Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Home Improvement

Light Timer

Every night since moving in, I have been doing battle with the external light timer. The previous owner left instructions, and I found the manual online, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t get them to work correctly. Even when I set the program, the timer drifted and would be wrong by the next day.

I finally gave up trying to get it working and ordered the fanciest light timer I’ve ever seen: a Honeywell Econoswitch. It’s a digital timer that fits right into the light switch panel. You can do a separate program for each day to turn the lights on and off, or the really cool feature is that it will calculate the sunrise and sunset based on the latitude and longitude that you enter in. The installation was simple and this one is a breeze to program. It’s well worth the money!

benmartens November 1, 2011 Gadgets, Home Improvement

Network Cabling

While I would love to have network cable installed in the entire house and run to a nice patch panel, realistically that’s either going to take me forever or cost a lot of money. So for now I’ve settled with running a couple wires from the family room to the theater room. The rooms sit on top of each other and share a wall in the garage, so it was a pretty simple job. I ran the cable out through the wall in the family room to the garage, up the other side of the wall, and then punched through into the theater room. It ended up looking really nice because all of the networking gear can stay upstairs in that room and the family room just gets the TV and a PC to drive it.

One great tip I got from Logan was to drive a six inch nail through the wall before cutting into it. This not only helps you locate where you need to cut on the other side of the wall, but it will also give you a hint if you’re trying to cut through something solid between the walls.

This is a tiny step forward, but I’m excited about what this room is going to turn into!

P.S. You may have noticed that I started a new blog category called “Man Cave.” Any time I do an improvement to that room, I’ll be posting it with this tag so that you can find them all easily if you are interested.

benmartens October 18, 2011 Home Improvement, Projects

The Home Theater Begins

Tyla thinks we bought this house so that we’d have more room, own some dirt, etc etc etc. Wrong. We bought this house so that I could have a projector again. Those of you who have been reading for a while may remember that back in Jersey, we had a little theater room set up on the ground floor. That projector was only 800×600 but boy was it fun! There was no room for a projector in the condo, and ever since leaving that projector behind in Jersey, I’ve bided my time waiting for the opportunity to arise again.

As we walked through various houses, the thought of “where can I stick a projector” was never far from my mind. When we walked into this house, it was obvious. Upstairs there is a 15’x25’ bonus room with a huge wall just begging for a projector. I patiently (I’m lying) waited until we bought the important things like a fridge, but it wasn’t too long before I couldn’t wait anymore. I pulled the trigger on a new projector.

I present to you the Epson 8350. It’s a 1080p 3LCD projector, and depending on how it looks, I’m shooting for roughly a 120” diagonal screen. It’s going to blow my mind when it arrives. I won’t even have any furniture to put in that room yet, but details details, first things first! You can expect a lot more photos of this as soon as I get it set up. After that I’ll have a lot more projects lined up to make this into an incredible man cave!

benmartens October 14, 2011 Home Improvement, Projects

Another Weekend of Work

Last weekend we spent a lot more time at the house getting it prepped. We owe another huge thanks to Don, Nancy, Logan, Megan, Andy and Stephanie for coming over. We’ve gotten so much more done than I thought would ever be possible! The projects for this weekend were painting a weird bar in the master bedroom white, painting the hallway (vaulted ceilings), and cleaning out the pantry and painting it. We were home before dinner on both days which is a testament to how much help we had. The house is really looking great!

There are eight new photos available under the House tag. In the photo of Don in the kitchen you can spot our brand new fridge. That was delivered earlier in the week along with a washer and dryer.

benmartens October 13, 2011 Home Improvement

Werner Multi-Function Ladder

We spent a lot of time painting this weekend, and before we got started, I knew I was going to need some ladders. I figured I would need a step ladder and an extension ladder, but being the geek I am, I found one ladder that does both. It’s available from a lot of places, but one of the cheapest is Amazon and you can get it with 2 day shipping if you have Amazon Prime!

It turned out to be even more useful than I thought it would be. You can use it as a regular step ladder but you can set it at different heights between 5’ and 9’. As an extension ladder, it will go all the way out to 22’. And as an unexpected (and probably not recommended) bonus, when you get close to a corner, you can decrease the height of one side of the stepladder to bring you closer to the corner. The same idea applies if you want to set up the ladder on the stairs.

The biggest drawback is the weight. It’s a heavy ladder, but given it’s flexibility and price, I’m very happy that I bought it.

Plus, you get to have this video run through your head the whole time you’re using it. (No, the ladder in the video isn’t the one I bought and the one I bought doesn’t support this configuration.)

benmartens October 11, 2011 Home Improvement

First House Pictures

After a long and crazy journey, we finally closed on the house on Friday! We were very thankful to finally have the keys in hand and be the proud owners of a house that exceeded our dreams.

Friday night we went over after work to meet with the carpet guy and have dinner on the floor. Logan was nice enough to bring over a little fridge so we could keep beer cold over the weekend.

Saturday morning started with spending a lot of money at Home Depot (a theme of the weekend) and then painting and cleaning. The whole Brandt family came over to help for the entire day. We got the whole kitchen deep cleaned and painted the living room and taped the family room.

Since we were going to church on Monday night this week, we were able to spend all day Sunday at the house. The whole family came over AGAIN and Tim and Chelsea were there too. With all that help, we were able to get both bathrooms cleaned, two coats on the family room and kitchen and one coat in the master bedroom! Tyla and I finished the night by putting a coat of purple in the laundry room.

It was a long weekend, but it was a blast to be in the new house and show our friends and family around. Appliances come later in the week and carpet comes next week. Combined with all the paint and little projects we’re doing, it’s really going through a big transformation.

We can’t thank you all enough for helping out! It would have easily taken us a couple weeks to get this far on our own. We’re both eager to get moved in and have you over for relaxation instead of work!

Photos are available under the House tag.

benmartens October 6, 2011 Home Improvement