when a simple projet unexpectedly goes "all the way"

[fazool]

You know what it's like: you start a project like this (true story):

My wife and I were in her parent's former home while building our house. I decided to put on a new toilet seat. Simple $7 project, right?

Well after removing it I realized the toilet wax seal was gone and leaking so I had to lift the entire toilet out. Once that was off the floor I could see the linoleum needed replacing. Once Ipeel that off the subflooring was clearly rotted. After pulling that out the floor underneath it was rotted.....sigh.......easy $7 job.

My wife and I call those situations "I gave a mouse a cookie" after the children's book (if you have little kids and read it you'll understand)

So, sometimes a guitar project goes that way. I started with a couple crack fixes, a finish touch up and kept uncovering more finish issues. Last night I pulled out the sander and stripped the top and back to "start over". This isn't something I would do on a valuable guitar - this is only a DRS1 but man, oh man, did I ever give a mouse a cookie!

[tahoeguitar]

Story of my life...

"Mr. Johnson, I think we can keep the tuners and the saddle but the rest of this guitar must be replaced."

[tadol]

Well, at least you got to keep the tuners -

[auffenauger]

Putting a fingerboard on an upright bass owned by the local school turned into completely remaking the dovetail neck to body joint and then installing a new fingerboard, bridge, and nut. Restringing a friend's violin has just turned into removing the back to repair open glue joints and refinishing. It happens.

[printer2]

A guy that I worked with a fair amount was retiring and I decided to use a few bits and pieces from work to build him a little practice amp. While tubes were not totally foreign to me I did not end up making an amp that sounded good to my ears given the parts I had used. He never got the amp, I continued on playing with parts and started to get the hang of it.

Listening to an early Gibson amplifier on Youtube I saw a link to a cigar box guitar at the side and decided to give it a listen. A kid doing some nice slide with three strings, hey I could build that. From there a Telecaster sized guitar with the body chambered with a pine top to make a semi-acoustic. Next a 3/4 size guitar, sounded not too bad and from then on I was hooked.

Still dabble with the amps but found a soft spot for acoustics. Funny, never really paid them much attention before that. Now if that first amp turned out sounding the way I wanted I probably would not have continued on with them or built a guitar.

[LouieAtienza]

Doing a project now, that started as a classical guitar repair, now the body and neck are hacked, and I have to make a nylon string acoustic-electric using the old neck...