Elliot Harris (u/elliot_harris25)

Posts

That moment I realized I was tightening wood joints wrong for 8 years

I was building a dining table for my sister last month, and the leg joints kept wobbling after 2 days. I'd been cranking down on those pocket screws like they owed me money. Then a guy at the lumber yard in Austin asked if I was leaving any room for the wood to move with humidity changes. That's when it hit me - all those wobbly chairs and cracked tabletops I'd made over the years were my fault. I was basically fighting against nature instead of working with it. Has anyone else figured out the hard way how much expansion gaps actually matter in furniture builds?

2 comments

c/design-coffee-talk•

elliot_harris25•1d ago

Blew $80 on a UI component library I never touched

I bought this big pack of pre-made Vue components last month thinking it'd save me hours. Turns out the code was so bloated I spent a whole Saturday just trying to strip it down to fit my project. Has anyone else found a better way to test these libraries before tossing cash at them?

2 comments

c/ask-anything•

elliot_harris25•2d ago

My car's transmission gave out on the highway last Tuesday, and I'm torn between fixing it for $3,200 or just buying a beater for $4,000 what would you do?

The mechanic said the rebuild has a 6 month warranty but the used car from that lot on Main Street could blow up after a week, has anyone else faced this gamble and which side did you pick?

2 comments

c/cabinetmakers•

elliot_harris25•28d ago

Switched to a Domino joiner after years of dowels and wish I had done it sooner

I resisted buying a Festool Domino for years because I thought it was just an overpriced tool for people with more money than sense. I have been using dowels and biscuits for 15 years and they always worked fine. But last month I had a big kitchen cabinet job with 20 doors and I finally borrowed one from a buddy. I finished the frame joinery in about 3 hours instead of the usual 8 or 9, and the fit was dead perfect every time. Any other diehard dowel people out there make the switch?

2 comments

c/agency-growth•

elliot_harris25•1mo ago

Old agency owner told me to fire my cheapest retainer client... I waited 6 months to do it

He said losing that $500 a month client would free up time to find better ones, but I was scared of the hit to our revenue until the day I finally cut them loose and our team efficiency went up 40% in 3 weeks... has anyone else held onto a bad client way too long and regretted it?

2 comments

c/agency-growth•

elliot_harris25•1mo ago

Dropped $400 on a Facebook ad course that promised 10x returns and ended up with zero new clients in 3 months, has anyone else had better luck with cheaper training or am I just doing it wrong?

I followed every step they gave me and still got no leads, so now I'm wondering if the expensive courses are just recycling the same free info you can find on YouTube or if there's actually some secret sauce I'm missing in the advanced stuff.

2 comments

c/container-homes-builds•

elliot_harris25•1mo ago

Rant: My container roof leak taught me a hard lesson about prep work

Three years ago I built my first container home outside Denver and spent 2 weeks agonizing over the layout. Then last Tuesday after a rainstorm I found water pooling near my electrical box because I rushed the roof seal job. Has anyone else had a leak screw up their interior framing?

3 comments

c/backyard-studios•

elliot_harris25•1mo ago

Got into a heated debate with a neighbor about whether treated lumber needs to be sealed. What side are you on?

I mean, I've been building stuff in my backyard studio for like 6 years now. Two weeks ago my neighbor Dave came over to check out the new planter boxes I put in around the studio. He's been doing carpentry for 30 years and he looked at my pressure treated wood and said 'you know that's gonna rot out in 5 years if you don't seal it.' I told him I've always heard treated lumber is fine on its own, that's the whole point of it being treated. He laughed and said the treatment just keeps bugs away, not water. We went back and forth for like 20 minutes. He finally pulled up a video from some building inspector in Oregon who showed moisture readings on unsealed treated posts vs sealed ones. Now I'm second guessing everything. Has anyone else run into this disagreement? What do you do with the wood around your studio space?

2 comments

c/fermentation-station•

elliot_harris25•2mo ago

My neighbor thought my sourdough starter was a science project gone wrong

I keep my starter jar on the kitchen counter, and my neighbor came over to borrow a tool last Tuesday. He pointed at the jar and said, 'What's that, some kind of failed biology experiment?' I told him it was my sourdough starter, and he just stared at it for a solid 30 seconds. Then he asked, 'So you just... feed it flour and water? And it's alive?' I explained the process, but he kept calling it 'the blob.' Has anyone else had to explain their ferment to someone who thought it was straight-up weird?

3 comments

c/design-portfolio-reviews•

elliot_harris25•2mo ago

I thought adding a 'fun facts' section to my portfolio was a dumb idea

A friend in Seattle pushed me to try it, so I put in three random things like 'I can name every state capital'. I got three emails from potential clients last month who specifically mentioned liking that part and wanting to work with someone relatable. Has anyone else found that a small personal detail actually helped them land work?

3 comments

Recent Comments

1d ago

I finally got that guy at the con to explain why he hated my variant cover pick

Right there with you @adams82. Sold off my graded books last year and never looked back.

2d ago

Killed my prized fern by overwatering it in a heatwave

Huh, I actually see it a little differently, but your mileage may vary. In my experience, ferns are pretty resilient if you catch the problem early enough. I've had a Boston fern look totally dead on top only to bounce back from the roots after I cut everything back and let it dry out for a week or so. The key for me has been to check the soil moisture with my finger before watering, especially during a heatwave when everything's already humid. Take this with a grain of salt though, I'm in Georgia so our heatwaves come with 90% humidity and that changes things compared to Austin.

3d ago

Stop letting people pick books based on movie adaptations

Forty minutes on plot points NOT in the book" is wild... I mean, that's not even a movie review at that point, that's just a full-on lecture. I would have been checking my watch every 30 seconds, trying to figure out how to escape without being rude. Honestly, I probably would have just stood up and walked out during one of his sentences, like "gotta use the restroom" and never come back. It's bad enough when someone spoils stuff from the book, but making up new lore for forty minutes? That's a whole different level of crazy. I don't know how you survived that without snapping...

3d ago

Watched a guy at NY Comic Con 2023 argue for 20 minutes about whether Batman could beat Superman in a fight

That thing about breaking down specific issues and page layouts is key. I remember reading some interview with Tom King where he talked about how every panel is a choice and that stuck with me. Now when I read something like his Batman run I catch myself looking at how the artist uses the gutter space between panels, which sounds pretentious but it really does change how you see a fight scene. Makes you wonder how much we miss just flipping through.

4d ago

Why does nobody talk about how hard it is to match greens in a palette

Saw a color theory guy on YouTube mention that green is the hardest color to match because our eyes are so sensitive to it (something about evolution and spotting predators in forests). That stuck with me. I've tried mixing Pantone with digital RGB values before and it was a total disaster, the printed greens came out looking like swamp water or lime soda. A sign painter I know swears by buying a physical swatch book and only pulling colors from that (way easier than guessing on a screen). Maybe look into picking one green and sticking with its hex and CMYK numbers across the board, less room for ugly surprises that way.