.. didn't quite finish priming yet..

Start laying out pattern of my stone veneer buttering the back (no, not what you were thinking, perv!) first course almost done with first face done with front wall. the drywall spacers on the bottom were used to give me 1/2" gap so I could have tile tucked in there when I do the tile floor. would be a PITA to try to trim to contours of stone otherwise. starting work on other wall view from guitar room small corner side wall done

its been a few weeks, thought i'd share a few updates since then.. mudding the drywall: sanding time! more to follow...

I did all that (as the instructions also explain clearly). The problem is that once i adjust the set screw to get the "e"perfect, it grips the stud and i can't pull it back to "d" unless i loosen the set screw a bit. That throws the "e" out sgain for the next time Oh ok.. Then try this. Take the dtuna off.. Remove the saddle bolt, and inspect it for gouges. What i normally do for periodic maintenance is stick the bolt in a drill chuck and use steel wool or 1200 grit sandpaper if its really chewed up.. to smooth it out, then apply light oil and reassemble check to see if plating is too thick to allow the bolt to fully seat in through u-shaped channel in the dtuna. . If so you will need to file it down.

First off, make sure you are setting it right before writing it off as crap. Here's what u need to do. With the dtuna pulled away from bridge (out).. Tune low e string to d before locking the lock nut. Then check to make sure all strings are in tune d a d g b e. If they aren't, adjust now. Then push the dtuna in. Now is when u adjust setscrew on dtuna. Adjust until pitch is e. Voila. I have seen some plating issues where the chrome is too thick causing problems but i doubt that is the case here.

Thanks guys. And sorry i left to seat down for the photos. Lol. Next time Mrs maltomario yells at me for leaving the seat up i will just point her to this thread so she can see the error of her ways!

Wow looking very good! That basement layout looks very familiar, do you live in the midwest? Illinois or Wisconsin? Nope, northeast

That is one hell of a nice Man cave! You do very nice work. thanks, but i make a lot of mistakes.. which photos don't always show. my mudding isn't perfect (god damn that is an art form in itself), there's a few spots where I didn't quite build it up / smooth it out good enough. but then again it didn't cost me $ to hire a pro.. so its a tradeoff.

Looking good! I'm scheduled to graduate college next May (if all goes well, it's going to be a hell of a semester). I know it won't happen for a long while after that, but one of the things I'm really looking forward to is getting a house and building my own man cave. congrats on your upcoming graduation.. and yeah owning a house is great.. i've done a lot of home improvement projects on mine already, but this one takes the cake. its nice to be able to make it your "own" ya know? i've learned alot (self-taught) about construction/electrical/plumbing/drywall/finishing/masonry since buying a house in 05. it also is a great way to save money since your labor is always "free". lol. good luck man and hang in there those last few months of the semester.

This {censored} is amazing! I love that shelf... thanks man! this shelf built-in took me a long time, lots of work.. its drywalled on every side, so there was a lot of taping too. major PITA but the end result was worth it. I'm very proud of it. its got a capacitive touch switch so you can vary the amount of light. and I designed it to fit my collection of engineering textbooks almost perfectly. (almost because i forgot to account for the thickness of the drywall. so its about 1" too short (width-wise) on each shelf but not that big of a blunder I suppose. here's a pic to give you an idea of how much taping is involved for such a small area..