Our church does an event called “Trunk-or-Treat”.  The basic idea is that members decorate their cars in the parking lot of the church, and kids come and trunk-or-treat from car to car in a safe environment where they’ll know most of the people.  Let’s set aside the decline of the American neighborhood for a moment, and just bask in the awesomeness that is Scary Cat Jeep.



I was in a rush to put it together after work in time for the event, but basically, it’s black construction paper for ears, white poster board for eyes (black construction paper irises), poster-board for teeth, and two red plastic table cloths for the inside of the mouth and the tongue.  I used a piece of the table cloth taped around my work light to give the red glow from the mouth.  It looked better than the picture can show.
The event was a huge hit, and a lot of kids showed up.  We were out of candy in about 45 minutes.  Thanks to our zebra-Jeep neighbors, we were able to replenish for another 30 minutes.

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One day, when I was about 12 or so, and my Dad was still a garbageman, he came home from work really excited.  Dad would often find things of great value out on his route.  Hey, one mans trash is another mans treasure.  My brother and I had 3 functional Nintendos because of that.*  Anyway; this particular day he came home with a very large torque wrench.  It was broken.  He was excited because it was a Craftsman tool.  He told me that Craftsman tools have a lifetime warranty.  That weekend, my Dad, my brother and I went to Sears and the clerk gave my Dad a 130 dollar in-store credit from that broken torque wrench.  His excitement was contagious, and we walked around throwing wrenches and screwdrivers and other tools of all sorts into the cart until we used up the credit.  I learned that day that a Craftsman tool means something. 

 

I’m a Craftsman Club member, and most of my tools are Craftsman tools.

I present to the court Exhibit A: My Craftsman C3 Collection

 

 

From left to right we have:

Planer, Work Light, Fluorescent Light, Right Angle Drill, Reciprocating Saw, 1/2 Driver Drill, 1/2 Hammer Drill.

 

There’s also Craftsman wrenches and a hammer in that shot. 

 

Deep inside, I know that a lot of these things are sub-par, now.  Sears has decided to capitalize on the name and lower the quality of the tool, knowing that sentimental fools like me will buy them anyway.  That reciprocating saw has let me down on a few projects.  The batteries are definitely not as robust as I would like.  But, on average, for most home-improvement jobs, these things are great, and they are reasonably cost effective.  If my budget allowed it, I'd get some DeWalt tools on that wall, too, but for the most part, I’m content.

 

Today I bought this.

 

It was on sale, and I got an extra 20 bucks off as a Craftsman Club member.  I have a large number of huge trees, and the leaves are overwhelming.  My Dad and my Father-in-law both have Stihl Backpack Leaf Blowers, and sing their praises, but I can’t afford to drop 500 bones on a single yard tool.  Hopefully I won’t regret this purchase.  I used it to blow off my rather sizable driveway this afternoon, and while underpowered compared to the Stihl, it did a fine job.  I’ll review it after the fall season.

 

Between visiting the wife at work and running around shopping for a blower, I didn’t get too much done under the sun today.  I did 10 feet of fencing.  Once the sun went down, a friend and I did a little project I’ve been wanting to knock out to prepare for the cold evenings at home, but I’ll post about that tomorrow. 

 

* Another related story: do you remember Pepsi Stuff?  Oh man, did we get a lot of stuff from that catalog; and all thanks to people not recycling.**

 

** Please recycle.

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I started on one of the projects I teased a couple of weeks ago; the range hood.  I worked on this Saturday night, and then Sunday after church.  My wife was getting a tad bit nervous, as we were hosting a Ravens party (they won!)  I’ve got to sing her praises, though, because she let me work on it until the 5 mins before the first guest arrived, and we finished cleaning up before kick-off. 
We got the Cavaliere Euro 36in wall mount from here.

I did a lot of googling to try to find reviews for this unit, and they were few.  The ones I did find were very positive, though.  I’m not totally satisfied, but for the money, it’s a great buy.  The screen doesn’t look right unless you look at it from just the right angle, and there is little in the way of mounting points.   It definitely moves air, though.

When we redid the kitchen walls, we installed a new range hood vent, which I’ve already blogged about.   I had to extend the venting up to accommodate the chimney-style upwards venting. 

  

That 90deg elbow stuck out too far from the wall, though, so I ended up having to extend the in-wall ducting all the way up and then put in a hole and adapter. 

   

This is not ideal, as it doesn’t afford a smooth air path, but it will have to work.

Here's some key points from the install.

• Installing the ducting piecemeal was difficult, but the better option, as it allowed me to secure it to the stud better.
• The recommended height (32-36in) seemed ludicrously low, but I didn't want to go so high as to make it ineffective.  I ended up at about 45in.
• I cut myself about 5 times; once badly.  Wear gloves.

I’ve since mounted the hood, but I’m not totally happy with it, so no pictures yet.  I decided to use some spacer blocks behind the hood to put it about .75in off the wall.  This is so it won’t look sunken when I eventually put the stone around it. 
Still to do: hardwire it in, mount it better, install the chimney cover, and install the (as-of-yet-unpurchased) stone veneer.

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I got in a couple of trips to the County Drop-off on Saturday.  I love going there, but I hate to see some of the stuff people throw away.  Luckily, these trips were just to the brush drop-off.  The previous owners valued privacy very much, and so the foliage along the edges of the yard is overgrown by about 30 years(!).   We have 4 Ewes that are easily 15ft high with a 30ft diameter.  We have bushes that, in their attempts to reach sunlight, have become trees.  When we decided to put in the fence, we wanted it as close to the property line as possible, which meant it was time to trim this all back. 

I bought this last summer:

(see it here)

This I rate “awesome” on my tool scale.  I am not a fan of being whacked in the face with low-hanging branches whilst mowing, so I trimmed every tree up about 8ft.  I may have become a little carried away with it… I took down probably 7 volunteer trees averaging forearm size; as well as a lot of bushes.   Oh, and some trees on my neighbors side of the line that looked inviting.  And I may have tried to trim some hedges with it.  Then I cut some firewood.  And then I wandered around the property just looking for things to cut down.  Eventually, I realized I had better things to do.  Anyway, all this activity generated a lot of yard debris.  Enter my trusty Jeep and trailer.

 

The view from our hill really starts to improve when the leaves change and start to fall.  During my pole-saw excursions, I often consider climbing neighbors trees and chopping off limbs to better the view, but better sense (or an admonishing wife) typically prevails. 

Once loaded, I headed to the dump.  I stopped to take a shot after unloading half the trailer.

There’s something very communal about going to the county drop-off.  A half-dozen pickups are all lined up with guys throwing stuff out the back of them.  Everybody is asking about what projects people are up to, and nobody is averse to offering a helping hand with some of the bulker loads.  I sometimes see the same people I’ve seen before.  This is why DIYers are my people.  I also like to gauge a project by what I see people discarding.  Is that what is left of a bathroom vanity, there?  Or perhaps a kitchen cabinet? Cabinets are great, because when they fall the 15ft off the ledge to the concrete floor of the pit, they explode.  I’m a man, and I enjoy explosions.  Take note, Michael Bay.

After a couple runs to the drop-off, I took a few minutes to move a bush-trunk.  It’s not a tree, although it thinks it is.  I took it down a couple weeks ago with help from the father-in-law. 

My method, here, was to use a dog lead.  Hey, it’s what I had handy.  And it worked.   Yikes, that hill is a mess.  Maybe next year.

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My Kung Fu is weak sauce today, because I am really hurting after a day of:
1) Homework.  My night classes.  They will not end.
2) Fencing.  The digging bar workout.  It may not kill me, but I don’t think it’s making me any stronger, either.
3) Cabinet Hardware on cold floor.  I  finished the hardware on the island, but the floor is cold and the high cost of heating oil is preventing me from turning on the hydronic heat just yet.  

There is some sort of limit that could probably help you, the audience, understand why I would suffer on a cold floor when I have the option of having it heated. 
**

There are some givens you will need. 
1.  I am 100% Dutch-American.  We are not known for spending money willy-nilly.
2.  Last winter we dropped about $500.00 a month on heating oil in the winter.   It’s about 3 bucks a gallon, and our tank is 120 gallons.  And I never have the thermostat set higher than 60F.  The normal is 55F. 

I’m hoping to see some savings, this year, with the kitchen being insulated better, the floor being functional, etc.  I still have major drafts in the very old doors, but the windows are all a couple years old, so I’m good there.  The doors are on my agenda, but they’re not near the top.

Here are a few status shots of the various ongoing projects.


** I completely made this up. If you couldn’t tell. 

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I've mentioned him occasionally in my posts, but never introduced him.  Howie is the name I use for one of the early owners of our house.  When he bought it in the 50s, the house was on nearly 40 acres, and there wasn't much in the way of development nearby.  Howard D. was a builder by trade, and the room above the garage was his office.  There is a long, narrow closet that he stored blueprints in.  He partitioned the property of the house off into parcels and built houses on all of them.  He had two new streets put in along the edges of the property and named the streets after himself; apparently he had a bit of an ego, too.

Howie was also a craftsman.  He built the cabinets in the kitchen, as well as the vanity in the bathroom and a hundred other things.  I see his handwriting all over things all the time.  The bottom of drawers, the innards of the cabinets, the inside of walls; they contain his measurements or hastily scrawled notes to himself.  I've also found a tool or two of his in the crawlspace when I was spending way too much time in there working on the radiant floor.  The previous owners of this house never used the barn for more than storage, and there is a lot of lumber in there from him that has now found its way into various projects of mine.  Working in this house is like stepping in the footsteps of a man I never knew, but I'm getting to know.  It adds some level of sacredness to projects that makes me more careful.  I want to respect his legacy, as I hope someone someday respects mine.

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I had a blog, once.  It was before blogger, livejournal, facebook or myspace (remember myspace?).  I had a website where I had a blog running MovableType, and for a while, it was a lot of fun.  Then spam hit.  I spent more time clearing out the spam then I did blogging.  Eventually, I deactivated comments altogether, and that robbed all the joy out of it.  When myspace/facebook came along, the need to keep my friends and family informed of my doings shifted to social media platforms and away from my then-stagnate blog, and I deactivated the website, its blog, and picture gallery.

All this to say that I’ve been crawling over other blogs, and I like some of what they are doing.  A lot has changed in the 6 years since I last blogged regularly.  There are a lot of neat blogging tools I’m playing with.  This post, for example, is written in Windows Live Writer, and I’m really liking it so far.  Other suggestions?  Let me know. 

I intend to go back and add some more context, dramatis personae, and other helpful anecdotes to many of the posts I just flooded the blog with as time allows me to do so.

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Look what came in the mail over the weekend.

This has been low on the priority list but high on the "need" list.  We're hosting Thanksgiving this year in our new kitchen, so there's a number of things that need to be done before then.  This was first on the list.

Installing them is pretty easy.  I considered making a template to do it, but when I started putting them on, I found I didn't really need one.  Here's what I did need.

That square (and beer) is critical.  I used the seams in the edges of the doors to place the knobs, like so:

Notice the seam line.  Easy peasy.

Once I had done it once, the rest of the knobs on the uppers flew by

The handles for the drawers are much trickier.  Again, I considered a template, but it ended up just being easier to carefully measure each one.  Because the depth of a drawer effects the width of the center piece, each drawer needs to be checked and rechecked for the correct marking for the handle.  I did mark a couple of them incorrectly, but stepping back and looking at it showed something amiss, and a remeasure confirmed it.  A scrubby pad got the marker off with no issues.

Two more things were delivered this weekend, so I'll tease some upcoming projects now.

Thanks for reading!  Comment with any questions, and if you have advice on installing a range hood or a zone valve controller, pass it on!

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Hopefully, this blog will be useful to some people doing the same things I have done.  Here's a list of products I used in our kitchen, and where I got them.  Pretty much everything else (tiles, drywall, electrical, etc) is from Home Depot.  I'm still not done with the kitchen; I have to eventually install under-cabinet lighting and stone facade.  When I source those, I'll add them to the list.

Cabinets
All Wood Fast
We got our cabinets through Costco.  I looked at a lot of different places, and the 3 options I ended up with were trying to find a warehouse, using Ikea cabinets, and this one.  Ikea cabinets ended up being much better than I thought they would be for the price, but I couldn't bring myself to do it and keep at the finish level I was going for.  Their free design service was nice, too. I had already drafted up a 3D kitchen design using the Ikea software, but after sending it to them, they reproduced it faithfully in their software with their products.

Appliances
Sears
I waited until the after-Thanksgiving sale and bought all our appliances at Sears.  I've bought at scratch-and-dent centers before, and it went well, but these sales were really good.  About half of them, including the Jenair wall oven, were displays, which saved even more.

Radiant Floor
Radiantec
PexUniverse
I bought the pex, zone valve, mixing valve, circulator pump, and manifold at PexUniverse.  I bought the aluminum heat transfer plates from Radiantec.

Other
Whitehaus Farmer's Sink - Quality Bath
Cavaliere Range Hood - Overstock
Cabinet Hardware - Overstock

Sites that Helped
DIY Forums
There are some very smart, very helpful people here, and I spend a fair amount of time just reading what they have to say.

Garden Web
This place is great to get inspired.  People here have great ideas, thoughtful designs, and beautiful results.  And it's not just for big projects, either.

Ikea Room Designer
This was where I started on the design process after I had used some graph paper to get the measurements down.  This let me visualize the room.  For free.

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I've been installing a fence over the last month whenever I can spare the time.  Today, I worked on a double-gate to allow cars to get onto the lawn.  This actually happens quite frequently.  The oil delivery guy, gravel delivery, mulch delivery, pulling my trailer back there, etc.

One of the gates w/ the ring installed for the hinge.  I put a pilot hole, then used some vice-grips to tighten them up

This digging bar is heavy and tiring, but it's hugely important.  I used gravel to fill all the post holes, and I used this digging bar to compact it.

When I was digging the post-holes, I broke a buried gutter drain I didn't know was there.  I used this to repair it.

For the posts supporting gates, I've gone a little bit deeper and I've added concrete powder to the gravel

Gate is installed.  Now to the rails on both sides.

The rails here are way too long, so I decided to try and taper them

I tried tapering them on my table-saw, but it didn't work well because the blade doesn't go high enough.  Notice the cabinet on wheels, there.  All my base cabinets in the shop are on wheels.  It makes cleaning the floor easy, and allows me to roll them around for things like this.

 

This was my wife's idea, actually.  Since tapering didn't work, this was my make-shift taper

Took a while, but I got all the fencing you see here done today.

And there's the finished gate, plus the remaining fencing material.

Still 100 feet or so to go of fencing, but then this project will be done!

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We finally got around to hanging our wedding picture and some sconces up above the fireplace.  Also, time for the first fire of the season!

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