So the ol’ blog here hasn’t seen much action from me, and that isn’t entirely my fault (even though I’m the only one that can post). So, after my glorious and self-gratifying accomplishment of hacking apart my bathroom wall to insert a metal box with a mirror on it (see previous entry from medicine cabinet installation) as a surprise for Kari while she was away on her first business trip I apparently ate something with a touch of The Nasty. Tuesday (2/10) started normally enough with me having my workout before school. But during class, my stomach didn’t feel all that great. So, before heading straight into work, I thought I would stop by the house and take a swig of pink, chalky, bismuthy, vile liquid to settle my stomach. Well, I never left the house. For the next 4 hours I spent equal times either in bed or in the bathroom trying to guess if I had to kneel in front of the toilet or sit on it (or both). Hmm… I don’t think I’ll be able to pick up Kari at the airport. She happened to call shortly after my first bout of porcelain yodeling and she just happened to be in a fish market and wanted to know what type of smoked salmon I wanted since I had asked her before leaving to get some. Well, you can guess that with the current state of my stomach, I really didn’t want to think about that choice at all. I told her my current situation and told her that she’d need to contact her mom to get a ride from the airport later that evening. I returned to my shivering and dashing to the bathroom right afterwards. OK, sparing the details, I was laid up for a couple of days and my muscles were so wore out afterwards that I was in no mood to tackle any projects that weekend. However, that didn’t stop me from cleaning out the garage and actually having enough room for Kari and I to both park in it! Sure, we couldn’t get out of our cars, but there’s enough room for both of them in there! Ok, that was to be the extent of any projects that weekend. However, some light had been shone on a possible project to come soon during my throes of agony earlier: my dad had called and based on some plans I had drawn up to replace my current side gate with a metal framed one had priced the 2-inch square tubing and had come up with a very reasonable figure. So, after cleaning the garage and noting I had enough space to store interim progress on the gate pieces, I called my dad and gave him the green light to get the metal.
The next weekend on the 21st, my dad came up with some welding equipment and metal cutting tools. My brother-in-law, Steve, was to show up shortly after with the metal tubing. So, my dad shows up around 9:30 (early for him, as I think his bed time can sometimes be just a few hours before this) and we start laying out the equipment. Lo and behold, he’s donating one of his small welders to me and will be teaching me how to weld! This will be a very useful skill in my new role as a home owner I’m quite sure. About 30 minutes later, Steve shows up and we unload the three 20-foot lengths of 0.090 wall thickness, 2-inch square steel tubing. After a few minutes of discussing the plans and defending choices I made arbitrarily on the plans and changing a few others, we decide to get work. Steve had to take off and actually go to a paying gig, but not a big deal, this was not a major project by either my dad’s or Steve’s estimation. Today’s task would be to create the two frames for the gates and then paint them to seal them from the moisture to prevent rust. We measured our top pieces and made the first few cuts. The cutting on my dad’s metal chop saw was slow going so he decided to change to a new cutting disc that was a little larger and we started again. This time the cut went much better. However, as we were nearing the end of cutting off the end at a 45° angle (the second cut after changing the disc), the saw started to slow down no matter how hard I squeezed the trigger and then I saw the magic smoke come out of the motor housing. Well, this was just no good. My dad at this point, PC as ever (as some of you know), started extolling the virtues of foreign-made equipment especially Chinese. He wasn’t too upset as he only paid $20 for this particular tool. So, after a few minutes of discussion, we decided to pack everything into the garage and head to Home Depot to look for a replacement. There weren’t too many choices, but the ones we did see were about $200. He said he was going to see if he can find one on eBay or something for less. Now, at this point, I’m thinking he already learned not to go “cheap”, but I’m not going to point that out to someone who’s donating time and teaching me something to boot. As it turns out, my friend Taylor’s family has a mill shop and he mentioned that he could loan one his to me for the job if my dad can’t find a replacement. So I got that going for me … The saga will continue probably on 3/7.
Tomorrow will see my first Physics 301 (Digital Electronic) test and I’m a little anxious about it. I feel comfortable with the material, but I don’t know how the instructor tests, so we’ll see. It’s a mixture of hands-on circuit building and then some problem solving exercises. It shouldn’t be too bad. So far the work we’re doing in the class is very interesting. I’ve built a 4-bit parallel full adder circuit with 2’s-complement correction on the fly with LEDs for its binary sum, overflow, and an LED to indicate whether the result is a negative number not. It’s a great thing to be able to add and subtract numbers from -16 to 15 with just TTL chips, a 5-volt DC power supply, some resistors, and a whole bunch of wire. Yeah… now I can have the machine do that part for me! One less worry! My other class on the history of early modern Europe is still interesting as well. We’ve been reading about remission requests (pleas to the king of France for grace to avoid execution) in 16th century France and I’m now starting to read about witchcraft and the legislation behind the accusations. Lots of seemingly unrelated issues that are all tied together by social and legal thoughts of the day. Interesting…
Well, as long as I don’t have any more of The Nasty, I’ll be posting again soon. This weekend may not see much in the way of house work as we’ll have guests all day on Saturday.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Monday, February 9, 2009
Business Travel and How I Decided to Put in a Bathroom Medicine Cabinet and the Aftermath Thereof
So, Kari’s work has decided to spend some bucks on her and send her up to Seattle/Everett/Renton for a few days to look at how part of her company does business up there. I think this is great that they’re investing money in her to see her do her job better. Well, they’re not putting her up in the Ritz Carlton and flying her first class. She actually is flying on SouthWorst. In fact, at the time of this writing she is currently up there. It was a balmy 42 last night and rainy when she arrived according to the almighty Internet. So, when the cat’s away the mice will… well, do home projects on the sly to surprise the wife, err, cat!
My cunning plan started a few days before her travel when I figured I’d install a ceiling fan in the master bedroom. We went to Home Depot to pick up the never-ending list of items and I just happened to wander near the ceiling fans. Huh, funny that. I found out what she liked and mentally recorded the model, looks, etc. and then picked up the rest of my list and headed home. The process of determining that I would do the ceiling fan is mainly a product of frustration. I find that as my (or Kari’s) frustration level rises regarding a project; it tends to bubble its way to the top. Meaning, that this point, any light would be good in that room as it is lacking anything in the ceiling. This would be a hurdle to overcome, obviously. But, months ago at a garage sale I picked up a mounting brace meant for ceiling fans, so I just needed to drill up from the center of the bedroom into the attic space above and stick a little something up through the hole to see where I would be working up in the attic. One issue is that we both want the light switch on the right wall as we enter. However, the previous owners had a pocket door installed there precluding us from mounting a light switch there. There will be one there eventually as I plan on removing that pocket door which means tearing that wall down and framing a new one. Fun for another day obviously. A friend at work suggested just surface mounting a remote switch there, which I will be doing in the interim. Another concern was finding out if I had power up there. So, I grabbed the ladder and poked my head up through the attic access point in the master bedroom’s closet. Popping my head up there, I didn’t like what I saw. It’s all loose fill insulation. I don’t have much in the way of protecting myself from that, so I’ll need to invest in some of that or investigate replacing that with rolled insulation (or find out if I even want to). The good news was that I saw plenty of cables running through the attic space for power. Climbing back down and realizing that a ceiling fan may be a job that’s better suited to working with someone to help, I scraped that idea, for now.
The other project that’s been on my plate for a while now and has slowing been percolating its way to the top has been the lack of a medicine cabinet in the bathroom. We had already purchased the cabinet and I had previously marked where it needed to go. The reason it isn’t in already is because I found there was a stud running straight through the middle of the hole I’d need to cut and also that there were at least two electrical cables crossing that area too. I knew that would be a potentially long project to start with all the caveats there. One thing I noticed, however, whilst in the attic was that the wall I would be cutting into was not load-bearing. So, I would not have to worry about boxing the medicine cabinet in with studs.
I started the project at 2:00pm after dropping Kari off at the airport and a little lunch at home (salmon burger and chicken tortilla soup, yum!). I was able to cut through the dry wall pretty easily after scoring the perimeter with a knife to prevent peeling the paper/paint past the cutting point. Now, the big part: I had to cut the stud and the problem was that there was a hole drilled through the stud to allow the electrical cable to pass through. Using my handheld circular saw, I was able to notch above and below the hole to avoid nicking the Romex cable and then used a chisel to finish it off. Ok, now that the wires could be moved out of the way I had the job of cutting the stud to get it out of there. My circular saw would only cut to a depth of 2.5 inches so I needed to call in for the big guns. I called my neighbor and asked if I could borrow his reciprocating Sawzall and its blade was the perfect length to cut the
stud without poking through the other side of the wall. Within a few minutes we had cut the stud and pulled it out causing minimal damage to the other side. Looking at the other side of the wall in the hallway, I was able to see we had only one patch to work on as the nail from the stud had pulled through as we pulled the stud out. No big deal. I would have to move the security system panel over a few inches which meant I had a 1.5 inch diameter hole to patch for that. Again, no big deal.
After pulling the stud out and cleaning up the hole to allow the cabinet to fit snuggly, I taped the electrical lines to the far wall so it wouldn’t cause the cabinet to warp if it got stuck with a twist behind the cabinet. I also cut a notch in the top of the bottom stud so I could lay the electrical line across that and have the cabinet fit over it. At this point, it was just a matter of screwing some studs to the sides of the hole to allow for the side mounting screws of the cabinet to have
something to, well, screw into. With those in place, I put the cabinet in the hole with some minor adjustments to the hole size and screwed in one screw to keep it in place. I grabbed my level and saw that it was level. I then proceeded to screw in the other three screws, inserted the shelves and cleaned up my mess. Looking at the time, it was 4:30. Time for Kari to be arriving in Seattle soon. Not bad. 2.5 hours to complete something I thought would have taken much longer. Albeit, if I had done more with framing the hole (if it were load-bearing) and/or messed with the electrical cables (if they couldn’t be routed or made to cooperate), it would have taken some more time. As it was, I was in the middle of putting tools away when Kari called and said she had arrived and was waiting for her luggage. I wished her luck and fun (and warmth!) and proceeded to clean the bathroom and make everything pretty. I patched the hole on the other side and let that dry over night. I’ll be checking that out when I get home to see if any further touch ups are needed and then hopefully painting tonight so she’ll have no clue when she gets home that anything was done until she goes into the bathroom. I’m looking forward to her surprise. The only other clue should be the relocation of the security panel, but she’s usually not that observant. We’ll see.
In other slightly interesting news: the physics course this semester is covering digital circuitry and we’re building circuits to cover basic logic in preparation for our class final project of building a 4-bit computer. Sounds archaic, but that only sound archaic until you’re faced with making one yourself =). I’m enjoying it so far seeing how these things work is fascinating.
My cunning plan started a few days before her travel when I figured I’d install a ceiling fan in the master bedroom. We went to Home Depot to pick up the never-ending list of items and I just happened to wander near the ceiling fans. Huh, funny that. I found out what she liked and mentally recorded the model, looks, etc. and then picked up the rest of my list and headed home. The process of determining that I would do the ceiling fan is mainly a product of frustration. I find that as my (or Kari’s) frustration level rises regarding a project; it tends to bubble its way to the top. Meaning, that this point, any light would be good in that room as it is lacking anything in the ceiling. This would be a hurdle to overcome, obviously. But, months ago at a garage sale I picked up a mounting brace meant for ceiling fans, so I just needed to drill up from the center of the bedroom into the attic space above and stick a little something up through the hole to see where I would be working up in the attic. One issue is that we both want the light switch on the right wall as we enter. However, the previous owners had a pocket door installed there precluding us from mounting a light switch there. There will be one there eventually as I plan on removing that pocket door which means tearing that wall down and framing a new one. Fun for another day obviously. A friend at work suggested just surface mounting a remote switch there, which I will be doing in the interim. Another concern was finding out if I had power up there. So, I grabbed the ladder and poked my head up through the attic access point in the master bedroom’s closet. Popping my head up there, I didn’t like what I saw. It’s all loose fill insulation. I don’t have much in the way of protecting myself from that, so I’ll need to invest in some of that or investigate replacing that with rolled insulation (or find out if I even want to). The good news was that I saw plenty of cables running through the attic space for power. Climbing back down and realizing that a ceiling fan may be a job that’s better suited to working with someone to help, I scraped that idea, for now.
The other project that’s been on my plate for a while now and has slowing been percolating its way to the top has been the lack of a medicine cabinet in the bathroom. We had already purchased the cabinet and I had previously marked where it needed to go. The reason it isn’t in already is because I found there was a stud running straight through the middle of the hole I’d need to cut and also that there were at least two electrical cables crossing that area too. I knew that would be a potentially long project to start with all the caveats there. One thing I noticed, however, whilst in the attic was that the wall I would be cutting into was not load-bearing. So, I would not have to worry about boxing the medicine cabinet in with studs.
I started the project at 2:00pm after dropping Kari off at the airport and a little lunch at home (salmon burger and chicken tortilla soup, yum!). I was able to cut through the dry wall pretty easily after scoring the perimeter with a knife to prevent peeling the paper/paint past the cutting point. Now, the big part: I had to cut the stud and the problem was that there was a hole drilled through the stud to allow the electrical cable to pass through. Using my handheld circular saw, I was able to notch above and below the hole to avoid nicking the Romex cable and then used a chisel to finish it off. Ok, now that the wires could be moved out of the way I had the job of cutting the stud to get it out of there. My circular saw would only cut to a depth of 2.5 inches so I needed to call in for the big guns. I called my neighbor and asked if I could borrow his reciprocating Sawzall and its blade was the perfect length to cut the
stud without poking through the other side of the wall. Within a few minutes we had cut the stud and pulled it out causing minimal damage to the other side. Looking at the other side of the wall in the hallway, I was able to see we had only one patch to work on as the nail from the stud had pulled through as we pulled the stud out. No big deal. I would have to move the security system panel over a few inches which meant I had a 1.5 inch diameter hole to patch for that. Again, no big deal.After pulling the stud out and cleaning up the hole to allow the cabinet to fit snuggly, I taped the electrical lines to the far wall so it wouldn’t cause the cabinet to warp if it got stuck with a twist behind the cabinet. I also cut a notch in the top of the bottom stud so I could lay the electrical line across that and have the cabinet fit over it. At this point, it was just a matter of screwing some studs to the sides of the hole to allow for the side mounting screws of the cabinet to have
something to, well, screw into. With those in place, I put the cabinet in the hole with some minor adjustments to the hole size and screwed in one screw to keep it in place. I grabbed my level and saw that it was level. I then proceeded to screw in the other three screws, inserted the shelves and cleaned up my mess. Looking at the time, it was 4:30. Time for Kari to be arriving in Seattle soon. Not bad. 2.5 hours to complete something I thought would have taken much longer. Albeit, if I had done more with framing the hole (if it were load-bearing) and/or messed with the electrical cables (if they couldn’t be routed or made to cooperate), it would have taken some more time. As it was, I was in the middle of putting tools away when Kari called and said she had arrived and was waiting for her luggage. I wished her luck and fun (and warmth!) and proceeded to clean the bathroom and make everything pretty. I patched the hole on the other side and let that dry over night. I’ll be checking that out when I get home to see if any further touch ups are needed and then hopefully painting tonight so she’ll have no clue when she gets home that anything was done until she goes into the bathroom. I’m looking forward to her surprise. The only other clue should be the relocation of the security panel, but she’s usually not that observant. We’ll see.In other slightly interesting news: the physics course this semester is covering digital circuitry and we’re building circuits to cover basic logic in preparation for our class final project of building a 4-bit computer. Sounds archaic, but that only sound archaic until you’re faced with making one yourself =). I’m enjoying it so far seeing how these things work is fascinating.
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