My wife got a Joseph Joseph Adjustable Rolling Pin that comes with several plastic rings to allow you to adjust the thickness of dough you are rolling. It’s a clever design, but curiously the roller is sold with one ring obviously missing, so I was asked to complete the set. […]
Tag: home improvement
Sweet Dreams
Let me start by saying that bed warmers always seemed like a unnecessary luxury to me. That was until we got one 10 years ago and started using it in the winter to pre-heat our bed before we retired for the evening. Once you become accustomed to sliding into warm […]
Linksys MR8300 Mesh Router
I wasn’t completely happy with the Netgear X4S router – it was missing a few essential features – but then I really wasn’t happy when it started factory resetting itself in the middle of the night. Luckily, it happened within 30 days of purchase, so Amazon took it back. After […]
Netgear Nighthawk X4S
The time had come to upgrade my old router (D-Link DIR-825). It had been a good performer, with excellent stability, but it didn’t have quite the necessary range (since I keep it in the basement) for our house. I also wanted to add some parental controls, and the D-Link firmware […]
Outdoor Garden Sink
My present to my wife this year for her birthday was to build her an outdoor sink – a place where she can clean off her garden tools and wash vegetables before bringing them into the house. We had an old washtub that we weren’t using and a bunch of […]
Poster Hangers
When I was a kid, I had some of these really cool poster hangers on my wall and on the door to my room. They had a really simple but clever design that used the weight of the poster itself and a small roller inside to clamp down and hold […]
Ring Video Doorbell
I received the Ring video doorbell as a Christmas gift this year. Overall, I like it. However, I have a few reservations about recommending it to others. First, the price. I would never spend $200 on a doorbell, and I would not recommend anyone else do so either, no matter […]
All For A Cup Of Coffee
Hey, I know better than to get between you coffee-lovers and your morning cup o’ joe. That is hard-won knowledge that I understand and respect. But apparently Starbucks (of all people) didn’t get the memo. My wife uses one of their ceramic Pour-Over Brewers for her coffee. Or did, up […]
Requiem for Yellow Jackets
Your browser does not support the webm video format. Yellow jackets had taken up residence in one of my wife’s herb planters. So, after she got stung several times while watering them, it was time to declare war on the little critters. In an attempt to eradicate them without using […]
Family Room Remodel
It took me just over a year, but the family room is finally finished (including the train). I completed the shaker-style cabinet doors on either side of the fireplace and replaced the old carpet with new carpet tile. Now I can relax and enjoy our new room.
Extend A Vent For Five Bucks
If you have a room arranged in a such a way that the furnace vents are underneath your furniture, you might benefit from an Extend A Vent. But don’t buy one from Amazon, or anywhere else for that matter. It is hardly worth the $15, or $17, or $18 that […]
Gutter Shelves for Ten Bucks
My son has a loft bed and he is in the habit of keeping all of the books he is reading on his bed so he doesn’t have to climb up and down the ladder. Over time, the books accumulate to the point where there’s barely room left for him. […]
The Polar Express
Your browser does not support the webm video format. I’ve spent the last six months remodeling our family room. But the culmination of all of that work is a model train that runs around the perimeter of the room. Here’s a quick video showing the final product. By the way, […]
Using All Of The Space
If your house has more than one floor, chances are good that there is a lot of wasted space above and below your stairs that is just crying out to be filled with stuff. Shelves underneath the stairs are easy, and something that I added when we first moved in. […]
More Basement Woodworking
Earlier this year, I started building a cabinet in my basement on the wall opposite my new bar. As usual, I used Sketchup to draw up my plans, and I neglected to post these at the outset of the project. Sketchup is a powerful tool, and fairly easy to learn. […]
Garden Irrigation Project
In late April, we had a pretty impressive hailstorm, which led to us getting a new roof and new gutters. The timing was somewhat fortunate, however, since I had already started putting together a system for catching rainwater that we could use on our garden. I found a 300-gallon plastic […]
Landscaping Project
This has been a busy spring. Thanks to warmer than average temperatures in February, we got a jump on our normal outdoor activities and started a couple of projects. The first was a little landscaping of the front yard, which involved giving the existing flower beds a facelift with the […]
Progress Report
It has certainly taken longer than I had planned, and it is still a ways from being complete, but I wanted to offer an update on the basement bar project. A big thank you to my wonderful wife who has allowed me the time to work on it. You can […]
Projects Aplenty
Summer is always busy, but this month has seemed especially crazy with plenty of projects keeping me busy. Today we had our friend and concrete expert finish the patio we started two years ago by adding some steps to the face. Between that, adding the finishing touches to my daughter’s […]
Mmmm… Beer
Rule #1 in home improvement projects: everything takes longer than you think it will. This past winter, I started building a bar in the basement. When the cold outside prevented me from doing anything else, progress was swift, and I was actually thinking I would be done with the whole […]
Garden 2.0
Last year’s garden was a big success, but it didn’t take us long to realize that it wasn’t big enough to produce all of the food we wanted. So we started this season by expanding it to twice the size. Our success with the garden last year has also led […]
More Sketchup
Last year I wrote about how I was learning to use Google Sketchup and that I was planning to use it for some home improvement projects. The first project is a basement bar that I have been planning ever since we moved into our house. I have found Sketchup to […]
Handy Storage For Christmas Lights
Looking for a good way to store your Christmas lights and don’t want to spend a lot of money? If you have any of the cardboard boxes that they use to ship Florida citrus, they are an excellent storage solution. Each box has three removable cardboard trays that will keep […]