Studio711.com – Ben Martens

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

100 Beers

I’ve been using Untappd.com for the last 18 months. It has been fun to keep track of all the different beers that I’ve had. While we were sitting in the stands for the Indy 500, I popped the top on my 100th different beer! It was a Schell’s Deer Brand straight from New Ulm, MN. I suppose technically I’ve had more than 100 different beers but I’m not counting any that I drank before I started using the app.

So now that I have all this data, what are the best beers? First I should start by explaining the rating scale that I use:

  1. This isn’t what I call beer.
  2. If somebody hands me one, I’ll drink it, but I wouldn’t pay for it.
  3. If I can’t find #4 or #5, this is a good choice.
  4. If I go to buy beer and this is on the shelf, I will almost always choose it.
  5. Stockpile this beer! It’s awesome!

I also won’t let a beer get to #5 unless I’ve had it on multiple occasions. Sometimes a beer seems more delicious based on your social situation or the food you’re eating. A 5 star beer should be good any time!

So far, I’ve only given 5 stars to three beers:

  • Galley Mac Amber Ale – This is the recipe that we used when we made our own beer. It’s a copy of the Mac & Jack’s African Amber recipe.
  • Mac & Jack’s African Amber – The brewery is only a couple miles from work but I’ve never been there. WHY!?
  • Deschutes Brewery Red Chair Northwest Pale Ale – This is only made 5 months out of the year so when I see it, I buy a lot of it.

There aretwo more beers that are vying for a spot on the 5-star list:

  • Bell’s Brewery Two Hearted Ale. I had it for the first time on this last trip to Indianan and loved it. It’s similar to the Red Chair that is already on the list.
  • Hopworks Velvet ESB – I had this in Portland but can’t find it here!

There are lots of four star beers on my list: Fat Tire, Redhook ESB, Alaskan Amber, Double Take Amber, Widmer Hopside Down, 10 Barrell Hop Project #37, Redhook Audible Ale, Anchor Brewing Liberty Ale, Fish Brewing Spire Mountain Cider, Gustav’s Enchantment Ale, Great Lakes Burning River Pale Ale, Left Hand Sawtooth Ale, Gallagher’s Cealidh Wheat, Gallagher’s Hals Celebration, Goose Island Honker’s, Silvery City Ridgetop Red, Pyramid Pale Ale, Manny’s Pale Ale, Hopworks Velvet ESB, Alaskan ESB, Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA, and Bell’s Two Hearted Ale.

That’s a lot of 4 star beers. I’m thinking I should run through them all again and see if they really are worth of their 4 star rating. Sounds delicious… challenge accepted!

benmartens June 3, 2014 Commentary

Bear Grylls Life Tips

I admit to being a Bear Grylls fanboy. I’ll watch just about anything he does, or at least give it a try. He has quite a few books so I decided to look at one. Meh. It’s really not very good, but there were three thoughts from the book that have really stuck with me.

  1. He talks about how it’s so easy to take your frustrations out on your closets friends and family. You see them every day so you feel very comfortable and you let down your guard. But if we love them the most, shouldn’t we give them the best of ourselves? “The smart man and woman save the best for those they love.”
  2. “We all have bigger and better stories, but it’s a good quality to be able to hold your tongue and allow the storyteller their moment in the sun.”
  3. “Here is a great definition of gossip I once heard: ‘If the person you’re speaking to will think worse or less of the person you’re speaking about, then it’s gossip, so cut it out!’”

The book is called A Survival Guide for Life: How to Achieve Your Goals, Thrive in Adversity, and Grow in Character. I can’t really recommend it if I can remember and act on even one of those three things then it was worth a read.

benmartens June 2, 2014 Books

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

Throwback Thursday – Yard Work In 1996

As I’ve been getting started on our huge landscaping project, it seemed fitting to show a photo from a project back in Indiana. Dad was rebuilding the back terrace retaining wall and there are a couple photos of me digging post holes decked out in my elementary school all-star baseball shirt and high school baseball hat. I don’t know why that was the best work wear. I do still have my high school jersey though. Maybe I should wear that while working out in the yard now?

benmartens May 29, 2014 Throwback Thursday

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

Nail Gun

I’ve wanted an air compressor for a long time, but I just couldn’t justify the cost. Until now. Part of this backyard project is building a fence and while, yes, I could build it without a nailgun, it would move along MUCH faster with one. I also wanted to pick up a little big bigger than average air compressor in hopes of being able to blow out my own irrigation lines (albeit much more slowly than the pros do it.)

To that end, I picked up an 8 gallon air compressor from Lowes. It’s nothing fancy but it should get the job done, at least for the construction part. It remains to be seen how long it will take to blow out my lines with this. After checking rental prices for nail guns from Home Depot, I decided I could get the exact same Hitachi model for about the price of 4-5 days worth of rental. Done! The last piece of the puzzle was a 50 ft retractable air hose.

Put them all together and I’m ready to build a fence! I look forward to picking up a smaller brad nailer for my woodworking too.

benmartens May 27, 2014 Uncategorized

Thank You Veterans

Happy Memorial Day! The first thing that might pop into your mind is beer and barbeques, but don’t forget to thank a veteran today.

Memorial Day has a long history dating back to the 1800s when people would decorate the graves of fallen soldiers. There’s a lot of controversy about exactly how it started, but it was declared an official Federal holiday in 1967. At that point it was moved from always being on May 30 to being the last Monday in May. Can you imagine what would happen if they changed the date of a holiday now?

benmartens May 26, 2014 Commentary

Flite Fest

I’ve blogged quite a bit about the guys over at FliteTest.com. They’re almost my sole source of information as I’ve leanred the RC hobby. Over the last 6 months, I watched every single one of their 400+ videos on YouTube.

There are lots of radio controlled plane/helicopter airshows around the country. The Flite Test crew travels to a lot of them, but they also decided to start their own this year. They decided to fund it with a Kickstarter and timidly asked for $5000. The hordes of fans smashed down their doors waving money in the air and they were fully funded in less than a day. They kept adding stretch goal after stretch goal. At the halfway point of their month of fundraising, they were at $32,651!

They wisely had quite a few options for fans to back them even if they couldn’t make it to Ohio for the Flite Fest event. I joined that group and pitched in some money. I can’t make it this year but I would absolutely love to visit them sometime in the future. It also got me excited to look at local RC airshows and possibly visit one here in Washington.

So kudos to the Flight Test guys on a massively successful Kickstarter campaign! I’m hoping that this outpouring of support will convince them to sign up for something like Patreon.com to help fund their twice weekly videos too. I’ve written to them about it and it sounds like they’re investigating. They provide us so much value that we’d like to give them some value in return!

benmartens May 23, 2014 Radio Controlled Flight

Throwback Thursday – 1981 First Haircut

Elijah got his first haircut recently so I thought it was fitting to show the first time that I had my haircut. It’s hard to make that first haircut for your child. Mom and Dad got some help from Aunt Sandy and Uncle Dean to make those first snips of my hair. It looks like it was a surprise attack in the middle of a croquet game.

benmartens May 22, 2014 Throwback Thursday