Random Thoughts [Home Improvement/Decorating Edition]

[93Flareside]

Wish me luck! I am planning to start running the pipes so that my kitchen has a heated floor. That’s the plan to fix the bullshit fan thingy that still allows a cooled section of the kitchen.

I think the plan is to just do the plumbing, over the week I will buy a mixing valve so that 80°C water temp isn’t at your feet.

 

[DaBoom]

I think the plan is to just do the plumbing, over the week I will buy a mixing valve so that 80°C water temp isn’t at your feet.

Sauna with a fridge..!

 

[93Flareside]

I’m glad that’s over, this is over the stairs to the back door which also back here has stairs to go to the basement. Thankfully only dropped a screwdriver and wire nut once.

 

[93Flareside]

Today I cleared some brush running against my garage thanks to the neighbor who doesn’t live in but owns the house behind mine. The grass is cut but nothing else is done.

I also got new rain gutters that have hoods over them to keep them from clogging up. This also came with some fascia board replacement due to the old owner covering the rotted pieces with aluminum sheets…

 

[Blind_Io]

I forgot about this one. I will have to get going on revising some of my landscaping. @Kiki and I are planning a hardcore backyard rehabilitation later this year when it's cool enough to work on it again. I'm going to have to learn some more electrical for this one and spend some significant time on the end of a shovel.

 

[NecroJoe]

Almost 2 years ago, we moved our bed into the new "Master Suite" once we got the walls painted, the floor installed, and the base board trim behind the bed installed. When we did that, we had to have the bed shoved over to one side, because we still needed an open space to store stuff from other rooms as we re-did the floors, going from room to room.

Every so often, we'd go, "You know...it's been 3/6/9/12/15/etc months...we should probably actually put the bed and stuff where we want it, since we don't need to keep a sofa/computer desk/dining table in here...not today because (insert excuse {but not a reason} here)". The only real reason: it's an adjustable bed frame, and it's heavy as heck. Ha!

Well...today was finally that day. Behold: the "finished" bedroom.

This room was an addition to our home. It was 768 square feet, and we added on this master suite (bedroom, bathroom, and walk-in closet on to the back of the house to put it just north of 1,000sq ft. Went from a 2br/1ba to a 3br/2ba. The ceilings in this bedroom are 8ft at the entrance of the room from the hallway, and 10ft on the back wall. The back wall features a 6ft wide sliding door, with a 6ft wide operable transom window.

A contractor "built" the room, and installed the lighting and fan. We installed the sub-floor, leveled it to the "old" floor in the hallway, sanded and painted the ceiling and the walls (two coats of primer and 3 coats of paint), installed all of the walnut flooring, and painted and installed all of the doors. We cut, painted and installed all of the wall, window and door casing and trim, including hand-shaping the walnut threshold pieces at the back door, and at the entrance of the bathroom.

Yes, we know the pillows don't really photograph well, but they are comfy as heck.

 

[93Flareside]

Wish me luck! I am planning to start running the pipes so that my kitchen has a heated floor. That’s the plan to fix the bullshit fan thingy that still allows a cooled section of the kitchen.

I think the plan is to just do the plumbing, over the week I will buy a mixing valve so that 80°C water temp isn’t at your feet.

So, winter came and went and this didn't work. Last week I removed the mixing valve and plumbed the kitchen loop directly off the main loop instead. I'm still not convinced it'll work. If not, I will throw in the tiny circulation pump that I bought to combat the problem. I also purchased a relay because I don't think the Honeywell boiler control has the amperage to support the usual boiler pump and additional pump on the same circuit. Thank you RIB relay.

Actually, I could even do this without a pump, duh. I have a box of Bell & Gosset flow control valves. Derp.

Also during this I replaced the boiler refill shut off valve as it was an old gate valve and it seized up. I needed to use a pipe wrench to turn the handle. Now it's a ball valve with a handle that clearly shows when its open or closed.

 

[93Flareside]

Last Monday (labor day weekend) I conned my brother and father to help get my fence replaced. Didn’t get all of it done but got a huge chunk of it and is a relief for me. I was getting anxiety looking at it all summer and seeing the small section I had done never progress. So now I need to get more pickets so I can do the back and other side. Posts are staying because my pea sized brain determined they’re fine. Plus they’re set in concrete.

 

[NecroJoe]

My girlfriend's been doing consistent business on her etsy store, and we've been building up our shipping supplies. She makes the items,, and I pack and ship everything. The supplies just sort of ended up in a pile in this otherwise-unused closet. A mess, stacked 6ft high, using boxes as make-shift shelving/bins.

The Container Store is having their once-a-year sale (although it's normally 30% off, and this year it's 20% with a $500 minimum), so we decided to finally get the supplies under control. So now it's all organized, we can clearly see when we're low on some supplies, and I even have a place to use as a work surface if I just pull out the foam wrap. Up until now, I've been using my chair.

When we remodeled our home, we did 7 closet walls of this same product line, so there were q
A couple additional piece we could add in to a few of these to get over that $500 minimum purchase, making them effectively free since hitting $500 meant at least $100 off.

 

[killpanda]

We just bought a townhouse a few months ago and after having some renovations done (mostly flooring and paint), we finally moved in around the start of December. Now I've mostly been busy doing a piss-poor job at replacing light fixtures and towel bars (who knew the length of the new 24" bar would be slightly different from the length of the old 24" bar ) so I'll need to have our contractor come back to help us put some finishing touches on some stuff.

One part I've been wanting to tackle on my own is the networking situation. At first I thought I'd be fucked since there only were phone jacks in every rooms, but after further inspection, I discovered that they were all pre-wired with Cat.5E wires! So I only need to replace the plugs and that's most of it done already!

The next part of the networking installation I wanted to do was to re-purpose the useless to us central-vacuum installation to host my wifi access points as the pipes are conveniently located at the center of each floors. Some fish-tape, one of these and a lot of swearing later and it's now complete too!

 

[Matt2000]

I had this ready yesterday but kept it so I didn't post too soon after someone else, you both beat me to giving this thread a big bump.

Another year passed and another car purchased, it's time to add another metal plate to the wall:



I had a shuffle around from last year so the three cars are side-by-side, then each Discovery I've owned and finally the Series III. I was going to put Bob at the bottom at first as the only Land Rover I own but it didn't look right.

Along with the new hole for the Series III I had to drill a new hole for the Mazda as Redbubble have yet again changed the mounting on the back, going from the previous nice foam and metal plate to a cheap bit of MDF with a slot milled it. It has no way of retaining the plate on the screw and the slot is actually tapered, so I got my Dremel out with a thin routing bit and dug out a pocket for the screw head to catch in.

Seems to work fine but the plate sits much closer to the wall than the others so it looks a bit odd. It really needs feet, that lack of which also means it's way to easy to knock it. The mounting screws of the others are adjusted so the feet grip the wall and they don't move.

 

[Matt2000]

I'm sure many of you are aware of Jim'll paint it, the guy who shot to fame making MS Paint images of whatever people asked for, no matter how strange, often involving British celebrities.

Well, I've always wanted some wall art of his but I've never been into them to spend the kind of money I spent on the metal plates of my cars. Earlier this year, his designs started appearing on the e-card store Moonpig, where I happen to buy all of my cards for my poor family and friends who I see fit to receive something at Birthdays and Christmas. That last bit is to stop any of you lot re-checking your mailboxes.

So I ordered some of the cards with other orders and following my latest delivery I had 6 cards, all quite cheap with nice prints of the designs, all 15x15cm. I went to one of the big hobby shops today to get a 30x45cm clip frame, but they don't stock any clip frames in that store for some reason, nor do they stock clear styrene sheet for me to make my own. Useless, last time I go there.

By chance, I was going to a shop in my town and went into a small stationary shop I was passing, just on the off-chance that they had something. They didn't have 30x45cm but they did have 29.7x42cm (A3) and it was cheaper, so I saw this as a lucky break and picked it up. With the cards sliced up they line up nicely in the frame. The trimming isn't perfect but it was very low cost and effort for something that looks pretty damn good I reckon.



I didn't realise it until I started laying them out but I managed to buy them in pairs of a single category. From the top we've got:

• Sitcoms
  • Kryten from Red Dwarf recreating Queen's I Want To Break Free video with his groinal vacuum cleaner attachment.
  • Fawlty Towers in zero gravity.
• Chefs/Cooking
  • Ainsley Harriott, son of God (surrounded by other British chefs - spot the Gordon Ramsay).
  • Mary Berry's Frankenstein (from The Great British Bake Off).
• British treasures living and dead, fighting creatures. At night.
  • Sir Richard Whiteley (RIP) fighting a crocodile with his bare hands in front of the Countdown clock.
  • Sir David Attenborough battling the dark lord Cthulhu during the filming of an episode of Blue Planet.

I sincerely hope that any non-Brits (that's most of you) are really confused by these pictures and the celebrities depicted in them.

 

[NecroJoe]

Well, we were hoping the stove or fridge would die soon so we can replace them with something that suits our life/house better.

And what dies? The microwave.

Man...over-the-range microwaves have gotten really shitty over the years.

But, got it mounted myself. Super awkward since I couldn't pull the oven out, and the left side is right up against a wall.

 

[Matt2000]

I never understood having the microwave there, other than an extraction hood (which I know is sometimes built-in with the microwave) I can't see the reason to have anything directly above the cooker/range. Our microwaves just chill out on the counter mostly, or are integrated elsewhere. Cookers in this country used to have eye-level grills that would catch all of the steam and grease, a terrible design really.*

Looks really nice anyway, things go in and out of fashion but brushed metal always seems to stay stylish.

*It doesn't look like grills are a thing in the US like they are Europe, they provide a high heat from above that's consistent across the entire area of the grill. Good for bacon, burgers and for toast if you don't have a toaster. How would you make toast in the US without a toaster?

 

[eizbaer]

Where exactly is that grill thing supposed to be located? Somehow to me, your post reads like it should be where the microwave is in the above picture (because of the comment about steam and grease and eye level) - which honestly scares me a little? In that case that would not be a European thing, or at least not german, because I've never heard of that ever.

 

[Matt2000]

Where exactly is that grill thing supposed to be located? Somehow to me, your post reads like it should be where the microwave is in the above picture (because of the comment about steam and grease and eye level) - which honestly scares me a little? In that case that would not be a European thing, or at least not german, because I've never heard of that ever.

Potentially just a British thing then

This design seems like madness to me too but it isn't uncommon here. If you grilled bacon there's a chance of setting the kitchen on fire, as any flames would be closer to the ceiling or any cupboards. I thought since manufacturers like Zanussi make cookers with them it might be common across Europe.

 

[eizbaer]

Ahh fair enough... it is less madness than I originally understood - somehow I was imagining something without that sheet tray underneath just blasting away at the stove way down below regarding toast without a toaster: i would imagine in the oven with the broiler? Should essentially give you the same result as that abomination you posted, but with the added safety of having a proper metal box with a door around it

edit: if you have that craziness in your kitchen, might as well just plop the microwave on top of it why not. can't get any worse from a safety/hazard perspective, right?
edit2: our microwave sits atop our fridge/freezer combo. which is a bit daft, because that thing is 2m tall, but it sort of works without taking up any more countertop space, which is already pretty scarce because of the countertop oven (yes.), not-really-a-thermomix-knockoff, coffee maker, milk-foamer, kettle, baby-milk-warmer-thingamajig and just plain STUFF (mainly fruit in some bowls).

 

[Matt2000]

edit: if you have that craziness in your kitchen, might as well just plop the microwave on top of it why not. can't get any worse from a safety/hazard perspective, right?

I'd rather have that than an electric appliance with a high voltage transformer and increasing amounts of electronics in it. Electronics and steam/grease don't mix well.

 

[ninjacoco]

TIL such a home appliance exists. Kind of looks like a broiler?

 

[Matt2000]

TIL such a home appliance exists. Kind of looks like a broiler?

I looked up broiler and aside from tons of pictures of chickens yeah it's pretty much the same thing when it's electric, the gas versions seem to be a bit different though.

TIL too because I thought broiling was a combination of roasting and boiling, don't ask me what form that would take.