Studio711.com – Ben Martens

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

Custom Storage and Desk: Part 3

Part 1 showed the cabinets going in. Part 2 talked about building and finishing the desk surface. Once that was all done, it was time to install the desk!

The two desk pieces fit into their spots pretty well. There were some non-square walls that I had to deal with and it required a bit of sanding on one end for a good fit, but overall, it wasn’t too bad. The oak desk surface was screwed to the cabinets and supports from the bottom up. I added a couple 45 degree angle supports just to ensure that the desk was solid. I was able to put all my weight on the biggest span so it should be ok.

After installing it, I drilled a hole for the cords to snake down under the desk and installed a grommet. This was one of the most nerve-wracking parts of the build. I had to take a giant hole saw and cut through this piece of wood that I had spent weeks building. Thankfully it went smoothly.

Once it was all assembled, I realized that the surface was an inch or two too high. I’m a big guy so I like a tall desk, but this was too much. When I designed this, I had only accounted for the height of the cabinets and forgot to include the thickness of the desk and the spacers I had to put under the cabinets so the doors wouldn’t scrape against the carpet as they opened. It wasn’t a huge deal though because I knew I could use a keyboard tray. I don’t generally like keyboard trays because I feel like they are too small or too flimsy so I decided to build my own. I ordered 14” slides and then used some leftover oak plywood to build a keyboard tray that is almost 3 feet wide and over a foot deep. Now THAT is a keyboard tray! It’s rock solid and plenty big enough.

After that was all done, it was time to move in. I ran all the cables and tried to start with some nice cable organization. One of my favorite features is this little cord manager which sits to the left of my keyboard. It holds all of the little USB dongles that I use regularly (micro USB, mini USB, smart card reader, etc) so that I don’t have to go digging through a door or under my desk to find the right one.

I’ve started cleaning up the pile of boxes that used to be up against this wall. A lot of it is getting thrown away or donated, but the remainder is getting organized into the cabinets. Once that is done and I finish a couple other house projects, I would like to build some small shelves under the desk to the right of where my desk chair is to help even out that space. Right now that opening looks a little lopsided. I also need to add some handles on the drawers and cabinet doors. Those parts can wait a little while though.

This was a huge project, but I’m very proud of the way it turned out. I did it for about $3500 less than a contractor would have charged me. It’s not overly fancy, but it gets the job done.

benmartens November 12, 2013 Home Improvement, Projects, Woodworking

Custom Storage And Desk: Part 2

Part 1 showed the cabinets going in. Once that was done, I added two sets of quad outlets above what will be the desk surface. Each quad outlet contains two outlets that are built-in surge protectors. This seemed useful for things like printers and scanners which will sit on the desk surface.

The length of the wall wasn’t an even multiple of the cabinet sizes I had available so I couldn’t stretch cabinets all the way to the end of the wall. Instead I wrapped some custom shelves around that corner. This is my least favorite part of the project, but they were cheap and functional. I can replace them later if I come up with something better. I bought some 10” metal supports and a couple melamine boards. I cut the boards to fit, ironed white veneer on the exposed ends and mounted them.

Next it was time for the hardest part of the job: building a desk surface. I went through a ton of different ideas from buying a bunch of boards to make a butcher block style table and using laminate flooring. This kept me up nights. I won’t go into details but there were a bunch of requirements that seemed to conflict. Finally I decided to build it with 3/4” sheets of oak plywood and face it with 1” strips of solid oak.

I had to build the desk in two parts in order to get it up the stairs into the room. One piece was an L-shape with a 45-degree angle where I’ll sit and the other wise was a simple 2’x8’ rectangle with a notch cut out of one corner to accommodate a support structure in the wall. I don’t have a table saw (yet) so all of the big cuts were done on the garage floor using a clamped straight edge to guide my circular saw. It’s not the most glamorous way to make cuts, but it sure works well even with one person. (The blue tarps were set up to cover my shelves and to block off the third bay where I was working in an effort to control dust.)

The building work went pretty quickly once I got started. The L-shape part was two pieces of plywood joined together with biscuits and glue. The facing went all the way around the desk and was also attached with biscuits and glue. There are no nails in the whole thing so the surfaces are pristine. I bought some 48” clamps and got good at using them as I slowly attached each piece of oak to face the plywood.

Once the building part was complete, I nervously set about staining the desk. It’s a huge surface and I’m no expert. A new 5” random orbital sander helped immensely as I got the surfaces prepped. I ran through 120 grit, 150 grit, and 220 grit sand paper.  I figured I needed to do each piece in one pass so that the stain would be put on roughly even. I started by doing the bottoms of both pieces, made my mistakes there and then did the tops. After the stain I applied three coats of polyurethane (the bottom only got one coat.) Given the cool weather, I wanted to let everything dry extra long so I did one coat per day. That stretched the project out a long time, but in the end, I had a desk surface that I was pretty proud of.

Next up: Installation and finishing touches

benmartens October 28, 2013 Home Improvement, Projects, Woodworking