Physical Labour
For some reason, working as a software engineer almost completely eliminates any interest in programming when I'm home. I must turn elsewhere for hobbies... And it's living in this house that helped me develop my physical skills.
When I moved here, I painted the ceiling and wall-papered the walls. Then I replaced the window screens, fixed the phone jack and the faucet. Then the sliding closed doors.
But that's still was not enough for me, so I kept going. There were a decrepit dresser and a TV stand in the garage, along with a used mattress and a box spring. They always interfered with the actual point of the garage--parking--and I eventually decided to let them go, too. The problem was that throwing away extra items would cost $30/item, since mattresses obviously wouldn't fit into the tiny trash bins.
So I came up with a plan:
(1) A [cheap] box spring is carton, wood, and a bit of fabric. Fabric is easily torn off from the rest of the box spring, and can be compacted on top of the trash bin. Carton fits into the bigger recycling bin. And wood... I used half of the wood to light up the fireplace, and the other half went into an even bigger "Yard Waste" bin, which accepts wood.
(2) A [cheap] mattress is made of cloth, foam, and a matrix of springs. If you remove the cloth and foam (About 1/6th of a mattress's foam will fit into the remaining space of a trash bin), you'll have rows and columns of springs. Each spring is attached to the 4 adjacent springs (diagonals don't count) by 2 wires, which are, conveniently, thin enough to be cut by wirecutters. If you take a 5x5 chunk of springs and separate them from the rest of the bed, you'll have a section that I classify as "Scrap Metal", which goes into the recycling bin. All you'll have left is the frame, made of 2 long thick wires, which can be curled into being scrap metal.
(3) A dresses makes a really good TV stand! The top of the dresser is a nice piece of wood, strong enough to support a TV. The four poles supporting it can support a TV; trimming them down to 28" will give the finished construction the correct height. The sides are just particle boards, and can be trimmed down to the same height easily. Now, I just need the supporting board in the middle (so that the top board supporting the TV does not cave in) and the floor boards (so that the four poles don't wobble, like excessively-long table legs).
(4) The decrepit TV stand can make good shelves for the garage. (The fact that it's decrepit is the reason that I didn't want to reuse it for my TV: the material it's made of should not support anything fragile.)
(5) I had an extra board from when I assembled my desk. It was meant to hold the keyboard and the mouse, and to slide out from underneath the desk. I knew that I'd never use such a construction, and left the board lying around. Now, it's about to become a new shelf, since it was cut down to the proper size.
So overall, lots of improvements are coming along. We have only 2 more months in this place; and while it might seem crazy that I'm spending so much time on making it better, it's something that actually makes me happy, regardless on what the owners will think.
When I moved here, I painted the ceiling and wall-papered the walls. Then I replaced the window screens, fixed the phone jack and the faucet. Then the sliding closed doors.
But that's still was not enough for me, so I kept going. There were a decrepit dresser and a TV stand in the garage, along with a used mattress and a box spring. They always interfered with the actual point of the garage--parking--and I eventually decided to let them go, too. The problem was that throwing away extra items would cost $30/item, since mattresses obviously wouldn't fit into the tiny trash bins.
So I came up with a plan:
(1) A [cheap] box spring is carton, wood, and a bit of fabric. Fabric is easily torn off from the rest of the box spring, and can be compacted on top of the trash bin. Carton fits into the bigger recycling bin. And wood... I used half of the wood to light up the fireplace, and the other half went into an even bigger "Yard Waste" bin, which accepts wood.
(2) A [cheap] mattress is made of cloth, foam, and a matrix of springs. If you remove the cloth and foam (About 1/6th of a mattress's foam will fit into the remaining space of a trash bin), you'll have rows and columns of springs. Each spring is attached to the 4 adjacent springs (diagonals don't count) by 2 wires, which are, conveniently, thin enough to be cut by wirecutters. If you take a 5x5 chunk of springs and separate them from the rest of the bed, you'll have a section that I classify as "Scrap Metal", which goes into the recycling bin. All you'll have left is the frame, made of 2 long thick wires, which can be curled into being scrap metal.
(3) A dresses makes a really good TV stand! The top of the dresser is a nice piece of wood, strong enough to support a TV. The four poles supporting it can support a TV; trimming them down to 28" will give the finished construction the correct height. The sides are just particle boards, and can be trimmed down to the same height easily. Now, I just need the supporting board in the middle (so that the top board supporting the TV does not cave in) and the floor boards (so that the four poles don't wobble, like excessively-long table legs).
(4) The decrepit TV stand can make good shelves for the garage. (The fact that it's decrepit is the reason that I didn't want to reuse it for my TV: the material it's made of should not support anything fragile.)
(5) I had an extra board from when I assembled my desk. It was meant to hold the keyboard and the mouse, and to slide out from underneath the desk. I knew that I'd never use such a construction, and left the board lying around. Now, it's about to become a new shelf, since it was cut down to the proper size.
So overall, lots of improvements are coming along. We have only 2 more months in this place; and while it might seem crazy that I'm spending so much time on making it better, it's something that actually makes me happy, regardless on what the owners will think.