Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Home Improvement

Tying Trees

We have a row of arbor vitae trees in the backyard. They provide a nice visual block between us and the neighbors, but during the recent snow storm, they took quite a beating. The tops of the trees were bent down so far that I could hit them with a broom!

Thankfully they rebounded, but I thought I’d take a little action to hopefully help the situation next time. I purchased 100ft of 1 inch tree chainlock. That is now wrapped around all the trunks so that instead of individual trees, I now have one mass of trees that support each other.

While I was up there, I noticed that the previous owner had used some small rope to attempt the same thing on a couple of the trees. While those trees didn’t have quite as much trouble with the snow, the rope was really destroying the bark. In some places the tree had tried to grow around the rope and in others, the rope was rubbing the bark off. This plastic chain should do a better job and keep the trees healthy.

We’ll have to wait until the next snowstorm to see how well it works!

benmartens February 21, 2012 Home Improvement

Projector Cables

Very shortly after buying the projector, I built a simple shelf mount for it. It was easier and cheaper than hanging it from the ceiling and the Epson 8350 has awesome lens shift so I was still able to get the picture in the right spot. However, the cables were left dangling down the wall. I finally got around to fixing that this past weekend.

The key to the project was finding a good way to get power up to the projector. I didn’t just want to add an outlet up there, because I want the projector to run off the battery backup system in the AV rack. Enter the PowerBridge. It’s effectively two outlets connected by a piece of Romex. The special thing is that one outlet is male and the other is female. That means you can connect your extension cord to the outlet at the bottom and run it to whatever power source you want. There is also an opening for HDMI cables to come out. This is a great way to wall mount your TV without paying for an electrician! The kit had everything I needed except that I needed to buy more Romex because the included 6’ length wouldn’t reach up to the projector.

The other trick to this projector is mounted near the ceiling and this room has vaulted ceilings. That means that there is a ceiling joist between the projector and the floor. I had to cut an extra hole in the drywall just above the hole and drill through to feed the cables down to the floor.

The extra cut is the part that took the longest. I did a pumpkin cut on three sides, folded it back and then made my holes. After running the wires, I folded the drywall back in place and applied spackle and sanded until it matched nicely again. I sprayed on some orange peel wall texture and it’s almost as good as new. Obviously it needs a coat of paint to completely match, but I’ll do that later once the rest of the project is done.

Next up: mounting a projector screen.

In picture #3, the drywall wouldn’t quite stay flush so I applied a little glue and taped it in place until the glue dried. And in picture #4, yes, that’s a trash bag taped to the wall. I had it there to catch most of my sanding dust and any of the spackle that I might drop.

benmartens February 16, 2012 Home Improvement, Projects

Cistern at Gates Foundation

I’ve been pestering TimS with a lot of questions now that I actually have a yard. His landscaping expertise has already come in very handy. We were discussing various ways to improve water runoff from my roof. It tends to drain back down into the crawlspace making extra work for the sump pump and the previous owners already had a little bit of an issue down there. I think I’ll probably end up installing one of these dry wells, but we started talking about cisterns. He mentioned that The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters here in Seattle has a 1 million gallon cistern that is used for flushing toilets and irrigation! The runoff from the paved areas and the roof of the building is collected there and reused.

I know it’s completely impractical for a lot as small as mine, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Sure I’d have to dig up most of my yard to fit a decent sized cistern in it. Sure I’d have to do a lot of work to get all of my downspouts to funnel into it. Sure it would cost orders of magnitude more money than I would save. But none of that means I don’t dream about it!

benmartens February 7, 2012 Home Improvement

Toilet Repair

When the inspector went through this house, he noted that all of the toilets had very old gaskets that should be replaced. It wasn’t something we asked the homeowners to fix so I’ve been going through and getting them changed out. I’m far from an expert, but since I had a few issues that were solved by the Internet, I thought I’d give back some of the things I learned.

  • Home Depot sells a bunch of products by Fluidmaster. They have mixed reviews about their longevity, but it’s what I’ve been going with. I recommend the model that has two chains. In addition to the normal one, another runs to the float. When you flush, it unlocks the float and lets it drop. This way if you somehow do have a leak, your toilet won’t run until you flush it the next time.
  • Some of the Fluidmaster kits also include a nifty pinch valve that fits on to the bowl refill line. You can adjust how much water goes back into the bowl after a flush. I have one toilet that doesn’t need any extra water after a flush so all of that water was being wasted.
  • If you’re going to take the tank off as part of your repair, just replace everything including the main gasket between the tank and the bowl. It hardly costs any extra money and then you’ll be good to go for many more years.
  • Can’t get those rusty tank bolts off? Take the blade off your hack saw, slip it between the tank and the bowl and saw that bolt off. It’s way easier than trying to use WD40 or something to loosen it up.
  • Don’t put your tools away when you’re done. Leave them there for a couple hours and then check for leaks. If you’re like me, you’ll need to give the tank bolts a little more of a turn. I’m always afraid of tightening them too much and cracking the porcelain.
  • If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The first toilet went smoothly, but the second one was a pain. In retrospect, replacing the filler valve to be the kind that doesn’t run until you flush again was fine, but I should have left the tank bolts and main flush valve alone. It took me days to get past all the leaks and I’m still not convinced that I’m done.
  • Don’t invite your wife in to see what the guts of a toilet looks like. She won’t be amused. Ha!
benmartens January 20, 2012 Home Improvement

Wall Switches

We have various colors of outlets and switches in our house. I’m planning to do a full sweep through the house replacing them all with white. The big question I’m dealing with right now is should I go for the flat switches or the older style that everyone is familiar with?

 

Which do you prefer? Leave a comment or shoot me an email.

benmartens January 12, 2012 Home Improvement

Garage Shelves: Part 3

After the success of the shelves and the workbench, I decided to build some shelves and a coat rack by the door. For those of you keeping track at home, this is day four of the garage project.

Instead of designing them myself, I used some plans that I found online. I’ll spare you the details since you can read the plans, but here are before and after shots.

While the plans look nice, I can’t recommend that you build these shelves. They took FOREVER and it was very difficult to mount them to a finished wall. I had to be super careful to make sure the lag bolts went into the studs behind the wall. If I missed, the shelves would end up on top of Tyla’s car.

The horizontal 2x4s look goofy. I added them because the center vertical 2×4 doesn’t tie into any wall studs. It’s there for vertical support only. The horizontal 2x4s are screwed into it and then screwed into the wall studs. Also, that was about the only way I could hold the shelves up and screw them in myself. If I had it to do over, I think I would place 2x4s horizontally across the wall and then build shelves onto those. But I guess once I have some boxes on the shelves, I won’t see that anyway.

The coat rack is made from a bathroom shower rod and some eye hooks. We have coat closets inside, but this will be a good spot to hang motorcycle gear and wet clothes.

I think this will be the end of the garage updates for a while.

[UPDATE] Since I wrote this and took the photo, I have removed the bottom shelf. Our garage door openers don’t have working lights (they’re OLD!) so a motion detector by the door is our only hope of getting some light when we drive in and step out of the car. The bottom shelf blocked the motion detector’s sensing range. I’m not very proud of these shelves. They’re functional but I know I can do better. You might hear more about this some day.

benmartens January 11, 2012 Home Improvement, Woodworking

Garage Shelves: Part 2

The next phase of the garage shelf project was building a workbench. Here’s a shot of the old bench.

It’s not quite the dream work area that I had in mind. The day after I built the storage shelves, I set to work building a new workbench. The shelves had been thoroughly planned out, but the workbench was designed as it was built. I decided to have the bench be roughly 38” tall. As with the shelves, I had to factor in the slope of the floor out to the driveway. Here is a shot of the frame. Some of the posts rest on the foundation. It bolts to the wall for rigidity, but I don’t rely on any of the wall joists for actual support.

Next it was time to apply the work surface. I went with one layer of 3/4” plywood and a top layer of 3/4” MDF drilled in from the bottom. Some day I’ll probably replace the MDF with a more durable surface, but for now it makes a very smooth work area.

I don’t have a table saw, but the method pictured below worked very well for making large cuts.

Once I got the plywood on, I realized that I didn’t have a good place for some black metal shelves that I had in the garage. I bit the bullet and cut a few inches off the end of my brand new workbench and remounted the legs. I wish I had thought of it originally but it turned out ok.

That’s as far as I got on that day. The next day, I spent a few hours adding a rail and shelf along the edge of the bench. The base of the shelf is a 2×4 and then the shelf is 3/4” MDF with cutouts for each wall joist.

On the second day of the workbench project, Logan also came over to help me put some plywood up in the rafters. It was pretty tricky and a bit time-consuming because all of the wires are run on top of the rafters. Not only was it hard to get the boards up through gaps in the wires and rafters, but I also had to lay down 2x4s on the rafters to give the wires room to go underneath the plywood. We added about 80 square feet of storage space up there.

benmartens January 10, 2012 Home Improvement, Woodworking

Garage Shelves: Part 1

The shelves that Tim and I built in the condo were one of the best changes I made to that place. The garage in the new house is awesome, but I wasn’t real happy with the aesthetics or functionality of the old shelves and the workbench area. I’ll break this into a series of posts because it was a pretty big project.

Here’s what it looked like before I started. (That’s Logan’s truck in the photo.)

Functional? Probably, but I knew I could do better. Logan and I started by tearing out all the old shelves. The metal went to recycling where we made about $35. That covered the dump run for the rest of the stuff that couldn’t go to recycling.

Getting all the wood and cleaning out the old mess took a day. The next day I tackled the main shelves. Because of the electrical box and the plumbing (just to the left of this photo), I decided not to run them along the whole wall. I started by building the shelves on the floor. I used the existing wall studs as the support for the back side of the shelves and that saved a lot of time. I had to make each post a different length because the garage floor slopes slightly out to the driveway.

I was able to lift the shelves up into place and secure them to the wall.

Then I added some plywood for the shelves. Each piece was 2’x4’ so when I was at Home Depot, I had them cut the plywood for me. That saved a lot of time and made it easier to handle. All I had to do at home was notch out holes for the 4×4 supports.

By the end of the day I had a good looking set of shelves in place!

benmartens January 9, 2012 Home Improvement, Woodworking

Vinyl Flooring

When we bought our house, the master bathroom had carpeting and no door. Odd, yes. There is a separate toilet room at the end of the bathroom and that part did have a door, but it’s still a bit weird to have someone watch you in the shower.

When we got our new carpet, I had them skip this room because we weren’t fans of carpet near the showers and tubs. Last weekend, I finally got around to installing a vinyl floor so we can use the bathroom.

One of my top priorities was going cheap on this project. We’re planning to gut the bathroom in a year or two and get rid of the ugly stuff in there now. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on a floor that I knew would be going away, and I didn’t want to put anything fancy in because it probably would need to be modified. I had originally intended to find a remnant, but by ordering a new piece we got exactly what we wanted for a design and I was also able to get it in the newer “floating vinyl” style.

This floating vinyl has a pad on the back of it which keeps it from warping at the edges. It also provides a bit of a cushion as you walk on it. The big benefit is that you don’t have to cover your floor with adhesive which is hard to take up later. Instead, you cut the vinyl to fit and then place a few strips of double sided tape down to hold it in place. It’s meant to float around a bit as the floor expands and contracts.

This is the first time I can remember installing vinyl so I’m sure I made a lot of mistakes, but I’m happy to report that it’s at least functional. I’m not happy with the line along the tub and the shower. I had to fill that with caulk to keep water from getting underneath, but it’s a pretty thick line of white against the brown vinyl and yellow tub. Bleh. It remains to be seen whether I will live with that until we tear it out, or if I’ll try to come up with something better.

Next up: adding a door.

benmartens November 11, 2011 Home Improvement

Tankless Water Heater

Our house came with a long list of appliances that needed to be replaced. Chelsea’s Dad, Brent, has a heating and cooling company (PMG Mechanical 206-624-5040) so I called him out to take a look at our water heater and furnace. His opinion about the water heater lined up with our inspector and a plumber that had been at the house: replace it soon. The furnace? That’s next year. Yeehaw.

Instead of just replacing the 50 gallon water heater with something similar, we went fancy and got a Takagi TK-3 tankless water heater. Tankless? Yep. That box hanging on the wall in the photo is our water heater. When you turn on a hot water faucet somewhere in the house, the burner fires up and it heats up the water as fast as it flows through the box. In theory you have to wait a tiny bit longer for your hot water, but since many of our faucets are on the other side of the house, I can’t tell any difference. The benefits are that you never run out of hot water and you aren’t paying to keep a bunch of water hot all day when you’re not using it.

Brent said that the water heater he took out was around 61% efficiency. For every $1 we spent on gas to heat the water, $0.39 was thrown away. The new system is 82% efficient and qualifies for some pretty large rebates and tax credits for being Energy Star certified.

You may notice that there is a recirculation pump in there. It’s the cheesy kind that works with a bypass value which forms a loop at the end of your plumbing run so your hot and cold pipes fill with hot water. This was on the old tank when we bought the house so I had him hook it up but it’s not enabled right now. Running a pump like this means that you’re burning gas the entire time and I’d rather just run the cold water out of the pipes myself in the morning. Also, when he set this up he added a hose bib for both the hot and cold water lines, so in theory, I could easily have hot water to wash my car!

All in all, I have no complaints with the system. I won’t really know if this saves us any money because we haven’t gotten enough gas bills to see a trend change. Brent said that for many people, the bill actually goes up because they never run out of hot water and use more of it. I’m not sure that Tyla and I will fit into that category since we aren’t in the habit of running out of hot water, but we’ll see. Hopefully this keeps our water warm for many years to come!

benmartens November 10, 2011 Home Improvement