I love DIY because I make it amusing.
- Design is fun, especially when you nail it.
- So is construction. Except when you nail your hand. Never mind.
- Drinking a beer after looking at a great space you created is fun too. Just don’t drink the beer beforehand or you’ll nail your hand even more.
During construction, I love to leave easter eggs. Not real eggs, that would be gross. I’m talking about fun artifacts for the future remodeler to find.
As great as I think my designs are, the next person who moves in decades from now may not agree and will tear out all of my hard work. If that’s going to happen, I should leave her/him some messages.
I’m remodeling my bathroom now and one wall will be covered in shiplap. This is an opportunity to leave some presents underneath. I’ve already started…
Easter Eggs
My grandmother was an interesting person. As a child of the depression, she HATED to see hard-earned money pissed away. Whenever my siblings and I would visit, at random times, she’d sneer at us and unload this gem with much piss and vinegar:
Is there a more inspirational speech than Churchill’s “We shall fight on the beaches?” I don’t think so. I’m way too lazy to write it out, but this one is pretty good too:
This one from Jocko is one of my favorites:
On and on:
Your Turn
What are your favorite quotes, pieces of wisdom or truths?
Let me know in the comments and I’ll add some of them to my wall and show you the final product next week!
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My day was successful if I finished with just a single trip to Home Depot
You‘ll miss 100 % of the shots you don‘t take — Michael Scott
;))
“Nothing happens unless first a dream.” — Carl Sandburg
This one is over-quoted, but I like it and very applicable to an FI mindset:
“I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.” – Robert Frost
Like Winston, could write down the whole poem…
The original is a classic. I like this one too:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by. . .
Since then I’ve been completely lost.
Thanks for nothing, Robert Frost!
-Chris Harris
Love people and use things because the opposite never works
https://www.netflix.com/title/80114460
I’m pretty far from a minimalist but I hopefully I can make small improvements.
His quote is really profound in my mind.
“a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone” Thoreau
When i look at my brother in law who earns 300k a year but has credit card debt, i often think of the meaning of rich. I suspect i shall retire before he does
“Good Judgement comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgement” – Will Rogers
“I have a life. And it only goes in one direction, Forward. – Don Draper character in the show MadMen
You are never too old to set a new goal or dream a new dream. – C.S. Lewis
We are always more afraid than we wish to be, but we can always be braver than we expect. – Robert Jordan, from Lord of Chaos, Book 6 of The Wheel of Time
“It’s not how many times you fall down, it’s how many times you get back up.”
“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.” – Oscar Levant
have buried a 100 gold pieces beneath the oak tree (where the rub is that you, off course, have no oak tree in the garden),
financialfreedomsloth recently posted…Monthly expense report: October
My Grandpa always told me, you should try to fix something yourself first because you might be surprised at what you can do. He would then follow this up with, if you don’t want to fix this again, at least now you know why you are willing to pay someone else to do it.
Hi Carl – happy belated birthday! Here’s a good one:
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
Anais Nin
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit, Aristotle
“Shoot for the moon and even if you miss you’ll be amongst the stars”….. I read that somewhere….
“The more pleasures a man captures, the more masters he will have to serve.” – Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“‘Should’ is a lousy word.” – Carolyn Hax
“Mistakes are the exhaust of the dream machine.” – John Mayer
I love this! I’ve done this before and it’s a lot of fun! We did this at our last house but now that we’re remodeling this one I think it’s time to get the kids in on it, they were two young back then.
Long but one of my favorites: “I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be much worse if life *were* fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them?’ So now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe.” – Marcus Cole
JW recently posted…AHA Big Brew Day 2017
Life is not about how many breaths you take. It is about the moments that take your breath away. Anonymous
Oh, I read a piece recently with photos of all the weird stuff people found behind walls on remodels. Things like a skull and one super creepy Annabelle looking doll! Yikes!
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”— Kahlil Gibran
JRobi recently posted…Kadar Quote….
Love all the quotes 🙂 we left human body outlines in spray paint of each member of our family on the subfloor before installing bamboo floors.
Awesome!
“True self care is not salt baths or chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life that you don’t need to regularly escape from” – Briana Wiest
As I get older I understand this one much more from Yvon Choinard (Patagonia Founder)
…”He who dies with the less toys wins, Because the more you know, the less you need.”
our doubts are traitors that make us lose the good we oft might win for fearing to attempt.
also: love the art in yourself not yourself in the art.
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Wow, that first one gives me chills.
shakespeare wrote it. he was pretty good, carl.
freddy smidlap recently posted…Malevolent Missy Invests, Stock Series #4 We bought Twilio (TWLO)
Oh yeah! I visited that guy over the summer.
“There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.”- Fred Rogers
Wow.
The price of abundance is restraint. – Greg Critser
My limited wisdom to parents: “Even if you don’t intentionally teach your children about money, you are teaching them because they are watching you.”
But I like the quote: “One million dollars.” — Dr. Evil
I always wrote on the 2×4’s when I was helping my grandpa with construction. Fun times.
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You can’t stumble unless you’re moving.
“Your life is an occasion. Rise to it.” -Mr. Magorium
This is the quote I put in my resignation.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Mark Twain
Silence equals assent.
“I don’t think I’ll run out of money, but I know that I’ll run out of life” can’t remember who said that, but it changed my life.
This probably isn’t the sexiest quote, but “little things done right every day leads to big changes”. This is a pretty big mantra of mine that I constantly remind myself of.
1) If you drive don’t park, accidents cause people. – My late uncle, a catholic priest.
2) Figures don’t lie, but liars sometimes figure. Father Kelly, freshman algebra.
I spent half my money on gambling, alcohol, and wild women. The other half I wasted
failure is never so frightening as regret
Construction Related Quote: I’m like lightening with a hammer. I never hit the same place twice.
*lightning
This JL Collins character has collected a few good quotes. : )
https://jlcollinsnh.com/2012/06/12/i-could-not-have-said-it-better-myself/
Moderation in all things… including moderation.
You don’t need to be accepted by others. You just need to accept yourself.
Jack Kerouac said it best…
Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn, climb that Goddamn mountain.
You’re clearly not the first to come up with this idea! Stripping the wallpaper in the bathroom of my childhood home, we found the message:
“I LOVE YOU – whiskers and all”
That’s awesome!
Be yourself, everyone else is taken.
Oscar Wilde
Nice one.