In my old career, I built high speed fluorescence microscopes with lasers and fancy cameras. The scope parts were off the shelf, but the software was mine entirely. So were the firmware tunings for all the outboard equipment! Manufacturers in the 2000s would give you nice technical manuals with "enter at your own risk" appendixes with all the control settings. Was real fun eking out another 20ms~ from a filter wheel with some custom acceleration parameters and balancing. I used Ryan Geiss' milkdrop timing code (http://www.geisswerks.com/ryan/FAQS/timing.html), an absolute gem for Win32 timing quirks.
More recently I've: put an entire exhaust on my car due to manufacturer telling me it would be 2k to replace, rebuilt my garage door frame, reroofed part of my garage, and repointed my historic brick garage wall.
For the repointing, I had to get lime mortar which is rare in the US but here in PA we have a lot of old stone. DeGruchy's NHS to the rescue, color matched and everything. The labor is over the top, but the tools are cheap. I paid for this once and they did it so badly I decided it's simply not worth it. It should last another 50-100y!
More recently I've: put an entire exhaust on my car due to manufacturer telling me it would be 2k to replace, rebuilt my garage door frame, reroofed part of my garage, and repointed my historic brick garage wall.
For the repointing, I had to get lime mortar which is rare in the US but here in PA we have a lot of old stone. DeGruchy's NHS to the rescue, color matched and everything. The labor is over the top, but the tools are cheap. I paid for this once and they did it so badly I decided it's simply not worth it. It should last another 50-100y!