Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Home Improvement

Yard Project

From the moment we looked at the house, Tyla and I have had some dreams about improving our yard. We’re both used to huge lots in the Midwest so having 1/6th of an acre (which is a big lot in this area!) feels constricting. On top of that, lots of the plants were overgrown and the yard was in two tiers making the useable space even smaller. And on top of that, drainage was terrible so the yard was muddy a lot. Now that Elijah is walking, we really wanted to give him a place that was dry and safe to play in.

Thankfully, TimS does this kind of thing for a living and was willing to help us out in his free time. It’s a massive project but we’re trying to knock a lot of it out in just two weeks. Here’s what we’ve done to this point:

  • Remove the trees.
  • Remove all sod in the back yard, all remaining bushes and plants, and the fence. This took two dump runs with a big dual axle dump trailer and one concrete recycling trip with that trailer. Thanks to Don for loaning us his truck so we could pull that trailer!
  • Build a retaining wall along the northeast corner of our lot. Fill in dirt to raise that corner up about three feet to level out the back yard.
  • Build a new fence.
  • Add French drains along the west side of our lot to catch water flowing down the hill as it hits our property. Add drains behind the retaining wall. Tie the downspouts into the drain.
  • Add an irrigation system.

We’re making great progress. All of the demolition happened last Friday on Day 1 of the project. We rented an excavator, and with Tim at the controls the work got done quickly. Since then we’ve been digging postholes (thanks Don and Logan!), building the retaining wall and building the fence. The goal is to get the wall done this week and then rent a machine to trench and move dirt around this weekend.

It’s a massive project but so far it’s going pretty smoothly. The only set back so far has been cutting the Comcast and telephone lines. They were wrapped around and through a big tree stump that we were trying to remove. Oops! If that’s the only problem we have, I’ll be thrilled!

Tyla has the hardest job of all. Normally when I come home I try to take care of Elijah and give her a break and I try to do a lot of that on the weekends too. With me being out in the yard working every minute I’m awake at home, she’s on full time baby duty. This project couldn’t happen without her. Thank you Tyla!

Below you’ll find a timelapse video for our demolition day. Unfortunately both of my GoPros ran out before we got the stump out, but we did get it before the day was over.

And here is a comparison of what the yard looked like before and what it looks like now.

benmartens June 4, 2014 Home Improvement, Video

Bye Bye Trees

I am Ben, Destroyer of Trees.

The next step in the yard project was to pull out a bunch of trees. Some of them were dying and some would have died after we raised the level of the yard above their current bases. Tim regularly works with one tree service and they had done some free work for the church so they seemed like a good fit for the job at our house. They pulled down a bunch of trees along our back fence and along the side of the house. As with most contractor work, I was a bit hesitant to pay someone to do this, but in the end I was glad I did. They had the whole thing done and cleaned up in four hours. It would have easily taken me all weekend and then I would have been left with a big mess of trees to haul away. It looks incredibly different in our backyard, but it’s not the finished product. Out with the old, in with the new!

In the photo below, Elijah and Tyla are both wearing their “Better Hearing and Speech Month” shirts. The clinic that Tyla worked in promotes this every month as a public service announcement. Make sure you protect your ears! Once you damage them, you generally can’t fix them.

benmartens May 30, 2014 Home Improvement

Water Level

I like catching glimpses of useful information in the show Treehouse Masters. One that always catches my eye is the water level. It’s a simple piece of clear plastic tubing filled with water. As long as there are no air bubbles in the tube, the water will always rise to the same height at both ends of the tube. This simple science fact means that you can find the same height across great distances and uneven ground. I have a laser level which is good for this but it doesn’t go very far, especially in the daytime. And oh yeah, it’s a lot more expensive than a clear plastic tube.

I recently used this technique to figure out how high we need to raise up the corner of our yard to match our patio height (33”). I imagine we’ll use this at some point in the fence building project too.

benmartens May 28, 2014 Home Improvement

Backyard Project

I grew up on 6.5 acres. I now live on 1/6th of an acre. I regularly wait up and think of Phil Robertson saying “Another day in the subdivision.” This house is great, but the yard is tiny. The nice thing is that it means we can afford to make huge changes to the yard. Ever since moving in, I’ve been collecting ideas on my landscaping wish list and now it’s time to make it happen. Here’s a list of some things we’ll back doing:

  • Take down almost every tree and plant on the property
  • Lift up the northeast corner of the lot about 30 inches and add a retaining wall. This will level out the yard and give us more usable space.
  • Add drainage along the west edge of our lot to catch rain running down the hill onto our property. This should keep the back yard from turning into the swamp it is now.
  • Tear down the fence and build a new one
  • Take down the basketball pole and hoop and install a new one
  • Tear out all the sod and dig down a few inches. Replace it with better topsoil and new grass.
  • Add a planter area at the end of the sidewalk to help keep people from driving through the yard in the dark or the snow
  • Add new plants and trees

That’s most of it I think, but as you can see, this is an enormous project. Thankfully we have the expert, Tim, to lead us. He and I will be doing most of the work ourselves with help from any of you who want to stop in. We’re going to start and finish the back yard before digging in to the front yard.

I got a head start on the project by removing the cedar swing. I dismantled it over the course of a few evenings and then took it all to the dump. Seeing this small bit of progress has me very excited to dig into the rest of it! Expect a lot more posts about this.

benmartens May 9, 2014 Home Improvement

Night Vision Camera

I’ve done quite a bit of DIY security work on our house and it’s built up into a system that I’m proud of. I haven’t blogged about it for obvious reasons, but one of the pieces is a bunch of security cameras. I recently added one more camera by the garage and it’s so cool that I had to share some info about it. The camera itself is the same model that I use most other places, but the difference is that I added an IR LED light that is supposed to be good for 200-300ft. This means that at night, the entire front of my house is now lit up light the mid-day sun, and best of all, it’s invisible to the naked eye. Here’s a screenshot with and without the IR light.

 

I know these screenshots are small, but when someone walks in front of my house or comes out of the path in the woods, I can see tons of detail and it’s all automatically recorded to my server.

If you’re ever interested in some DIY security at your house, let me know. I’m happy to chat about this and share what I’ve learned. It drives me nuts that I can’t blog more about it, but I really don’t feel like sharing the details of it (though even knowing probably wouldn’t help a thief too much if I did everything correctly.)

benmartens April 22, 2014 Home Improvement

Peg Board

About a month ago I took some time and reorganized the peg board above my workbench. Sounds exciting, right? The odd thing is that I did it on a Saturday and on Sunday morning when I told Tim what I had done he said “I’m doing that exact same thing this afternoon!”

The peg board mostly just holds tools like you’d normally expect but I got two special pieces for it too. One is a paper towel holder and the other is a metal basket.  I wouldn’t recommend the paper towel holder because it was pretty difficult to install (which is ridiculous on a peg board), but the metal basket is great and I might get one or two more. It’s a convenient place to hold pencils, ear plugs, headphones, etc.

As part of my effort to improve the workbench, I also added a shelf below the main working area. It gives me more places to keep tools. Generally, I like the shelf but I’ve hit my knee on it a couple times while sitting on my stool. I might need a little redesign or a piece of foam to go over the edge.

What you can’t see in this photo is that I also have a place to mount a bench vise that I got for Christmas. I drilled holes on the left side where the scroll saw is currently sitting. Since I don’t use the vise every day, it sits on the shelf under the bench.

I’ve been waiting until my workbench is clean to take this photo, but you know what? It’s a work bench and it’s generally covered in a project. That’s what it’s for!

benmartens April 15, 2014 Home Improvement

Custom Closet Storage

We have a closet underneath our stairs that opens out into the kitchen and family room area. That’s where a lot of our cleaning supplies get stored along with extra trash bags, paper towels, etc. We’ve always wanted to have that be a little more organized so I embarked on a small project to build some shelves and cabinets.

I started by designing the project with Google Sketchup. I’m really liking that tool and hope to use it more. It’s a great way to visualize the design decisions and then also to take measurements of the various pieces that need to be cut. The entire project was built out of 1/2” MDF with a little bit of 1/4” MDF for some facing. I cut everything to size first and painted it before I assembled it. I’ve never painted/stained a project BEFORE putting all the pieces together but it sure made painting a lot easier. I’ll probably try that again, but I won’t do it for a project like this where everything needs to fit precisely into a pre-defined space. As I started installing it, I realized that the closet wasn’t square so I ended up with some goofy looking gaps and pieces that didn’t fit quite right. The pictures below show it loaded up with our supplies and honestly you can’t see most of the issues. I do need to cover up the screw holes around the door (this would have been a good use for a finish nailer) but that should be pretty quick.

I got to use some new tools in this project. The table saw was a huge help as I was able to make big, repeatable cuts very quickly. I don’t miss crawling around on the floor, clamping a straight edge onto the big sheet and then using the circular saw to make each cut. I also made good use of a self-leveling laser that I got for Christmas. It made it super easy to attach the closet support pieces to the wall and get everything at the same height.

All in all I’m happy with how quickly this project came together (7 days from first cut to final install). If I can’t learn to live with the gaps then I’ll either rebuild part of it or add some trim, but something tells me that probably won’t happen. I learned a lot from this project and will probably put the skills to use again in one of our upstairs storage closets.

benmartens January 22, 2014 Home Improvement, Projects, Woodworking

Frozen Hosen

We had a spell of exceptionally cold (for this area) weather. Daytime temps were barely above freezing, and it dipped down into the low teens at night. After a few days of this, I was outside and noticed a big ice formation growing from one of my hose bibs. Oops. There’s a shutoff valve inside the garage, but I forgot to flip that this year and the entire valve froze along with much of the pipe leading up to it.

Thankfully nothing broke but I wanted to get it thawed before anything bad happened. So I wrapped a rag around the valve. Then I hooked a hose up to my tankless water heater and ran it out to the frozen valve. (Thanks to Brent’s guys for adding this valve right by the water heater! It has been incredibly useful!) The hose I connected is the white one on the left side of this photo.

After a minute or two, the ice started to break up and eventually I was able to turn the valve and get water to flow again. Phew! Hopefully I won’t make this same mistake twice. Next time I might not be so lucky.

benmartens December 23, 2013 Home Improvement

Lumber Rack

My garage is plenty big, but I’ve never figured out a good place to store leftover wood, especially big sheets of it. The original plan was to build something that hangs from the rafters, but for lots of boring reasons, it just wasn’t the right answer. So instead, I decided to stack the wood up against the wall.

I had to build a platform to keep the wood above the water main, so that’s why it’s not resting directly on the ground. It’s a very simple design. The bottom platform bears the weight and then there is a bar running across at about 5 feet up from the platform to keep the wood in place. That bar is held in place with a U bracket so I can just slide it up and out when I need to access big sheets of wood.

This solution won’t hold a LOT of wood, but I think it will do the job for a while. I actually don’t have a lot of big scraps left. Many of them went to this project!

benmartens December 9, 2013 Home Improvement, Woodworking

Workshop Additions

I recently purchased (used) a few tools which will greatly expand what I can do in my workshop.

I’ve always felt a bit stuck without a tablesaw. Whenever I needed one, I had to drive up to Monroe and bug Tim. That also meant making very sure that I had all my measurements ready ahead of time. The alternative was trying to use my circular saw to make the cuts myself. All that is behind me now!
I never knew I needed a biscuit joiner until I had access to one. This makes it so easy to join pieces of wood together. I used it heavily when I was building my desk and again when I was building the church sign.
When Tim offered to sell me his jointer, I said, “What’s that?” After a quick YouTube search, I wrote him back and said I’d take it. This helps you make two sides of your board perfectly flat and at a perfect 90 degree angle. This will come in very handy when I finally getting around to building some nicer furniture.
benmartens November 26, 2013 Home Improvement, Woodworking