General Upgrades & Ideas

[USUC]

Get an LG OLED and you shouldn’t have any problems with dark washout. I would go as big as possible. You won’t regret it. I have 86” (sofa back is 15 feet from the screen) and it’s awesome.

Ok, after some back and forth with the wife and measuring the front room. We will probably go with a 77".

Just looking at LGs, do you know which model you went with. I'm probably not getting it off of Amazon but these two options seem to be the options that most stores have. Is 120Hz Refresh Rate a must compared to 60Hz?


LG OLED C1 Series 77” Alexa Built-in 4k Smart TV (3840 x 2160), 120Hz Refresh Rate, AI-Powered 4K, Dolby Cinema, WiSA Ready, Gaming Mode (OLED77C1PUB, 2021) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08WGFKSMW...ing=UTF8&psc=1


LG OLED A1 Series 77” Alexa Built-in 4k Smart TV (3840 x 2160), 60Hz Refresh Rate, AI-Powered 4K, Dolby Cinema, WiSA Ready, Gaming Mode (OLED77A1PUA, 2021) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B092LX3VN5...ing=UTF8&psc=1

[Donuthole]

Thank you. I'll look into it. Are there different series of the LG OLED or is this a specific model?

Sorry, I posted and ghosted. Didn't see any of these comments until today. My two statements appear to have been conflated. My living room TV is an 86" LG, but it is not OLED. My upstairs TV is a 65" OLED. The upstairs room gets a LOT of light, and the OLED darks hold up well. Ours is a couple years old, so I think the refresh rate is 60hz and it is just great. The 86" does fine, but that room is darker. And that TV mostly gets used for sports and Minecraft.

[USUC]

Sorry, I posted and ghosted. Didn't see any of these comments until today. My two statements appear to have been conflated. My living room TV is an 86" LG, but it is not OLED. My upstairs TV is a 65" OLED. The upstairs room gets a LOT of light, and the OLED darks hold up well. Ours is a couple years old, so I think the refresh rate is 60hz and it is just great. The 86" does fine, but that room is darker. And that TV mostly gets used for sports and Minecraft.

After doing some more research, it looks like the 120hz is a must for gamers but most people don't notice a difference. This TV will probably be the main TV for sports, movies, and the Switch. But the 60hz version runs $300 to $500 less. I'll see if any sales happen over the weekend but I'll probably just settle with the 60hz otherwise.

[USUC]

Since my wife is completely over my neuroticism and indecision with this dumb TV, I figure I'll bring it back here. Has anyone actually purchased a TV off of Amazon or an online oly store? I'm used to in-store purchases but I'm also seeing some deals online.

[Moliere]

Since my wife is completely over my neuroticism and indecision with this dumb TV, I figure I'll bring it back here. Has anyone actually purchased a TV off of Amazon or an online oly store? I'm used to in-store purchases but I'm also seeing some deals online.

I bought a tv off of Amazon five years ago. Had no problems with it. I bought an OLED tv from Best Buy last year and had no problems with it. I think Best Buy was about the same price and I wanted to see it in person before buying. OLED is the only way to go. The blacks are black and the picture is amazing. We have a 65 inch in our front room and it’s worth the cost.

[USUC]

I bought a tv off of Amazon five years ago. Had no problems with it. I bought an OLED tv from Best Buy last year and had no problems with it. I think Best Buy was about the same price and I wanted to see it in person before buying. OLED is the only way to go. The blacks are black and the picture is amazing. We have a 65 inch in our front room and it’s worth the cost.

Thank you. The new OLEDs look amazing but they are out of my price range. I have my eyes on the LG OLED C1 series,, but I'm a little concerned with how dark it is. This will be going into our front room that has a lot of natural light. Behind the couch are 5 east facing windows. I was actually impressed with the 2021 model Samsung Neo QLED. It's pretty bright. Not sure how the blacks look though.

[Donuthole]

I've had this project in mind since we built our pool four years ago. If you rememberfrom the pool thread, our entire yard was surrounded by an ugly grey cinderblock wall. Very industrial. The year after we built the pool, I hired a stucco guy to come out and stucco all around the yard. It was a 6' wall and probably 200' linear feet, so it was a decent sized job. However, I didn't want stucco behind the pool, mainly because, while it's not as ugly as grey cinderblock, it's still not very pretty. So I had him stucco the entire yard and leave the wall behind the pool exposed.

Resulted in a look like this:

wall before.jpg

You can see the stucco at the right edge of the picture. Anyway, I wanted wood, but I remember what a pain it was as a kid to help sand and stain my neighbor's deck each year, and I wasn't about to create another yearly project. So I turned to composite decking. Expensive, but the look I wanted with minimal upkeep. I calculated the amount I would need, and then for about a year I monitored Lowes and Home Depot websites for when they had smallish amounts go on clearance. I finally found some that was about 50% off of normal and pulled the trigger.

That was in October, and the decking has been sitting in my yard since then waiting for install. I wanted to install horisontally, meaning I needed vertical studs on the wall. I had planned to drill them into the columns filled with concrete, construction adhesive, and secure with Tapcons. But the pattern of which columns were filled vs. hollow was very sporadic; sometimes the filled columns would be 2' apart, sometimes they would be 8' apart. Not enough consistency for the support I needed. So I decided to attach with heavy duty toggle bolds. Also, I had to double up the studs, as a 1.5" stud didn't come out far enough for the planking to cover the structural columns on the wall (see the column between trees 2 and 3 from the left in the pic above). I didn't want any vertical interruptions, so the studs needed to be out at least 2". I took pressure treated 2x4s and glued them together, clamped, and screwed, and then let them dry. Perfect.

I then attached them to the wall in 5' increments with a 3/16" toggle bolt in top, middle, and bottom. Then I painted the entire wall dark brown, so the grey wall wouldn't show through the spaces:


wall 3.jpg


wall 1.jpg


Once the paint dried, I was able to start running the decking. I spaced it out 1/2" for aesthetics but also to make it easy to clean out the inside if necessary. It took some time to make sure the top row across was perfectly level. Once that was up, I used some blocking as spacers for quick install. These first three rows took about as long as the rest of the wall:

wall 7.jpg

[Moliere]

well done.

[Jeff Lebowski]

The finished result looks like this:


Very happy with the results. Now I think I'll find some nice low-voltage eyelid deck lights and put one of those in each gap between the bay trees.

Hmm... This isn't showing for me.

[Donuthole]

Hmm... This isn't showing for me.

The finished result looks like this:

wall 5.jpg

wall 4.jpg

Very happy with the results. Now I think I'll find some nice low-voltage eyelid deck lights and put one of those in each gap between the bay trees.

EDIT: Did that work?

[BigPiney]

Did that work?

yes

[Jeff Lebowski]

Did that work?

Yes!

Wow, looks incredible.

[Donuthole]

I was originally planning on using hidden hardware to mount the decking planks to the studs. But I realized that the hardware would not be hidden if I spaced the deck planks out a half inch, per my design.

So instead I used a depth-controlled drill bit system where the heads of the screws create a hole the perfect size for a deck plug. So each screw is covered by a matching plug and you can’t really tell they are there unless you look really closely.

[Pelado]

Yes!

Wow, looks incredible.

It does look a little better than the cinder blocks.

[Uncle Ted]

wall 4.jpg

Looks nice DH.

I am trying to figure out your pool deck. Is that some kind of stained concrete? Looks cool.