Pictures and notes from various DIY Projects.
All Posts Tagged ‘DIY’
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Garden Room reed blinds
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Running Repairs (365:14)
Running Repairs (365:14). Copyright © 2007 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. This is what happens when you leave the kids in charge of the house while you go away for New Year. I’ve made them suffer long enough it was time to replace the broken toilet seat.
Running Repairs II Copyright © 2007 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Running Repairs III Copyright © 2007 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. -
Running Repairs in the Garden
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Break (365: 90)
Break (365: 90). Copyright © 2007 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Work on renovating the hall has begun.
Today we took down the ceilings on the middle and ground landings and my work room. we also took out the wall between the landing and my work room.
There was no way I was letting my camera into the the dust and dirt, so I took this shot during a break after the dust had settled. The light is great here – note to self, paint this wall white!
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Moved in
With all the remaining undecorated rooms in the house being decorated, I was not going to be able to keep an inside workshop. That means I’ve moved my workbench and tools out into my first ever shed. It’s going to take a while for me to remember where everything is. The kids may tease me, but I did know where everything is. When I say it’s in the general toolbox, that’s where they’ll find what they’re looking for (and all the toolboxes are labeled).
Not only am I having to move my workbench, but also my store of DIY and hobby goodies: timber, cable, old electronics, etc. To store all that stuff I have a second shed for stores.
Packing everything away I discovered what I fondly call ‘my favourite rope’. It’s the mainsheet of my last yacht — which was wrecked in the storm of ’97. I’d started growing my beard that year to save me having to shave while sailing and I vowed to keep my beard until I bought another yacht. ten years on, almost, and I still have my beard…
Shed #2. My Favourite Rope… – It’s all I have left of my last yacht – which was wrecked in the storm of ’97. Copyright © 2007 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. -
A quick break (365: 118)
Chasing out for the electrics, I took a quick break for today’s picture.
Not quite as good as the similar shot on Day 90, but what a difference a month makes, two pics in a row and I’m smiling! Just don’t expect it every damn day 😉
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Running Repairs: dispelling a common myth
Running repairs: dispelling a common myth. Copyright © 2009 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. We use a soldering iron power control as a dimmer for some strings of fairy lights in our bedroom.
Very poor soldering job – Very cheap and not so cheerful. No wonder it eventually failed. Copyright © 2009 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. After a recent furniture move it stopped working. The controller has been sat by my desk for a couple of weeks waiting for that ‘idle moment’ for me to take a look at it, this evening I couldn’t put my mind to any of the other things I’m supposed to be doing so I took the back off and had a look to see what was wrong. It took a couple of minutes to locate a dry joint which is the most likely cause of the problem. Now ironically, I have to buy a soldering iron to fix a soldering iron power control; the only soldering iron Ginger has is more suited to lead pipe work and leaded glass.
While checking the circuit for problems I was able to dispel a common myth. The US mains voltage is not 110 volts and hasn’t been since the 1950s. It is 120 volts, as my trusty voltmeter attests.
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Cleaning out the garage
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Workbench Project
Workbench Project.Copyright © 2009 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. When we bought the minivan it became obvious that the garage would need reorganizing as it is a very tight fit. It’s almost impossible to get at any tools while the van is in the garage. We’ve also got a lot of carpentry to be done so a workbench with easy access and one that I can mount my power tools on is needed.
I’ve designed, what I hope will be a practical foldaway workbench. We’ll see. Now all I have to do is make it.
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Shopping at Lowes
Workbench Project – This morning we went to Lowes to get the stuff needed to build the workbench. Copyright © 2009 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Van-full – Yes 4′ x 8′ sheets do fit in. Copyright © 2009 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. This morning we went to Lowes to get the stuff needed to build the new workbench. Though of course, nothing is that simple. Before I’m finished I’ve got to fit two new receptacles (mains sockets) one half switched for the lighting over the bench and the other half for the garage door opener. This means I’ve had to learn from scratch how electrical work is done in the US. And it is completely different from the UK. Not a screw terminal in sight.
However, My biggest problem with shopping this time was finding screws. They just don’t have any sort of a selection at Lowes. I feel really stupid and very demoralized when such a simple a thing as buying fastenings takes over an hour and I come away with what I feel is substandard items.
At least the van proved that it can (just) take 4′ x 8′ sheets.
We went to another store and lo and behold, they had a stock of decent screws (German). So at least I now know they do exist.
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Cleared up, ready to start
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Building the workbench
The first thing I had to do was make a workbench so I could build the workbench. I’m cutting all the lumber (as it is called here) to length ready for the big assembly job. The two roller stands have been excellent, allowing me to handle eight-foot lengths of 2″ x 10″ timber with ease. They’d be worth the full price, but I bought the pair for $5 at a Garage sale.
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Space is a bit tight
Here’s the bench laid out on the garage floor just so I can check it all fits. I’ve just got the legs for the benchtop to make now, and then it has all got to be assembled. The wall has to be painted before we can put it up too. Ginger is helping out by fixing the wall and painting it.
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Getting Ready for Gluing
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Workbench – Glued and Screwed
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Tra-la!
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Honey-do List
Honey-do. Copyright © 2009 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. This week I’ve been working on my ‘Honey-do’ list and managed to cross off four items: Fitted a new front door, replaced the broken light switch in the kitchen and replaced the light fitting in Alek’s room.
This afternoon saw me working on the fourth project, which involved performing major reconstructive surgery on the couch which was becoming rather saggy. It also involved a lot of close ‘head inside back of couch’ work, which my lack of near vision leaves me struggling, especially if the thing I want to see is at the top of my field of vision. The only way I can see things above me it to try and twist my head as far back as it will go to bring the offending item into the bottom near vision portion of my glasses.
Using leftover two by four timbers to shore things up inside the couch will hopefully hold it all together for some time. Hmmm, I wonder if a couple of two by fours would do anything for my saggies?
I thought all this Do It Yourself work was a fitting excuse to take a picture of myself and the completed workbench.
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Garage Project – Stage II. More shopping for lumber
I need to set up storage space alongside my workbench. Copyright © 2010 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. I need to set up storage space alongside my workbench. Today I grabbed the back of an envelope scribbled some plans and went off and bought the wood. I love how inexpensive good lumber (timber) is here. $7 for an eight-foot length of 2″x10″. Tonight it’s almost complete – though to get the shelving unit into place I’ll have to disconnect a bracket holding the garage door frame.
2019: While my notes on this picture say I was shopping for lumber, I have a suspicion that this picture was actually taken in ACE hardware when I bought the feet for the shelving — Lowes don’t stock that item (well they didn’t then). The display’s don’t look like Lowes, and I see feet are mentioned in my shopping list.
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End of Day One – Almost Finished
More workshop storage – End of day one. Copyright © 2010 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Most of the basic frame has been squared up and assembled. The shelves are ready for doweling and gluing. There are still three more shelves to fit. The whole shelving unit will stand against the wall to the right of my workbench
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My new shelves all finished
My new shelves all finished. Copyright © 2010 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. I have somewhere to keep all my tools including the planes, router, scroll saw and drills Jim gave me, plus the shop vac, leaf blower, and chainsaw. I’ve also finally got around to fitting a vise to the workbench. I just need to give it another coat of paint, one coat wasn’t enough, but I needed a vise to build the shelves. I ended up fine-tuning the placement of stuff over a couple of days, trying to get the most frequently used tools closest to hand.
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Another pile of wood means…
More shelves and the start of Stage III of the garage remodel. We have to replace the window and frame too. The plastic for the window frame has made this an expensive project. As usual, Ginger is making good and painting the walls and I’m doing the woodwork. We are using 2″ lumber for the shelves again because for some reason it is cheaper than 1″.
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Today I made a start on the new shelves for the garage
Today I made a start on the new shelves for the garage. Copyright © 2010 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Yesterday afternoon I made a new holder for the recycling so that it can be moved out of the garage. Today I made a start on the new shelves for the garage. While I’m doing this, Ginger is repairing and painting the wall.
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All Finished, and ready for a final inspection by Getzger
All finished and ready for inspection by Getzger who, no doubt is looking for snakes. Copyright © 2010 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. No doubt Getzger is looking for snakes (don’t tell him but we found one in here when we cleared the garage out).
Here’s how the work progressed:
May 26. The new garage window was installed. In the background is the new shelf unit along with a tent in the throws of being treated with silicon water-proofing.
June 14. The window is finished except for the trim. There are two coats of paint on the wall, and just one more coat to go. Ginger did most of the work painting and putting the film on the window, and Alek helped with the first coat of paint.
This window is finished except for the trim, two coats of paint on wall, just one more coat to go. Copyright © 2010 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. June 15. The wall is all painted, and the shelves are in place. I just need to fit a couple more feet to sheet material shelf (the big long one), a couple of brackets to the top shelf, fit the garden tool pegboard and a holder for my fishing rods, and it will be done.
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Drilling in the workshop (365: 28)
Drilling in the workshop (365: 28). Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Today, I spent some time in the workshop.
With temperatures up in the sixties expected, we planned to go out in the kayaks. That didn’t happen. Some shopping was done, and I spent some time in the workshop instead.
First, I repaired a kitchen drawer and, in the process, learned two valuable safety lessons. Then I made myself a pair of huaraches. I’ve been reading about minimalist footwear for quite a while, and the huaraches seem to be the way to go, providing a very open shoe with a firmly attached sole. They are also very easy to make. So today I made a test pair. The finish of the sole cut-out is a bit rough. I won’t worry about it because I don’t expect these to last long.
Now, I’ll have to give them a test and see how well they fair out on the trail and around home. One thing that has surprised me is that I’m having trouble getting used to the feel of the cord between my toes. As a long-term flip-flop wearer, I wasn’t expecting it to be an issue.
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Repairing a kitchen drawer
Today I repaired a kitchen drawer and in the process learned two valuable safety lessons.
I used my nail gun to fix in a support for the drawer base. I unloaded the two-inch brad nails I had been using, loaded half inch nails, ran a couple of test shots and then nailed the support from the back. Unfortunately, there was one two-inch nail ‘in the pipe’ and it came straight through the front of the drawer slicing my finger. Firstly I should have triple checked all the two-inch nails had been removed, and secondly, my hand shouldn’t have been near the workpiece. I could have easily nailed my finger bone to the front of the drawer. I made absolutely sure there were no nails left in the gun when I put it away.
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Clearing up the workshop (365:138)
It’s time to clear up the workshop, I had been holding off doing this. Not because I now have an aversion to the workshop, but because clearing up and putting everything away is an admission that my lack of care Sunday means I can’t finish the Backpacking stove project I started. Facing ones own stupidity can be hard at times.
At least the van can now be kept in the garage again. Besides clearing up and putting stuff away, I read some, but not all of the course notes, so I will have to finish them tomorrow.
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This morning my watch stopped. It’s a perpetual mechanical divers’ watch, which relies on movement to wind it up. Obviously, I’ve been keeping my injured arm too still to wind it. I’ve moved my watch over to my right hand where it feels most odd, but it is still going.
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Gary takes a break from other duties to repair the washing machine (365:206)
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Making a spice rack for Ginger (365:217)
Making a spice rack for Ginger (365:217). Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Well actually only the back of it,
and it is not just to put ginger in but for ‘Ginger’ who wants a spice rack. I suspect anyone actually bothering to read this knows what I mean.
My bit is all done and I’ve handed it over to my wonderful wife to finish it off. I did have other pictures which I took while I was trying out softboxes in the local Photographic emporium. However, ‘she who will remain nameless’ (with apologies to Rumpole) insisted on finding a way of getting into the background of all of them.
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Washer repair man (365:339)
Turns out the water on the laundry floor wasn’t a backing up drain after all.
No, the water was pouring out of the bottom of the washer instead. Today I learned how to replace a ‘tub seal’ which involved dismantling the washer and removing the washing tub to gain access to the seal. Here you see me in the process of putting it all back together again.
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Making stuff (365:361)
Today I made myself useful by making stuff in the garage
In fact I’m being a proper Santa’s Elf helping Ginger make Christmas presents for the girls when they arrive on Thursday. Darn I missed an opportunity to wear my Christmas hat again.
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Making the bed
When Ginger said “Make the bed.” I’m pretty sure this is what she had in mind
The six of us have been sleeping in a small ‘queen-sized’ bed for the past five years. Six – that’s Ginger, me and the four cats. Finally, we decided to invest in a much bigger bed. We didn’t like the standard shop bought bases, so I designed one based on a bed I saw in one of the architectural blogs I follow. The bed in the post seemed to float in mid-air with subdued lighting under it.
Given the amount of cat barf that we have to avoid, under-bed lighting seemed like a jolly good idea. To make the bed appear to float I decided on a recessed base that couldn’t be seen from normal viewing angles. This is the design I came up with. As per usual (for me) it was over-engineered – but it is good and solid. Despite being recessed twelve inches all round, the base is still big enough to hold four large storage containers.
We prefer the term ‘Hover Bed’
The finished ‘Hover bed’ – So-called because it looks like it is hovering above the floor. Copyright © 2014 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. It just needs some sci-fi sound effects to complete the ‘hover bed’ effect. Our room is too small to be able to get far enough away to take a decent picture of the bed. Even this ‘fish-eye’ image doesn’t really show it off.
‘Floating Bed’ Design
If I was doing it again I’d simplify the design of the base and its connection to the bed platform as in the above design. That is the problem with this type of project. The prototype is what you end up with…
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Washer Repairs (Part I)
Thursday night the washer started smoking. Obviously, that’s not a habit to be encouraged, so I took a quick look and determined that the transmission support bearing had broken up. Today I stripped the washer down, removed the transmission, and ‘rescued’ these loose bits of bearing I found littering the inside of the washer.
Now we have to decide whether to repair (C$250) or buy a replacement ($700-$800). The question is, how long until another bit breaks?
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Washer Repairs (Part II): Gary: 1. Washer: 0.
However, there is bound to be a re-match later. This is what $250 of washing machine parts looks like. I can highly recommend AppliancePartsPros.com, not just for the very fast service (and inexpensive delivery charges), but also for the videos – though they do make it look too easy to do and in this case left out at least one step.
I could claim that this was one of my birthday gifts, but not really. Though fixing the washer was one of my birthday activities.
It took me a good couple of hours to clean all the gunk out of the washer tub and drum. We won’t mention the state of the floor under the washer, which I had to give a thorough wash. Before starting the re-assembly I gave the inside of the washer a quick wipe down and vacuum too. This is the starting point for the re-build.
I didn’t take any pictures after this as once the tub is in place it looks pretty boring.I did lose my temper once during the reassembly – when I thought I’d lost a tool and concluded I must have left it inside the machine somewhere. After a few minutes of unreasonable cussing, I found the tool under the machine, where it had rolled unbeknownst to me.
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Building Bookcases
This weekend I started work on a long-outstanding project to build a bookcase.
Not just any bookcase but an eight-foot long seven-foot-high recessed bookcase. The project would have gone a lot more smoothly if Lowes hadn’t refused to cut the 8′ x 4′ plywood sheets into 11½” boards. So I ended up making around 75′ of cuts with a circular saw. The saw-sled I made a year-or-so ago made it a little bit easier. But, it still took me several hours to do something Lowes could have done in around 15-20 minutes.
Having cut the sheets into boards, I spent Sunday morning cutting all the broads to length. I finished that just in time for us to take Getzger to the Blessing of the Animals.
Now all I have to do is just (just, Ha!) assemble it all, stain and seal it. -
Bookcases – First Fit
Now these are out of the workshop I have space to stain and varnish the backs.
Once they are fitted I’ve just got the edge trim to make and fit. Of course, now I know why I’ve been putting this job off. It wasn’t the nigh on $400 of materials, nor the two days spent cutting all the wood to size. It wasn’t the two and a half hours it took to put each one together (each bookcase has more than eighty screws in it).
No, the worst part of this build was the two coats of stain, and the two coats of varnish, plus polishing and rubbing down. I had plenty of time to think about it, it took two hours per coat of varnish per bookcase.
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Back to the Bookcases
They look even more like the plan from this angle. Copyright © 2015 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. (See what I did there?)
Today I got a chance to put the final coat of varnish on the backs of the bookcases. Then this evening I indulged myself with an orgy of nailing with the nail gun. Always fun 🙂
It’s starting to look a lot like my plan.
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Uh-oh! It looks like we need more bookcases
This is what three big plastic bins and ten cardboard boxes of books look like.
My books arrived along with my other possessions on January 12, 2009. At that time we had nowhere to put them and they’ve stayed in boxes in the garage ever since.
When we put up the dividing wall, Ginger’s books got packed away too.
Earlier this year Jim did some sterling work under the house installing an additional floor pillar to support the weight of this lot plus the piano on the wall opposite.
Next jobs – display shelves for Ginger’s blue glass that also got put away when the dividers were built and a display cabinet for all my old cameras.
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Nail Gun
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Bookcase – Finished
I didn’t take a picture of the finished bookcase, so I took a couple today.
On the original picture, you can read all the titles. Hopefully, not so on the web resolution version.
I am going to have to be careful with the X-E2s, and not get lazy. It is very tempting to opt for a higher ISO and handhold shots like these at 1/10 second and 1/15 second. I must use a tripod. Just because I can hand-hold the camera, doesn’t mean I should.
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Steam Punk Sidearm
My sister is having a steam punk themed wedding,
so I’ve made myself this steam punk gun. After the wedding I’ll give it to them mounted in the frame below.
I spent a lot longer on making this accessory than I should have, but I’ve never tried making a model like this before. Touring the flea-markets looking for parts was fun. I ended up buying and old heat gun and a candlestick. I spent a lot of time working out how to make sure it was TSA friendly for the flight to the UK. The hardest bit was working out how to fix the candlestick in the barrel. The sights are an old transistor and I used a monitor cable, the top of a water bottle and some other bits from my junk box.
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Standing Desk Update
The new monitor stand and cable tidy channel for my desk arrived today. Anything that clears stuff off of my desk has to be good. I’ve also invested in a wireless keyboard and mouse to get rid of those pesky cables.
Standing Desk – Waiting for the new monitor stand and cable management That’s the new monitor stand installed. There is just the cable management to deal with now. My standing desk with all the cables tidied away. Update: November 2017
I ended up replacing the monitor stand with one that was even higher (from the same company). I’m hoping that having the monitor higher will improve my posture.
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Making a Simple Leather Journal Cover
Finished journal cover and some of the tools used. Copyright © 2017 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. My original idea of keeping my wallet insert in with my journal works fine. And my full Bujo with the wallet will fit into my pants pocket. However, it weighs around 1 lb, and is bulky, which is a pain when you are just popping out to the store, going hiking or backpacking. I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a second leather journal cover just for my personal journal (not Bujo) and a smaller wallet insert. The idea being I’ll use this for running around. For the moment I’ve moved my full wallet insert over into the new cover, and we’ll see how it goes.
It took me a couple of hours to make, and whether you make your own or buy a cover depends on how much you value your time vs the creative satisfaction obtained from making it. I’m all for saving money, I enjoyed making it, and I needed another excuse to procrastinate.
Apica CD10 Notebook and the makings of a new journal/wallet cover. Copyright © 2017 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Making a Leather Journal Cover
I found that the hardest part is selecting the leather. It needs to be rigid enough to protect your notebook(s), but not so stiff as to be impossible to fold. Leather thickness is measured in ounces (It just is, I have no idea why). My journal cover and the leather seen here is 9 oz.
Before I started I made a test cover from card to make sure I had all the sizes right.
Having got the difficult bit out of the way, I used a Sharpie to mark the desired height and width on the face of the leather, and the steel rule and craft knife to cut the leather. You’ll need a surface to work on that you don’t mind damaging – I used a cutting mat. I used a quarter to mark the curve on the corners and followed the line I drew with the craft knife. I cut from the finished side of the leather. I used a small drill bit to make the holes, I found it helps to push a punch through a little to stretch the holes.
This journal is made to hold two notebooks, so I have just two holes top and bottom of the spine for the lacing. I’ve found setting the holes ¼” from the edges has worked for me. I also make a hole in the center of the spine for the closure. Some people prefer it to be in the middle of one of the cover pages so it can be used to hold the pages down, or as a marker. I don’t like the lump in the middle of the page, I’ve stuck with the hole in the center of the spine.
Tip on threading pesky cords. Copyright © 2017 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. I have no idea who gave me this tip. Probably Ginger from her sewing experience. Whoever it was, I do know that this tip works. In this case, I’m using a loop of fishing line to pull the 1mm elastic cord through.
Lacing for two inserts (Two holes top and bottom in the spine) – 1mm shock cord
Starting inside the cover:
- Top Right to Top Left,
- to Bottom Left to Bottom Right,
- and tie off.
Journal Lacing. Copyright © 2017 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. I used 1mm cord for the closure as well as for holding the notebook(s) in place. I’d prefer to use a 3mm closure cord, but apparently (after much searching), I don’t have any at the moment. Once I get some, I’ll slightly enlarge the hole in the spine and swap the cord.
Lacing for four inserts (Three holes top and bottom in the spine) – 1mm shock cord
Starting inside the cover:
- Top Right to Top Middle,
- to Bottom Middle to Bottom Left,
- to Top Left to Top Middle,
- to Bottom Middle to Bottom Right,
- and tie off.
Everyday Carry Journal Lacing. Copyright © 2017 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Dimensions: Leather Journal / BuJo Compact size (Two A6 notebooks, ½ Inch Spine)
Overall cover dimensions: 9 ¾” x 6 ¼”. Size guide. I allowed 4 ½” for the front and back covers, ½” for the spine and ¼” for the folds. The holes for the 1mm elastic cord holding notebooks are positioned ¼” from the top and bottom edge.
Finishing Touches
If the leather is a bit rough on the edges, I found some very fine sandpaper will clean it up. I don’t know if this is a recommended method, but it worked for me.
I also added an inside cover – the white sheet in the pictures – out of 100 lb card stock. I added a couple of fold-up pockets taped along the edges with sticky tape. These hold business cards etc… I was concerned the pockets wouldn’t last long, but after a year of constant daily use and they are still holding up fine.
Finally, I tied ribbon place markers to the cords. Getting different colored ribbons can be difficult unless you want to buy several yards of each color. Amazon is your friend, I bought a whole bunch of â…›” ribbons for a few dollars.
Update, December 2019. After two-and-a-half years of constant use, the tape on one of the pockets of the inside cover broke and the paper had got a bit grubby, so I made a new one.
A note about the links. The links marked with a this icon – – are affiliate links, if you buy through them, it doesn’t cost you more, and I get a tiny percentage which helps me offset the cost of keeping this website running. However, please buy from the source that makes the most sense for you!
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Leather Writing Pad & Work Surface
My desk with it’s new leather writing & work surface For a long time now I’ve been using a piece of 16″ x 20″ black card on my desk as a rest and writing surface. It had begun to look a little the worse for wear, with water stains, cat snot, ink spills, and whatever on it. Rather than spend another $5+ on more card, I thought I’d venture down to the wonderful leather emporium that is Springfield Leather and see if I could find an off-cut that might do the trick. After browsing for an hour I came away with this piece, 12″ x 24″ slightly discounted from $15 to just under $13 for two square feet.
Now to see how well it stands up to everyday use, that is, the spilled water, cat snot, ink, etc…
I’m going to make a new desktop at some point to match my new filing cabinet tops. When I do I will look at recessing this into the desk’s surface.
By-the-way. Yes, I do have a thing about Pilot Metropolitan fountain pens, and each one has an appropriately matching color ink.
[Update – After
six months’five years’ use] It’s holding up really well, in fact I’d say it’s getting better with time and use. I apply leather polish every once in a while. It’s got scratches and marks, but they just add to its character. My only regret remains, that I didn’t make one earlier. -
Lighting Test – Journal and Pilot Metropolitan Pen
I’ve just built a lightbox/photography area into a closet in Ginger’s studio. We’ve also bought some new LED lights and this was a quick first test with just two of the lights operating.
It looks like it is going to work. We are going to have to get some black card for the walls to control reflections and highlights – like the one showing on the top left of the spine of my journal. Sometimes we’ll want those highlights, sometimes we won’t.
Below the photography area, I fitted shelves to either side and there is room for two, wheeled carts to fit in the middle. I also added another higher shelf – mainly to fix the lights to.
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Procrastinating In The Workshop
There are lots of other things I could be doing, like yard work.
Instead, I’ve chosen to make three cellphone stands and a couple of bench rollers.
It’s amazing the number of tools needed and the amount of mess created even for the smallest of projects. Both projects were completed, and no yard work was done. That’s at least a partial result, right?
My last project of the day was to declutter the workshop a little bit by finally putting bases on the bench rollers I’ve had for years.
It’s surprising the number of tools you need for the most simple of projects.
All I did was cut a slot in some decorative blocks of wood to create some desk / nightstand cell phone holders.
- Mallet – to hammer the bench stops into place
- Big Level – straight edge to line up all the pieces for marking
- Ear defenders – hearing protection while cutting & vacuuming
- Set Square – I just used the rule for a straight edge
- Quick Square – marking / measuring
- Sandpaper – finishing
- Micrometer – depth and width setting
- Chisel – cleaning up cuts
- Pencil – Marking.
Not shown:
- Pry-bar – to get the bench stops out again!
- Compound Miter saw – 15° slot cutting
- Shop Vac. – dust control & clean-up
- Compressor / air tank – dusting off
- Paint Brush – final finishing
And that moment when you go to get your good paintbrush …
… and find that a teenager has been using it. -
Cellphone Stand
A nice, simple project. I made three cellphone stands, one for Ginger, one for my nightstand and one for my desk. It took a couple of prototypes to get the depth just right so that the fingerprint sensor can still be used without the phone falling out of the rest.
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Small Product Photography Set-up in a Closet (Our ‘photo closet’)
Overhead camera mount. Copyright © 2017 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Back in June Ginger moved her studio to another of the bedrooms. She asked me to build a small product photo studio in the room’s closet. Below the photography area I fitted shelves to either side and there is room for two of her wheeled carts to fit in the middle. I also added another higher shelf – mainly to fix the lights to. We’ve bought some new LED lights with adjustable brightness and color. At the moment I’m not convinced that they are bright enough. We are going to add some black curtains to the walls so we can adjust the reflections and highlights.
So far it seems to work fairly well.
Update
It worked well, but the space was too small. In 2023 we replaced the photo closet with a new ‘photo space‘ in another room.
Some sample images
This morning Ginger asked if I could add an overhead camera mount to the ‘photo closet’. After a bit of thought I came up with this arrangement which uses a drawer slide and a cannibalized tripod head.
Close-up showing the drawer slide. Copyright © 2017 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. The remains of the tripod didn’t go to waste. I fitted a wooden top-plate to it and it can be used to hold an additional light.
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I’ve Been Busy in the Workshop
I completed two projects this week.
The first project was planned, the second project came as a surprise. All in all, I’ve spent a fair bit of time in the workshop.
Crawl Space Access Hatch and Fan
The crawl space access hatch & fan we made 10 years ago had started to rot. My first project was to build a replacement.
We wanted the new access hatch/fan to stay in place all year round, unlike the previous fan, which had to be put away each winter because we couldn’t seal it. I also wanted to stop the fall leaves getting into the fan, and for it to have a flat top strong enough to take my weight.
This is the result.
I couldn’t buy a 4′ x 4′ board â…›” thick, which is what I wanted to use as the sub-base to mount the fan on. There was no thin board in stock, so I had to use a thicker board which has resulted in the cover being a bit heavier than I’d planned.
It all fits nice and snugly and the screening should keep the leaves (and bugs) out. The whole thing lifts up for access to the crawl space, though I will admit it is heavier than I hoped – Typical Gary over-engineering. I put a lot of paint on it so I’m hoping it’ll last longer than the previous cover which was rather hastily put together during one of my visits.
A Desk for Alek
Thursday Alek and Ginger went to Restore and came back with a desk drawer unit and a vanity panel. I was asked if I could turn the two bits into a desk for Alek.
I was going to buy some new lumber and metal brackets. However, I realized I ought to have enough bits and pieces hanging around to do the job (Added bonus – more workshop decluttering).
I turned this into a challenge to complete the entire job using only materials I had on-hand.
I found enough lumber but I was struggling to come up with metal brackets and plates to join the bits together. Checking the drawer unit I discovered it had seven brackets to secure the desktop – so I removed three of them. For the metal plates, I used an old hinge – cutting off the hinge part and grinding it down square.
The vanity panel had adjustable feet, which I removed and fitted to the new desk legs. The desktop panel wasn’t as deep as the drawer unit so I made a backstop to fill (most of) the difference. I painted the whole lot with some black paint we had leftover from the Bed Project.
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My Weekend – Forty Feet of Shelving
I have my office, Ginger has her studio and my former office space. The office space has been due for remodeling for a long time. My first job has been to install forty feet of shelving to provide a home for most of Ginger’s blue glass. Ginger didn’t want a back on the shelves, and the best idea I could come up with to hide the shelf supports on such a long run was to bury them in the wall. So that’s what I’ve done. Now I’ve got to finish patching the wall ready for the room to be painted. The shelves aren’t finished yet either. l have to sand them down, make and fit hidden shelf end supports, and then paint everything.
Oh, and I’d better remember to patch that huge hole in the wall (The cardboard is to stop inquisitive felines getting under the house).
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Forty Feet of Blue
Ginger’s Blue Glass Collection Today Ginger filled her new office shelves with her blue glass collection.
The office remodel project is around 80% finished, though we still have half the walls to be painted. This side is complete and we can move stuff over into this half and paint the remainder.
Getting this far took far longer than expected – there was a lot more filling, patching, sanding, and coats of paint than anticipated, but the result is worth it.
All the shelf supports are plastered into the wall, and each shelf could take my weight and more. Preparing the wood we used for the shelves was the biggest unexpected time-consumer. I was going to use prepared wood, but we couldn’t find any of good enough quality the size we wanted. That meant using construction lumber and a lot of sanding and preparation.
I think my drywall patching skills are improving, you really cannot see where we cut out the drywall to fix in the shelf supports and the 24″ x 18″ hole in the wall has disappeared. Magic!
And this is what it looked like after we had started work:
Now the blue glass has been moved from where it was being stored in the garage, my next task is to tackle the garage’s disorganized storage area (or phase IV of the garage remodel, as it might be called. I finished phase III in June 2010, so that’s long overdue too!).
I’m slowly crossing off jobs to be done so I can get to the one I want done, which is to remodel my office.
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Gary vs The Drier (Again)
I was told that there was a blue flash and a bang, and the dryer stopped working.
It didn’t take long with my faithful multimeter to work out there was an open circuit on the drier power supply — no real surprises there. The extent of the damage was quite impressive though. One of the wires and the mains connection block was damaged. The block had melted and the insulation was burned off of the wire.
For a small component, the connection block was surprisingly expensive to replace (Over $30.00). The repair wasn’t helped or speeded up by needing a special tool to crimp the cables onto the spade connectors.
I guess I need to make a diary note to check the connections once every now-and-then, as my best guess is that the problem was caused by the connection coming loose and overheating due to arcing.
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Sunday Make & Mend – Weekly Journal Insert
Making my Weekly Insert. Copyright © 2017 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Today my Bullet Journal Ran out of Space.
It’s time to set up a new notebook. While I was doing that and setting up for the new week, I took some pictures to answer a question asked on one of the Facebook Groups I’m a member of. So here’s how I put together my bullet journal, along with how I hold my weekly inserts in place.
It is all very simple.
I have a gatefold insert I use each week for time recording and some basic planning. To state the obvious, I edit the insert for the right dates and print it on Inkjet paper (Inkjet paper is fountain pen friendly).
It only takes some basic tools to make:
- a straight-edge,
- cutting wheel (scissors would do),
- corner trimmer,
- cutting mat.
The template includes folding marks so I know where to make the folds. It typically takes less than five minutes to make my insert.
By the way, the big stack at the top of the picture is around 18 month’s worth of filled-in weekly inserts.
The insert is held in place with 1mm shock cord. Copyright © 2017 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Weekly insert in place. Copyright © 2017 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Inserting a Notebook into the leather cover. I also use 1mm shock cord to hold my notebooks in their leather cover. Copyright © 2017 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. And that’s it …
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I think I know what killed the fridge-freezer
The behemoth stands menacing anyone daring to enter the kitchen. Copyright © 2018 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. It was the cats wot did it guv.
Today I moved the fridge-freezer out ready to be taken away tomorrow when (hopefully), the new fridge-freezer arrives.
In the process, I think I discovered what killed it. I suspect it was a long lingering death caused by the buildup of cat fur.
Pride before a fall & I love it when a plan (albeit Plan B) comes together.
Around ten years ago I replaced the water line to the fridge. For some unknown reason, I didn’t fit an isolation valve (I do know better, honest!). Which left me with the dilemma of how to shift the fridge without shutting off the water main. Removing the front panel I found the water line and decided to try clamping it off with a pair of mole grips (I cannot remember what Americans call them). That worked great until I started moving the beast out, and I discovered that I’d just been very clever and cut one of the internal water lines, and not disconnected the supply. D’oh! As my hero, Homer would have said.
Looking closely at the real connection, and prying off a bit of the back cover, I realized that the supply goes to an electric shut off, which only turns on when there is a demand for water. Problem solved, I just ripped out the solenoid and cut the internal lines (again).
Plan B. That’s right, I ripped some of the guts out of it and the water is staying where it belongs — in the pipe. Copyright © 2018 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Of course, I will have to shut the water off to hook up the new fridge-freezer, but that’ll only be for a few minutes (Fingers crossed!) and not the several hours I will probably have to wait for the new one to arrive. Of course, I may be able to get away with kinking the pipe up to stem the flow. But that’ll depend on where the hook-up is on the new fridge.
I guess it makes a change from backpacking and hiking.
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Garage Project: Getting Started With Stage IV
Garage Project: Getting Started with Stage IV – I forgot to take a picture before I started clearing away, so the corner to the right had already been cleared. Copyright © 2019 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. The plan is to build floor to ceiling storage across this end wall with a separate storage area to the right for the shop vac, compressor, and their associated tools. There are no drawings for this project (a decision I will rue), I just have some general ideas, and sketches in my notebook. So we’ll see how it goes as the work progresses.
Because we have so much stuff stored in here, I’m going to have to work around things. To manage that I intend to build the shop vac and compressor storage first, so I can move the compressor, and the new top-shelf over the garage back door should hold a lot of the other things that were piled behind me as I took this picture.
The goal is to free up shelf space elsewhere in the garage so that it’s not as cluttered, so I can get at tools without moving or knocking things over. We want to remove obstacles that get in the way when getting in and out of the minivan (yes a minivan fits in here), and also make the area easier to keep clean, hopefully making it a less inviting home to the local spider population, especially the brown recluse spiders we’ve recently spotted.
Stage IV? I’ve just realized I’ve not written about stages I – III, so that’s something I’ll have to catch up on. For now, here’s a list.
- Stage I – Workbench Project.
- Stage II – Additional Storage.
- Stage III – New window and even more storage.
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That’s the corner cleaned up
That’s the corner cleaned up – The wall’s been patched, and the first coat of paint has been applied. Copyright © 2019 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. That’s the corner cleaned up – The wall’s been patched, and the first coat of paint has been applied. I have just enough room to build the corner storage area and put up the end-wall for the main storage space. It’s going to take three coats of paint to cover the mess on the wall. Fortunately, there were no large holes in this section to fill. However, I see there’s a nice big hole in the wall under the workbench that will need to be patched when I start working on that side of the room.
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Garage Project – The shop vac and compressor now have a new home.
Garage Progress – The shop vac and compressor now have a new home. Copyright © 2019 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Building Supplies – A trip to Lowes was needed for lumber and some drywall. So far the bill is around $200. Copyright © 2019 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. It took a lot of wood, two sheets of drywall, a fair bit of time, effort, and no small amount of bodging to get to this point. If you look carefully at the top of the storage cupboard you’ll see it has been extended upward. That was the result of a ‘good idea’ and not having any drawn up plans.
I thought I could lower the top shelf to gain a bit more clearance — and I could by over an inch — but what I failed to realize was that also involved dropping the support for the sliding doors that I plan to install, and they run the whole width of the garage. Fortunately, experience has taught me to check and double-check, so before I put up the drywall I put up the sliding door support cross-piece in place and realized that it stopped the back door from fully opening. In the picture above the left-hand half of the crosspiece can be seen temporarily clamped in place to the top of the wall. I rejected the idea of notching the crosspiece, so I had to extend the walls up, back to where I had originally intended to put them. I had to re-frame the other wall to the correct height. Grrr.
Both of the new walls need patching and painting. Plus the top shelf needs to be re-fitted. Then I will be ready for the main build on the left-hand side of the garage.
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Garage Project – Ready to start building the main storage area.
It took a lot of work to remove the old workbench and prep that wall ready for painting. Besides the preexisting hole in the wall, I managed to do a fair bit of damage prising the workbench out — it was nailed to the wall and there were a lot of nails used, so lots of holes to patch. You can get an idea of the number of nails involved by looking at the boards leaning over on the left of the frame. It was so well secured I even used the hydraulic jack to help break it up.
Magically the pile of lumber has grown (another trip to Lowes), and in the foreground is the new-to-me table saw which Jim found in a yard sale sometime last year. I’ve never had a table saw before, and I must say that I wish I’d bought one years ago. Now if I don’t have a piece of wood the size I need, I can produce something in minutes. The table saw ($100), along with my compound miter saw, circular saw ($15 in a yard sale), drill press ($1 in a yard sale), and cordless drill are my most used tools. And it just goes to show how a bit of time spent rummaging around in yard sales around can save a lot of money. I must have got 80% of my tools in yard sales.
Sitting on the table saw is a quick test build of the top rail that will carry the sliding doors. Based on the results of making the test piece I have decided to trim the back of the horizontal 2″x4″ cross piece to make sure it screws in square. It’s going to be a heavy beam, but it has to carry the weight of the doors, and the top shelf over an unsupported span of around five or more feet. I’ll be using some 3/8″ Lag screws I have to fix it in place, plus I’ll glue it too. I don’t think it’ll have any trouble with the weight.
Loads’a nails – When I mentioned that there were a lot of nails in the old workbech, I wasn’t joking. Copyright © 2019 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. The lag screws are pretty beefy. Copyright © 2019 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Lag Screw (one of eight) – holding the horizontal 2″x4″ beam carrying the sliding doors, to the vertical 2″x4″ beam that attaches it to the rest of the structure and supports the top shelves via a length of 2″x3″ screwed into the back. Copyright © 2019 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. -
Garage Project – Main storage area and the overhead shelving
Main storage area – and the overhead shelving is finished too. Copyright © 2019 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. This project is starting to come together, though there are still a lot of details to attend to before it will be finished. The track for the sliding doors is in place. I could have bought a 12ft length of track for $33, but the delivery charge was $125! So I opted to buy two six-foot lengths of track ($18 each) and hope that the join doesn’t prove to be too much of a problem.
All this construction has produced a lot of sawdust and a big pile of off-cuts, but with the shelves up I’ve been able to start putting things away again. I’ve also disposed of a lot of stuff, visiting two recycling plants and dropping some re-usable items off at Habitat for Humanity for them to sell on.
With all the main construction finished I’ve also started cleaning up as the next job is to make the doors for the storage area. I have to make them as they need to be 39 inches wide and just one and three-eighth inches deep.
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Garage Project – Open Sez-a-me
Doors made and fitted. This was the key element of my idea. It’ll keep the worst of the dust out of the storage area. Copyright © 2019 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Reminder: This is what it looked like three weeks ago. Copyright © 2019 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Phew! I’m getting there. Notice how there’s a ceiling in the entryway, as well as doors? — the entryway ceiling was there on August 9, but I forgot to mention it — The doors took a lot longer to make than I expected. A lot of time is wasted moving stuff around and setting up the saw cuts. A single car garage is a bit small for working with 4′ x 8′ sheets. Especially when you are trying to be careful to not damage the finish. Unusually for me, I am relying on glue alone (Loctite Ultimate Power Grab) to hold the front and back skins of the doors to the internal frames I made. I suspect that the two doors exceed the manufacturer’s 50lb door weight limit on the door track, but I’ve beefed up the track with some extra screws.
There is still lots to do, like fitting doors to the top shelf to keep the dust out of there too, then there’s plumbing in the compressor and shop vac so that I can access them at the workbench, some more drawers to make, and I’m planning on fitting an AC unit out here as it gets hot, and making a tool cart to fit in the remaining space in the storage area.
Most of that will keep for the moment. More important is putting up a rack to go up near the ceiling to the left of the kayaks to hold long pieces of lumber up out of the way. If I do that and get rid of the rest of the detritus from removing the old workbench and then maybe the minivan will be allowed back in the garage.
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Garage Project – Just about done
… For now.
I’ve been tinkering with finishing this project for a few weeks now. I fitted the sliding doors to the top shelf and the ceiling rack (to the left of my kayak) for storing lengths of lumber back in August.
Sliding door height gauge – When I realized the garage ceiling wasn’t level I needed some easy way to optimize the door heights across the twelve-foot span. This was it. Copyright © 2019 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. The top sliding doors were not without their challenges. I knew the garage floor sloped, that makes sense, water and fumes need to be able to flow out of the door away from the house. However, I hadn’t noticed that the ceiling wasn’t level – there’s about ½” to 1″ difference across the 12′ span. Either that or my spirit level needs adjusting… That raised a problem with the top doors, which slide in a track fixed to the ceiling. Musing over how to work out the best height for the doors — one that allowed me to easily insert and remove them, but also held them in place — I made myself this little gauge, which I used to experiment with different heights. The ceiling was out by too much though, so had I make the doors at each end a different height, but the gauge enabled me to optimize the doors to work over a larger span.
Sliding doors – hopefully, to keep the dust out of the top shelf. Hmmm. I’m going to have to tackle that flaky ceiling at some point. Copyright © 2019 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Workbench storage revisited
Where the boxes used to live. That cross brace made them stick out too far. Copyright © 2019 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. One of the main goals of the project was to try and declutter and improve access to everything. A major issue with the original build of the workbench and storage was that I used a load of cat litter boxes for storage. The boxes are great, but they stuck out four inches and would catch on bags and clothing as you walked past. Some of my tools stuck out a bit too. Changes were needed.
While I was building the end units I made mental notes of issues using the bench and accessing tools etc. Last weekend (and some evenings this week), I’ve rearranged where I keep most of my tools and I replaced the cat litter boxes with drawers. I also built the final drawer for the ‘suck and blow’ (Vacuum cleaner and compressor) closet.
The drawers are pretty primitive, and I could have made a better job of them, but they are holding all my screws, nails, brads, sanding belts and pads, safety equipment (masks, gloves, glasses, etc.), and more besides! And they don’t stick out.
Garage Workbench – waiting to be decluttered. There are a few tools here I no longer use, and lots of things just sitting on shelves because I have nowhere else to keep them. I’m hoping a few more drawers might at least remove the clutter from view and stop it collecting dust. On the workbench is the frame for the doors to the new storage area, and my nifty $1 yard sale find drill press. Copyright © 2019 Gary Allman, all rights reserved.Still to do …
Quite a lot, but I’ll save that for Stage IV ( or is it V? I’ve lost track).
- Paint the back door.
- Fit trim around the back door.
- Doors and external ventilation for the Suck and Blow closet.
- Dust extractor and vacuum connections plumbed to the workbench.
- Compressed air plumbed to the workbench.
- Re-wiring, and wire in new sockets (Needs an electrician. A pox on code is all I can say. I could do this easily)
- Install an AC Unit.
- Repaint the ceiling.
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My job for the weekend
My job for the weekend – is to convert this lot into a new front deck. Copyright © 2020 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Is to convert this lot into a new front deck
Fortunately, I had a lot of help, as it involved digging 10 post holes and a lot of assembling. With Ginger’s dad, Jim doing most of the ‘heavy lifting,’ my job was to cut everything up, move it, and hold things while they were assembled.
This what it was supposed to look like
And this is how it turned out
It looks a lot like the plan – which was what I wanted! Copyright © 2020 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. If you are wondering why it isn’t all decked, that’s because there is a shortage of lumber at the moment, and I haven’t been able to buy all the decking I need. There’s also another platform still to be added.
It may not look too complicated but there was quite a lot to it, and only a couple of modifications to the plan were required as we went along. Below is the framing plan for the complete project. Now I know exactly where the lower platform sits, I can finish working out how best to put it together (once I’ve bought some more lumber).
Thanks to Jim’s help and experience we got a lot done in a couple of days. Now Ginger is forming plans for landscaping the front yard which was all torn up by the Bob-Cat that broke up and removed the old concrete step. We have two big trees to have taken down before we do any landscaping. We hate the idea of getting rid of them, but one is unsafe, having been damaged in the ice storm in 2007, and the other dropped a big limb a year ago, just missing the house, and it drops loads of gumballs which are a huge mess, not to mention, a big slip and trip hazard.
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Hall Gear Closet – Framing
New project. We have two-and-a-half closets in the house full of backpacking gear (and some overflow in the shed too). Doing something about it is long overdue. I decided to use the space that used to be occupied by the piano and convert it into a gear closet. Today I started framing the new built-in closet. The plan is to mirror the design of the bookcase opposite.
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Hall Gear Closet – taped and first skim coat applied
Hall Gear Closet – taped and first skim coat applied. Copyright © 2021 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Ginger, “Most people just buy furniture, they don’t build things in.” Gary, “It must be the Frank Lloyd Wright in me.”
I put up the sheetrock a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday I taped up all the joints and put on the first skim coat of plaster. I do this sort of project once every few years so my skills aren’t exactly honed. Hopefully when I’m finished you won’t be able to see the join, and it will look like it has always been a part of the house.
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Gear closet update
Gear Closet update – Still plenty left to do. Bottom shelf and kick space, shelf fronts, and … doors to make. Copyright © 2021 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. I’ve been nibbling away at this project as work, backpacking, and life, in general, has allowed. I took advantage of the long Thanksgiving weekend to try and make some progress.
Still to do:
- Make and fit the bottom shelves and kick space.
- Shelf fronts.
- Paint shelves.
- Make and fit the doors.
Currently, the closet is home to Ginger’s business supplies and spares. My next job will be making an almost identical closet to hold all this. Thankfully most of the carcass for that closet is already in place, so less work should be involved. Essentially, this closet is the prototype for Ginger’s. Once that closet is complete, we can see how much backpacking gear we can fit in here. Then I can finally think about remodeling my office.
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Distractions
Unplanned activity – the dryer failed, which created an avalanche of consequences. Copyright © 2021 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. A couple of weeks before Christmas the dryer broke down. I’ve fixed it in the past, and I was ready to fix it again. It sounded like a motor bearing had failed. We were just about to have the utility room, kitchen, and our bedroom painted, so Ginger decided that she’d pop out and buy a new dryer and washer for the freshly painted room. And that’s when the work began.
First, the water shut-offs on the washer were frozen, so taking out the washer caused a few problems, and I called a plumber in to replace them (Yes, I could have done the job myself, but I’m busy doing other things).
Then we realized that the new drier was much deeper and would get in the way of the door to the garage. By moving the wall vent to the side of the dryer, we could get the drier pushed back closer to the wall and out of the way of the door. With the painter due any day, I removed the wall vent and patched the wall so it could be painted, and we’d worry about where to put the new vent later.
Then the painter called and told us he had COVID. That gave us some more time, so we researched different dryer venting solutions and finally found the slim telescoping vent, that was thin enough for me to mount inside the wall cavity. Which is what you see in the picture. Fitting it meant removing a large section of the wall (including the very good patch job I’d done a few days earlier). Oh well.
Bizarre switch wiring – plus it’s a single light switch in a double box. I think it might have been part of some strange three-way switch arrangement. Copyright © 2021 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. While I was at it, I moved an electrical outlet that wouldn’t be accessible when our plans for the utility room are complete — watch this space — and there was a bizarre switch arrangement for the outside light that I also fixed. Both involved removing big sections of the wall and then patching them up again.
Now, (January), we are having a new floor fitted too, and the painter still hasn’t painted the room.
The result of all this extra work was that my planned work on the hall gear closet was put on hold while it was dealt with.
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Gary in the workshop
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Making the gear closet doors
There have been a few upgrades in the workshop. Black Friday Grizzly had a drill press and bandsaw on sale at a price I couldn’t refuse. The pair cost less than the bandsaw normally retails at. Both tools have been on my ‘to buy’ list for ages. The bandsaw came in particularly useful for all the joints I had to make for the gear closet doors.
And for Christmas Jim and Carol gave me a new DeWalt drill driver and impact driver, which have come in very handy. I now need to find a new home for my old (as in over 17 years old) DeWalt drill driver, which came all the way across the Atlantic with me.
The white shelf unit in the background of the picture below is a sort of staging area. Each shelf is dedicated to one or more projects. Right now I have more going on than I can cope with. There’s:
- The hall gear closet project
- The utility room project
- Kitchen baseboard and quarter-round replacement
- Ginger’s storage closet
- some storage units for Ginger’s studio
- A gutter downspout to fix
- ‘Monolith’ finishing
Then there are the minor jobs I’ve done over the past couple of months but not bothered to mention, like:
- replacing a broken bathroom window
- Jacking up the roof at the front of the house (with a car jack) and replacing a rotten roof support post base
- Replacing our front door (okay helping Jim do it).
- Fitting two new front lights
There’s probably more, but those are the highlights. And September through November I was working 60-80 hour weeks.
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Almost Complete
Final coat of stain – Made a lot of difference to the color. Now to varnish it all, add door handles, and it’s finished. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. The picture looking down the hall (below) makes the hall look impossibly long and narrow. The bookcase on the left is 11ft. long. The other picture provides a sneak peek of the new front door too. I hope you’ll notice how you cannot see the join where I extended the wall out to build the gear closet.
Update
- 01-17-2022 I swapped out some of the pictures for essentially the same shots, but taken after the final coat of stain was added.
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Boxes – we have some work to do today
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Ginger fitting hinges
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Cabinets fitted on one side
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And that’s the cabinets fitted
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My task for tomorrow
My task for tomorrow … Is to turn this pile of wood into a ‘pantry’ and shelving unit. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Is to turn this pile of wood into a ‘pantry’ and shelving unit.
I think I’m going to need an early start if I’m going to get this finished in a day. We’ll see how far I get. I worked for a few hours today, so I guess it won’t matter if it overruns a bit into Sunday. (My work week is currently Sunday – Thursday.)
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Well, that didn’t go as planned…
At least one of the shelving units fits in where it is supposed to go. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. As usual, things took a lot longer to do than I anticipated, and I made two annoying mistakes.
You may, or may not, be wondering why there is a set of shelves standing in the middle of the floor. Well… the shelves fit exactly in the space, but I forgot to make allowance for the door trim, so there is no way to actually get the shelves into the space. When I realized this, My knee-jerk reaction — beyond a lot of swearing — was to break the shelf unit down and reduce its width. However, I’d already glued and screwed it together and the glue had set. I tried chamfering off the back corner so it could be rotated into place. Nope. that wasn’t going to work.
Our final plan cannot be completed until the shelves are painted. Then we’ll take down one of the wall cabinets, and that will give me enough room to get the shelf unit into place. What a stupid mistake to make.
This reminds me of my ‘Great Window Frame Debacle’ back in the eighties.
This reminds me of my ‘Great Window Frame Debacle’ back in the eighties. Then I had designed an extra room for the back of my house, complete with a huge floor-to-ceiling window, some eight feet high and ten or twelve feet long. The window frame had to be custom-built and was already being manufactured when in the middle of the night, I woke up to realize there was no way to get the frame on-site, except by craning it over the top of the house. Something that was way out of my budget.
I eventually came up with a solution that involved bribing several of my neighbors with beer, and between us, we manhandled the huge and very heavy window frame across the walls and fences of three adjoining properties. You would think I had learned a lesson not to be forgotten. Obviously not.
The second, error was to pick up non-hardening wood putty, instead of wood filler at the store. Now I have to get all the putty out and then refill fill all the screw holes with the proper stuff. Until that’s done, we can’t paint and install the shelves. Another unnecessary delay.
The net result of the above was that I only got I set of shelves finished Saturday. Sunday after work, I started assembling the second unit, which does fit in place (left of frame in the picture). I still have all the shelves to add, and it has to be lifted up into place. hopefully, I’ll get the last of the shelves and the doors fitted Monday night.
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Pantry shelves ready for finishing
Pantry shelves ready for finishing. With a lot of snow forecast, I needed to get the shelves out of the garage to make room for the car… Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Work on house projects has temporarily stopped. a) because the car is in the garage to keep it out of a winter storm. b) because work is keeping me busy.
It would be nice to find a bit of time to get out backpacking. I’ve not been out in nearly three months. I think it is time to address my work-life balance.
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Painting
By the way, this is what $700-ish dollars of wood and around 200 screws1 look like when put together.
The final round of sanding and finishing was put on hold while the car was taking up all the space in
my workshopthe garage. The winter storm is over, and it’s back to work. Ginger worked on sanding and finishing last Sunday while I was up working in Kansas City. Today I got everything ready for painting and had just enough time to get the undercoat on one of the units. It took several hours to paint. Now to find time to put the first coat of topcoat on. I’m preparing myself to have to give it two coats to get the finish I want.The better weather is forecast to be with us for a few days. Hopefully, I can find some time to get out here and get painting.
I would like to get out backpacking, but that doesn’t seem to be on the agenda at the moment. Every time I turn around another job at home presents itself. Next is moving the kitchen table light which is 8″ off of being over the table’s center, and needs to be done before the painter starts work on the kitchen. The darned gear closet still isn’t finished. There is a couple of coats of varnish to go on the doors, I then need to fix the door handles and it’ll be done. After that, Ginger’s gear closet, and the monolith — I forgot the monolith — which needs to be cladded and painted. At some point my office will get sorted. I’ll probably have retired or be dead before that happens. If not, it’ll be time to remodel the bathroom.
Footnote
1. 200 screws, 11 screws per shelf, and a total of 17 shelves, that’s 187 screws and 37 feet of shelving.
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Problems
Problems – Three coats of paint, rubbing down between coats, around 3-4 hours each. And the color of the paint doesn’t match the doors we bought. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. One of the deciding factors in the wall units we bought for the utility room was the availability of color-matched paint. So we bought some for the custom-built shelving.
The color looked off after the first coat, but I went ahead with the second coat, and it’s not right.
Back we went to the store — Menards’ — who refunded us for the paint, but they couldn’t produce a match, and the paint we’d been given wasn’t very good. It was supposed to be self-leveling, but it wasn’t.
After over half an hour of trying to make a color match, the staff (and us) gave up.
We went to Lowes with a sample of the finish and they matched it with some great paint that was self-leveling, matching color, and provided an excellent finish.
Though I still had to put in another three-plus hours work to sand it and paint it, so that’s a total of four coats of paint, at over three-four hours each to prepare and apply.
It’s looking like the other set of shelves may be finished in just two coats.
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Utility room shelving unit finally fitted in place
Shelving unit finally fitted in place – and with five coats of paint. At least the color matches now. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. It’s taken a long time to get this shelving unit made and finished, mainly because of problems with the paint. I’m glad it is now installed. However, there’s still more to do in this room before it is finished. Oh, and the doors were a challenge to fit. I probably should have stuck with my original plan of making a jig for drilling the mounting holes.
With the power of hindsight, Ginger suggested it might have been quicker and easier to move the door and use off the shelf wall units. She may be right.
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Last set of shelves
Last set of shelves – Fitting them was not easy… Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. We finally got around to fitting the last set of shelves bringing an end to all the major work on the Utility Room Project for the moment. The delay was caused in part by problems with the paint, and in the greater part by my reluctance to do the job because to get them fitted we had to take down one of the tall wall units. Those things are big and heavy, and I wasn’t looking forward to refitting it.
The job went fairly well with only a small amount of cussing as we lifted the cupboard carcass and finagled it back into place.
I still have a fair bit to do, but it’ll keep while I finish off some other projects (like my backpacking gear closet) and get the last of our planned storage closets built.
Outstanding work to do here includes,
- Fill and paint all the holes I made in the walls when I fitted ledger boards to hold all the cupboards up as we installed them.
- Kickboards to be fitted.
- Baseboard trim fitted.
- Counter tops.
- Build a unit to hold dirty washcloths and a space for a cat litter box.
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Titanium backpacking wood stove modifications
My titanium wood stove needs a bit more air. This afternoon I added some more air holes. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. On my last backpacking trip I tried out my titanium wood-burning stove. My thoughts were,
It works but needs some modifications. Specifically, more air holes because in its current form It smokes far too much. It needs air holes in the sides and back to help fuel burn …
Today, spurned on by some crisp (30℉) sunny and breezy weather, and thoughts of winter backpacking, I decided to tackle the job of adding the holes. I’ve not drilled titanium before, and even though I know it’s not a lot stronger than steel, I was expecting it to be harder to drill out than it was. It took longer to mark out all the holes than it did to drill them.
If you are wondering why I’m home when the weather is ideal for backpacking. The answer is I’m catching up on some home chores after the past few months of working like a madman. My goal for today was to do a load of tidying up and clear the garage/workshop so that we can move the car inside again. It’s been parked in the drive for nearly a year now and I am long overdue in making room for it in the garage.
Now I need to come up with some plans to go backpacking and test my modifications ‘in the field’.
Update
- I tried it out on a trip to the Devil’s Backbone Wilderness in December 2022. It was better, but still smoked more than I like, so I’ve stopped using the stove for the moment. You can read the post about that here.
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Hall Closet #2 — making a start
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Measurements
Measurements — It was a key requirement that this cart fitted and would pass easily through the doorway. Copyright © 2023 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. It was a key requirement that this cart fitted and would pass easily through the doorway. The lower part of the wall has been patched, but it needs to be finished and the whole inside painted.
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Checking
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Hall Closet #2, doors fitted
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Workshop — mid-project
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Stained, ready for varnishing
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Hall Closet #2 finished
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Cleaning & Reorganizing
Cleaning & Reorganizing. Copyright © 2023 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. My biggest recent upgrade has been to plumb in compressed air lines so I don’t trip over the airline snaking its way across the floor.
I’ve also been moving things around, adding shelves, and tidying up in the workshop (oh yeah, and I added some inexpensive Bluetooth speakers too).
Cleaning & Reorganizing — I’ve been moving things around, adding shelves, and tidying up in the workshop. (oh yeah, and I added some inexpensive Bluetooth speakers too). Copyright © 2023 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. -
Workshop Bling
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Morning sunlight in the workshop
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Doorstop
Doorstop. Copyright © 2022 Gary Allman, all rights reserved I finally found a use for one of the few small rock samples I have collected over the years. The rock is a memento from a vist to Piney Creek in July 2021.
On the first version of the doorstop, I used a hot glue gun to fix the rock. It held for a few hours before (as I suspected) the sandy surface of the rock caused it to come loose. Reluctantly, I opted to drill the rock so it could be screwed to the base.
This picture is the result of several technology tests. I installed the Samsung Raw Camera software (thus far, I like it) and Lightroom on my phone and used them to take the picture and edit the image (cropping and a few tweaks). Finally, I’m creating this post on my phone. The only step in the process that hasn’t gone as well as expected is creating this post. The Jetpack post creation software is sadly lacking in the basic functionality required to create a decent post. Oh well, that’s why I’m trying this. I’ll finish it off on my computer.
Apart from the problems creating the post, the results are encouraging. The camera lens foreshortening is fairly significant, which surprised me as I used one of the ‘Telephoto’ options, which ought to have reduced it. (The base and back are made of the same 3/4-inch board, not that you would think that looking at the picture). I’ll need to try moving back and cropping more.
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An empty wall equals storage potential
An empty wall equals storage potential. Copyright © 2023 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Recently we’ve been on the lookout for more storage space. We have also been looking for somewhere with space, that we can use for small product photography. The south facing windows of the ‘Sparkle Zone’ offer good light and, we realized, space for storage of our photography gear — and more.
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Boxes
Boxes. Copyright © 2023 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Boxes — I was going to custom build the Sparkle Zone Storage Center, but we realized we could save a lot of time (but not $$$ — the doors alone were nearly $700) by bringing in ready-made units. I volunteered my friend Tom and his pickup to help me collect the boxes and the large 8ft by 3ft end panel. The truck’s bed was full to overflowing.
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Will it work?
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It fits
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Sparkle Zone Storage Center, Stage One, almost complete
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A costly mistake…
A costly mistake… Copyright © 2023 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. At $70 per door, and I ruined two doors before I realized my error. I forgot to allow for the Inset panel (at 3/16-inch) when selecting screws to mount the doors on cross braces. That brings my ‘Cock-up Account’ up to $200 in a couple of months (don’t ask).
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Sparkle Zone Storage Center, Stage Two
Sparkle Zone Storage Center, Stage Two, almost complete — Some final adjustments to the bottom doors to be made. There is still some minor work and finishing touches to be completed. Apart from that, all done. Copyright © 2023 Gary Allman, all rights reserved. Now with added ‘Small Product phototable.’ For small quick shoots it can be pulled out with a small surface, just over a foot deep. For larger items it can extend up to 36-inches. The whole unit can be moved around to make the best use of the light or to put it where it is needed. Now to find out if it improves our photography workflow.
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Set up for a quick test