Home improvement...
So, one of the interesting things about one's wife being out on a six month hike is that one winds up with more free time than he remembered having when he was just a normal bachelor.
So I've been working around the house some. Here's a list of my projects for the next six months:
- Replace the ceiling fan in the living room.
- Install light kits and reasonable controllers on the ceiling fans in the bedroom and sunroom
- Replace the latch on the fence double gate. This will entail tacking down, if not replacing, some of the boards in said gate.
- Repair the Coronet's canopy.
- Install a screen door on the exterior door from the basement
- Repair/replace the front storm door latch so it, well, latches.
- Re-mortar the front steps. This involves figuring out how old-school mortar was made, as modern mortar will pulverize the ancient bricks.
- Add a throw rug to the home theater
- Add data wiring to the home theater
- Reconfigure the home theater/basement closet
- Turn all the ancient ex-firewood into mulch
- Install the rain redirector tin work under the deck that's over the basement door
- Find a sane, rainproof outdoor storage mechanism for charcoal, smoker wood, and related implements
Something tells me I may not get all of it done. :)
I also need to do some research into ventless gas fireplaces and sheds. I'm hoping to install the former in phase two of my home office rehab, the latter, well, I need to replace the shed before it collapses...
When I was looking into fan controllers, I was thinking it'd be really cool to start into a home automation project so I could turn on/off the ceiling fans remotely, but it turns out that ceiling fans are the one thing nobody's come up with a same way to do with the currently available home automation systems-- you can do on/off easy enough (though more expensively than a simple light), but adjusting speeds doesn't so much work without a heck of a lot of kludging-- or risk of the silly thing humming because they're not designed to vary speeds using the same technique one would use to dim a light.
Similarly, to step to the hardware that'd allow the compact florescent bulbs like we have pretty much everywhere at least triples the cost.
So we're at the intersection of "Costs more than it ought to" and "Low wife-acceptance-factor". Yeah, we'll wait for that technology to mature a bit more...
So I've been working around the house some. Here's a list of my projects for the next six months:
- Replace the ceiling fan in the living room.
- Install light kits and reasonable controllers on the ceiling fans in the bedroom and sunroom
- Replace the latch on the fence double gate. This will entail tacking down, if not replacing, some of the boards in said gate.
- Repair the Coronet's canopy.
- Install a screen door on the exterior door from the basement
- Repair/replace the front storm door latch so it, well, latches.
- Re-mortar the front steps. This involves figuring out how old-school mortar was made, as modern mortar will pulverize the ancient bricks.
- Add a throw rug to the home theater
- Add data wiring to the home theater
- Reconfigure the home theater/basement closet
- Turn all the ancient ex-firewood into mulch
- Install the rain redirector tin work under the deck that's over the basement door
- Find a sane, rainproof outdoor storage mechanism for charcoal, smoker wood, and related implements
Something tells me I may not get all of it done. :)
I also need to do some research into ventless gas fireplaces and sheds. I'm hoping to install the former in phase two of my home office rehab, the latter, well, I need to replace the shed before it collapses...
When I was looking into fan controllers, I was thinking it'd be really cool to start into a home automation project so I could turn on/off the ceiling fans remotely, but it turns out that ceiling fans are the one thing nobody's come up with a same way to do with the currently available home automation systems-- you can do on/off easy enough (though more expensively than a simple light), but adjusting speeds doesn't so much work without a heck of a lot of kludging-- or risk of the silly thing humming because they're not designed to vary speeds using the same technique one would use to dim a light.
Similarly, to step to the hardware that'd allow the compact florescent bulbs like we have pretty much everywhere at least triples the cost.
So we're at the intersection of "Costs more than it ought to" and "Low wife-acceptance-factor". Yeah, we'll wait for that technology to mature a bit more...