Home Improvement, compressed to 1 day
General home improvement is a major hobby of mine. It lets me express my love of troubleshooting, design, and optimization. On my short trip to the States I had only 1 day for home improvement tasks. I got a lot done, but nothing major in itself. It was the first home change involving Rachel.
We pulled up all the plywood and carpet rugs in the master bedroom. These were left over from the brief 3 months I actually lived in my house where I used it as a gym. There were 6 large sheets of plywood covered by green rugs from Home Depot. We had to play a version of that game of shifting empty blocks around using a single hole space to get things out of the way. One by one we pulled up and moved outside the plywood and rugs. We left a single piece under the treadmill. That piece is larger than it needs to be but I didn't have time to trim it yet.
We sold my mattress to a friend and pulled Rachel's out of storage for our use. Then we rearranged some dressers.
The big coup was putting some shelves up in front of the treadmill. One is 2.5 feet off the ground, the other about 5.5 feet up, just higher than the treadmill which buts up nearly against them. The lower shelf now holds the cable modem and wireless router. The upper shelf is meant to hold a laptop to watch movies or Hulu from it.
I had a great idea though and remembered my old ViewSonic cable-to-VGA adapter. It is a box that takes in VGA and audio inputs from a computer and a coax cable. It is a video KVM that outputs to VGA. So effectively it is a cable box with usual features of menu guides that outputs to a normal computer monitor). This thing sat unused in my closet since my second year of college so I was happy to pull it out and use it. Now the coax cable from the wall goes through a splitter then to the cable modem and also this converter box. The convertor goes up to one of the LCD monitors I had lying around and some powered computer speakers.
Voila! Now the pesky cables and boxes sit nicely on one shelf hiding in the otherwise-useless wall space in front of the treadmill. And the treadmill now has cable TV at eye level. There is room on the shelf to slide the LCD monitor out of the way to put a laptop there instead to use Hulu. Of course, a laptop or permanent box could sit on the floor and send output through the cable KVM box also. We paid $40 for shelves and reused some unused electronics from my closet. In return we have an efficient media center for the master bedroom and the treadmill. Brilliant? Yes.
Downstairs I did some minor work: replace the air filter; hung a painting we bought from a street artist in Rome; and replaced some dead incandescent bulbs with flourescents. Until recently I couldn't find candelabra-base flourescents in the stores, but they carry them now at Home Depot and Walmart. For some reason the incandescents in the drop-down fixtures in the kitchen burned out very quickly and never gave much light. The new bulbs are much brighter for much less energy and should last much longer. Almost every bulb in the house is flourescent now except up in the ceiling fans. Those will be swapped when they burn out.
Also did some basic maintenance on the bicycles. Mine sat outside most of last summer and fall so it was quite nasty and rusted. I cleaned and oiled the chain and other parts. The shifting is very badly maladjusted and I have no idea how to fix it. I will investigate when I come home again, or simply take it to CycleWorks for a full tune-up. I think the chain needs replaced or adjusted to remove a link or two (chain stretching is a bigger problem on recumbents because they are enormously long). Rachel's just needed some oiling and chain cleaning and it is good as new. She has a real European city bike with light generator, upright seat and bars, 3-speed internal hub, and a lot of charm. It is practically good-as-new now.
My chore list when I move home includes:
Can't wait to get home! That might be sooner than expected. My definite last date is November 21 but my residency permit and visa expire October 31. We are having problems renewing it, so I might get kicked out of the country in a few weeks. Hot damn, that would be good to come home early.
We pulled up all the plywood and carpet rugs in the master bedroom. These were left over from the brief 3 months I actually lived in my house where I used it as a gym. There were 6 large sheets of plywood covered by green rugs from Home Depot. We had to play a version of that game of shifting empty blocks around using a single hole space to get things out of the way. One by one we pulled up and moved outside the plywood and rugs. We left a single piece under the treadmill. That piece is larger than it needs to be but I didn't have time to trim it yet.
We sold my mattress to a friend and pulled Rachel's out of storage for our use. Then we rearranged some dressers.
The big coup was putting some shelves up in front of the treadmill. One is 2.5 feet off the ground, the other about 5.5 feet up, just higher than the treadmill which buts up nearly against them. The lower shelf now holds the cable modem and wireless router. The upper shelf is meant to hold a laptop to watch movies or Hulu from it.
I had a great idea though and remembered my old ViewSonic cable-to-VGA adapter. It is a box that takes in VGA and audio inputs from a computer and a coax cable. It is a video KVM that outputs to VGA. So effectively it is a cable box with usual features of menu guides that outputs to a normal computer monitor). This thing sat unused in my closet since my second year of college so I was happy to pull it out and use it. Now the coax cable from the wall goes through a splitter then to the cable modem and also this converter box. The convertor goes up to one of the LCD monitors I had lying around and some powered computer speakers.
Voila! Now the pesky cables and boxes sit nicely on one shelf hiding in the otherwise-useless wall space in front of the treadmill. And the treadmill now has cable TV at eye level. There is room on the shelf to slide the LCD monitor out of the way to put a laptop there instead to use Hulu. Of course, a laptop or permanent box could sit on the floor and send output through the cable KVM box also. We paid $40 for shelves and reused some unused electronics from my closet. In return we have an efficient media center for the master bedroom and the treadmill. Brilliant? Yes.
Downstairs I did some minor work: replace the air filter; hung a painting we bought from a street artist in Rome; and replaced some dead incandescent bulbs with flourescents. Until recently I couldn't find candelabra-base flourescents in the stores, but they carry them now at Home Depot and Walmart. For some reason the incandescents in the drop-down fixtures in the kitchen burned out very quickly and never gave much light. The new bulbs are much brighter for much less energy and should last much longer. Almost every bulb in the house is flourescent now except up in the ceiling fans. Those will be swapped when they burn out.
Also did some basic maintenance on the bicycles. Mine sat outside most of last summer and fall so it was quite nasty and rusted. I cleaned and oiled the chain and other parts. The shifting is very badly maladjusted and I have no idea how to fix it. I will investigate when I come home again, or simply take it to CycleWorks for a full tune-up. I think the chain needs replaced or adjusted to remove a link or two (chain stretching is a bigger problem on recumbents because they are enormously long). Rachel's just needed some oiling and chain cleaning and it is good as new. She has a real European city bike with light generator, upright seat and bars, 3-speed internal hub, and a lot of charm. It is practically good-as-new now.
My chore list when I move home includes:
- finish patching and painting the large holes I put in the drywall searching out a water leak last fall
- add an electric outlet to the hallway and maybe one in the stairwell wall
- fix the two wonky electric outlets in the living room and laundry room
- get new windows installed in place of the cheap old ones: at least 2-pane with all the good energy-efficiency features (nitrogen filling and low-e coating)
- get or build a small outdoor chest to store barbecue supplies
- build the reading lamp/automatic nightlight shelves Rachel and I designed
Can't wait to get home! That might be sooner than expected. My definite last date is November 21 but my residency permit and visa expire October 31. We are having problems renewing it, so I might get kicked out of the country in a few weeks. Hot damn, that would be good to come home early.