Here’s another geek-themed doormat that even Dorothy could love.
Again, the price is kind of high. And again, if it was a little less expensive I’d consider buying it. It’d be nice in front of the sliding glass door in my office.
In an effort to figure out what is really possible in the extra attic space, I made the hole slightly bigger so I could see a little better. All I can say is that in my excitement of finding the space originally, I must have estimated more space than is really there.
I’m still going to open it up and put some flooring down, but it’s not going to be the panacea I thought it could be. It’ll still provide some relief for my storage concerns. The space is actually about four feet tall at it’s highest point (the hole I cut is as high as it could have been).
This new realization has helped me decide that the balcony project is a go. During the last week I’d been considering not doing it… the finish work kind of made me nervous, but now that the extra storage space has been cut by at least a third, the balcony will provide some more relief.
I was browsing the forum at HouseBlogs.net and found a thread on laminate flooring. One post pointed out a nice article at iFLOOR.com that does a pretty thorough job of comparing the many aspects of various manufacturers’ laminate flooring options (from durability to ease of installation). A couple of Quick-Step’s products got very high marks in the survey.
After reading the article, I searched through iFLOOR’s site and ended up placing an order for some samples.
Here’s what has caught my eye:
By no stretch am I ready to put down flooring in the kitchen, but it’s never too early to look at samples.
Which brings me to actually planning out the remodeling of the kitchen. Eventually I’m going to install new cabinetry. But I don’t know when that will be… and as much as I want new flooring NOW, I know that the smart move is to wait until the cabinets are done. I think next spring I’ll make some decisions about when to do the cabinetry. If it appears cabinets won’t happen for a few years, I might just go ahead and do the flooring. Or, I’ll redo the flooring in something really cheap (like vinyl tile) just to get rid of the ugly gray tile that’s in there right now. The only thing in the kitchen I hate more than the gray tile is the worn-out laminate fake butcher block counter tops. Somewhere along the line, someone who lived here didn’t understand the concept of a trivet.
Somehow I ended up at Wal-Mart tonight. Not sure why. I just got in the truck, then suddenly I was there. Spooky. Earlier I had a sudden urge to make zucchini pancakes (at 8:00 PM no less), but had no grater with which to shred the zucchini. So, maybe my subconscious was ensuring that the lack of a grater wouldn’t be a problem again. Or maybe it was just Walton’s ethereal self whispering into my ear… “Must Buy Cheap Stuff… Must Buy Cheap Stuff.”
After picking out a rather inexpensive grater and a nice set of silicone coated cooking tongs (so as not to scratch my nonstick skillet when cooking spinach) I ended up in the hardware section browsing the door hardware.
I’ve always liked the lever type door knobs. They seem so much more sensible. They’re easy to operate, and they look spiffy. So I bought four sets of the Black & Decker Bed & Bath Safe Lock sets, and two of the Hall & Closet variety (the only difference being that the Hall & Closet version doesn’t have a lock). That’s enough to do all the existing doors in the house. On the way home, of course, I realized I needed one more for the new door that will access the extra attic.
All told, I think I spent $80. An inexpensive project that goes a long way.
Okay… I’ve figured out how to deal with my apparent fascination with doormats. Even though “The Daily Doormat” has a snappier ring, I’ll spare all of you and limit the joke to a once a week thing. Really, I’m not particularly fond of doormats, but I keep stumbling over them online. Besides, Teh Internets is all about finding a niche and exploiting it… well, doormats just might be the next big thing. I can see it now: YourMat, a la YouTube! Yeah, you’re right… I’m probably grasping at straws. So what if I am. Web Celebs have been built on far, far less.
So, without further ado, I present you the first official “The Weekly Doormat” feature…
Swell, a nifty online surf shop, is offering up this incredibly understated doormat:
Not something for the family (unless of course your family swings that way). I think it’d be particularly funny at the steps of a hot tub.
Be sure to watch this space Wednesdays for the next installment of The Weekly Doormat.
Last night, while sitting on the couch watching tv, a thought suddenly struck me: there’s some dead space upstairs that could be used for storage. I jumped up, grabbed a saw, and commenced to cutting a 4″ x 4″ hole in the wall of my bedroom so I could take a peek.
Sure enough, I was right. On the other side of the wall, was essentially a large wedge of an attic that had been closed off by the wall of the bedroom which extends about half way across the kitchen. The rest of the space over the kitchen is covered by the pitching roof (see the illustration below).
At its tallest, the space is probably five or six feet tall, and slopes away to nothing. It’s hardly usable for living space, but it’d be perfect for some indoor storage. All it’ll take is to cut an entry hole, frame it for a short door, put down some plywood for a floor, and then insulate the ceiling of the new space (it isn’t insulated right now). It’ll provide a lot of storage, somewhere around 220 cubic feet, with about seventy square feet of floor space.
I can’t believe the builders didn’t think of this in advance. In the very least I can store things like Christmas decorations, clothes, and anything else I’d rather not trust in the crawlspace under the house.
I got some supplies in today, and I figured it’d be a fun experiment to set the webcam back up. It even has its own page (go there now).
The project I’m working on this evening will hopefully look like this once I’m done.
The intent is to improve my soldering skills. My test work from last weekend looks like bubblegum.
The majority of tonight’s work will likely be wrapping the individual beveled triangles in copper foil to prep for the solder. It’s a bit tedious and won’t make for any exciting webcam viewing, but I promised a couple people I’d set it up when I started working.
Honestly, I’m really not trying to turn CH into a product blog, but lately, it seems, I’ve been stumbling across some really cool house stuff. I guess with Christmas around the corner, the trend will only continue. So, with apologies (or not, if anyone is happy to see this sort of thing… leave a comment and let me know).
OhGizmo posted about a pretty cool looking spice rack that they found via CribCandy.
What’s nice is each container automatically dispenses a 1/4 teaspoon at a time, or you can pop the container out and use the shaker or pour top of the container. Hanging underneath a cabinet would go a long way toward reducing counter top clutter, but I’d be more apt to actually mount this under a shelf inside a cabinet. It’s nice and sleek, but I’d prefer it be out of the way completely. For $32, the only thing it’s missing are the spices.
Tiny Living has some other really nice stuff. Like this storage cube. Their prices seem pretty reasonable too.
Meanwhile, CribCandy has just been added to my feed reader (and linked in the sidebar as well). They seem to have a knack for finding pretty neat stuff.
While reading my feeds at Google this morning, Uneasy Silence had a post about this Barcode Doormat for sale at Perpetual Kid.
I think it’s pretty clever, but it’d be incredibly funny if they could be personalized… address number and zip code, maybe?
So I moseyed over to Perpetual Kid to take a look around and saw this one:
Now, that’s funny… and the prices on these are much lower than the Binary Code Welcome Doormat I linked a little while back.
So, after my minor and qualified success last weekend, I’ve started designing the fixtures for the kitchen and dining area.
Both fixtures will be mostly textured clear glass with the occasional translucent and opaque red and white accents to match the paint in rest of the kitchen. The rectangle fixture above will go over the cooking area. It’s about thirty inches on the long edge and will be just deep enough to encase the light bulbs it will cover (four inches or so). The octagonal fixture will go over the table and will have a diameter of eighteen or twenty inches. It’ll be more like an upside down lampshade with some depth (probably six to eight inches) and compound angles that come to a point at the center. I haven’t quite started to figure out the profile yet.
Obviously, I’m not going to start building these this weekend. I’ve got at least a little to learn before I’ll be confident enough to tackle either design. The nice thing is that now I have an idea of what I’d like to be able to do and the practice work I do between now and then will have some focus.