Transitions

This is a fairly unexciting topic, but it took me a while to do this and I'd been putting off doing it for so long, I think it deserves its own post.  I installed transition strips/thresholds this weekend between the cork floor and the sliding glass windows and the bathroom tile.  It wasn't a big deal, but also took some finagling to get right.  Pictured above is the transition by the front sliding glass window.

Not shown is the one I did for the other sliding glass window and the bathroom strip.  For the other sliding glass one, I cut small holes in the strip on the two ends so I could run some speaker wire under it and have my movie area wired for sound.  I'll take some pics of that when I document the main living room area and projector screen sometime soon.

Room Curtains!

I spent many-a-mornings with my room bright as the day because all I had on the sliding glass doors to prevent the light from coming in was a thin white sheet.  Last week though, my mom took the extra material from the curtain in the living room and made it into curtains for my bedroom!  I think it looks pretty great, and it definitely works well to keep the sun out.

It even allows me to leave my plants and my cats' bed in the window box and lets them get sun while keeping it out of the room.

In this picture you can also see that I've made a little seating area by the window.  My bed had been in the middle of the room, with a night stand to the right of it, but I moved that towards the door of the room and brought in two of the old-school/retro office chairs I have.  Now you can sit there and read or watch TV or just lounge.  I'm really liking the way the room feels with this area setup as opposed to before.

Ceiling Mounting the Projector

This weekend I worked on ceiling mounting my projector with my mom.  Since I got it, I've had the projector sitting on a little school desk between the couches.  It was fine while sitting down and watching movies, but walking in front of it caused you to be blinded by the bright light, and the power and video cables going to/from it were just asking for an accident.

I got a projector mount when I purchased the projector as part of the package, but in order to get the cables to/from it I needed to either install various types of video jacks in the ceiling, have cable run through the walls to another jack, where I'd plug things like my DVD player, comptuer etc into so that I could see them on the screen.  This would've been pretty expensive, so I went with the cheaper route of installing "raceway" from the projector, along the ceiling, to the wall, and then down.  Raceway is just a plastic guide for the cables to go in so they're not conspicuous.  It's fairly cheap and the sell it at Lowes and Home Depot.

I also had to cut out sections of my foam wall decorations/sound dampeners so that the raceway could run behind them, but that was pretty easy because of the fact that they're foam.

Once I finalize where my dvd player etc are going to be located, I'll run some more of the raceway horizontally along the wall to where it will end.  I also plan on getting a black power cable as opposed to the orange one you can see.

$450...

...is how much I'm going to get back on my taxes just from installing an energy efficient hot water heater ($300) and furnace ($150).

Definitely something to consider when considering upgrading appliances. Make sure to take advantage of this if you're able to.

It's about time...

Since I moved into my new house I've walked across the house every morning to shower in the guest bathroom which is off the living room. Then I'll come back to my room to walk through my bathroom to go into my closet, then maybe I'll have forgotten to brush my teeth, so I'll walk across the house again to go back to the other bathroom.

Before I bore you with the details of why that happened, I'll cut to the chase and show you the video of the bathroom tour. The begining's dark, so give it a second or two:



(ok, now get ready, this is gonna be boring)

There were a few reasons for my "master bathroom" (my mom hates that term, so I don't use it much and now it sounds a bit funny/pretentious) not being ready. First it was because the contractors didn't measure right for the cultured marble order and had to jury rig it slightly, and as a result, needed an extra piece to cover a joint. Then once I finally got that piece ordered and picked it up, I found that it was made slightly incorrectly and had to be replaced. Then I got it back, had the contractors come back in to install it, but realized that the caulking they'd used on the rest of the cultured marble was the wrong type. I got the right stuff for them and they came back, got rid of the old stuff and put the new stuff on. So all good, right?

Wrong.

They did a terrible job applying the caulking. The transition between the black caulking and the white wall looked horrible... it was varying thicknesses, not a straight line, missing in places, etc. Anyway, I was sick of relying on them to get it right so I decided to do it myself.

Removing the caulking kinda sucked, and after trying to put the new caulking on "free hand" with my mom, we realized that you really need to mask it off to make it look good. Sooo, we did that... then when I went to touch up scratches we'd made in the paint removing the old caulking, I discovered that masking tape doesn't stick to silicone caulking! This made painting pretty difficult.

After a good bit of work with all this, I think tonight I'm all set to use "my" bathroom for the first time tomorrow morning. I even installed the shower head my parents got me for x-mas that has a spinning center, haha.

Closet, I have it.

I finally installed the rod under my stairs for my coat rack. I have another idea I'd like to use for hooks hanging from the cieling, but that would be in addition to this. Wow, that picture's terrible.

Netflix should thank me...

... cuz I won't be driving over their DVDs anymore :P

Basket with cork back board

(Sorry for the poor photo)

I have a mailslot on my garage door, but no mailbox on the other side, so the mail just falls to the ground. My mom got me this plastic basket-type thing for x-mas to use as a mail basket and I finally got around to installing it on my garage door with a few bolts. After doing so I realized that the basket didn't return to it's normal position after the garage door went up and back down, making the mail miss the basket. To get around this, I bolted a piece of extra cork to the back of the basket, acting as a stop for the mail, as well as making it so people can't look into the garage.

Looking up at the basket on garage door in it's open position:

Number Ni... Seven.

I got this wood letter from Jo-Anna Fabrics, painted it with the same color paint as my siding and put three of the screw-bolts used to attach the siding in it (for show). It's too cold now, but when the weather's more temperate, I'm going to attach it to the concrete block with glue. For now I taped it to the front window though.

This. Is. Big. (Tetris.)

As it is now, my living room/dining room has a very prominent "flutter echo" from the two large parallel walls. Although it's a neat phenomenon, it's also somewhat annoying because it makes the room sound loud. I've been planning to put acoustic paneling up on this area for a while now to deaden the room, but that's quite a large project so it isn't one that I thought I'd get to in the near future. However, we started getting some things for work shipped in these large, crazy looking styrofoam pieces and I immediately thought to use them instead of the fabric panels I'd been envisioning. They're not really ideal acoustically for what I want to do, but they should help, and they're free.

I was able to get 18 of them so far, they measure about 18" x 29", and there's a top piece and a bottom piece. Top and Bottom are similar, but both have two distinctly different sides on them; one which has square bumps coming out of them, and the other that has half-cube like holes. Word on "the street" is that we get these regularly so I should be able to get more.

My first plan was to hang them on the wall with nails, but then tonight while my friends Teddy and Jess were over, we came up with an even better plan: put nails (or pegs) all over the wall, allowing you to rearrange the pieces anyway you want, anywhere you want. We also discovered that in addition to hanging them, if arranged in the right way, they can be stacked on top of each other, essentially making a giant Tetris/Jenga game! It's hard for me to convey how cool I think this is going to be. Anybody that comes over can just rearrange the wall in a manner they like.

Also, with the track lighting mounted only a foot or two from the wall some really dramatic shadows are created. Stop motion photography to come ;)

"The System" Works (Like a Dysfunctional Family)

Lots of updates to tell about the proposed place across the street today.

A few weeks ago the zoning hearing for the new building took place. Since I last wrote on here I re-examined what effect it would have on me and realized that looking out my window, I would barely be able to see the sky with this new building built as specified. I worked with my mom to create some scaled drawings of what it would look like next to my house and neighboring houses
and it really would be very out of place in the neighborhood, as well as blocking my light/view from the front. Additionally, my mom did some drawings showing that the land could easily be developed in a manner to fit 7 single family houses.

My mom and I went to the zoning hearing with two poster boards of drawings/pictures showing what I described above. The developer, his lawyer, a number of neighbors, and several Southside community groups (Southside Local Development Company, a Southside slopes group etc) showed up. After the zoning board had everybody state who they were and what their positions was (almost all the neighbors were opposed), the zoning board asked the developers' lawyer if they'd contact the neighbors or the neighborhood groups about the proposed development. When the lawyer said they hadn't, the board basically said, "Well, you should go and do that before you waste our time, because clearly there are some upset people here."

A week later the councilman arranged a community meeting. The meeting began with the developer going through a presentation he'd put together on who they were, who their company was, and what they hoped to do with the property. He focused heavily on it being a small family business (his wife, and two nephews were there, and his brother was involved, but couldn't make it) and that the intention was not to put in college rentals, but to put in nice condos for working professionals. The developer was clearly nervous, and I got the distinct impression from his manner during the presentation and through previous encounters with him on the street that he isn't a bad guy... just maybe didn't know the best way to go about these things. As they were talking there were clearly unhappy mumblings from the crowd here and there, with people talking under their breath or louder in disapproval at various things.

Next came the comment section in which the community members could have 2 minutes to speak. I went up first in an attempt to make a good example to the others of not being irate. I stated that although I was happy that somebody was developing the area and that they had some good ideas, the fact is that it's a really tall building that's out of place in the neighborhood and doesn't promote a neighborhood feeling at all. I explained that my mom had figured a way to put 7 single family houses in the same area and that this would be a much better way to develop the land. The comments from the other neighbors ranged extremely widely. The neighbors directly next to the property complained of irresponsible demolition practices, which they certainly had some justification in complaining about, while others practically yelled at them, and other still were pretty reasonable and logical about it all. It was really an interesting experience... the way people's approaches to the same thing can be so drastically different is fascinating.

Being that I didn't think the developers are terrible, money hungry people and having gone through a somewhat similar scenario with catty neighbors myself, I felt sorry for the developers a bit. Granted, I don't think their plan was the best it could be and they made some mistakes in not supervising their demolition crew properly... but so be it, nobody's perfect and they sure got an earful to think about. My mom, dad and I talked with them a bit after the hearing and they were clearly a bit shaken up by the whole thing.

I need to go to bed now, but the next chapter in this story is the Southside Planning Forum meeting just 5 days after the community meeting described above, and 2 days before the postponed zoning board hearing date.