…I am learning it means they are up to no good.
Bella was sitting right next to her mamma.
When babies get quite…
New Book Shelf Shelves
A long time ago, I had made some book shelf shelves out of cardboard so I could see more books on a shelf than normal. Today, I was cleaning up the garage and found some scrap wood so I made some more out of wood this time. No lights on this batch, but that can come later.
The first two I made was out of a junk MDF board.
The next one I made was from a much nicer scrap. I made this one a bit shorter as the shelf it went on was one peg shorter than the rest of the shelves.
I even went so far as counter-sinking the screws so the books don’t snag on screw heads.
The Feburary 2011 Blizzard
Hopefully it will prove to be ‘the’ blizzard.
We just had the first blizzard in the new house. It was an experience! We stayed warm, eating freshly picked lettuce from my basement aquaponics system – can’t beat that, eh?
Tuesday afternoon, I went home from work a couple of hours early. I cleared the 3 inches of snow that had fallen thus far from my drive and the neighbors drive – mostly to clean up the snow-plow heavy stuff at the ends of the drives.
The power sagged a bit Tuesday night, and we came back up, but across the street was without power for a few hours. We lost power again for about half an hour, and when it came back up, both us and across the street had power. ComEd must have patched something together in the middle of the blizzard.
Wednesday morning, I had a text to work from home from the boss. Sweet. So I watched the neighbors across the street dig themselves out.
Late morning, I took a break from work and figured I would spend an hour with the snow blower. I made one trip from my garage to the street and then helped the neighbor across the road clear the last 3 feet of snow. That snow-plow packed snow is the worst when you only have a shovel. I had just about got him done when one of the belts on my snow blower broke.
I went back inside and tweeted the broken belt and the neighbor responded on facebook that they may have one. Sure enough, they did! So I took my broken belt over and the neighbor was snow-blowing. So I grabbed a shovel and helped out. I did around the vehicles, and along the building and up the walk where the blower won’t go very well.
After some more work, I went back outside and put the belt on. Just as I tightening the bolts up, the neighbor came over with his blower. The two of us made quick work blowing out my drive.
Lessons Learned
- Having good neighbors makes all the difference between an easy dig out and a miserable one.
- Dryer vents can be easily covered with snow, so make sure they are clear before you use the dryer.
- High efficiency stoves have the same problem and will shut down (hearsay, my furnace is old)
- The doors can get drifted shut
- The snow blower is 6 inches too short – it’s a lot of work to muscle that heavy machine around all stooped over.
- The snow blower needs spare drive & blower belts. It also needs a good going through with a wrench to tight all the bolts.
- Bobcat Alternator belts will work in a pinch, but they check pretty bad pretty quickly.
- Waterproof gloves, once wet, stay wet.
- The city likes burying the fire hydrants with their plows.
- If you ship live fish from CA, they WILL be shipped during a blizzard.
- Somebody will call the cops on you if you go out and look at all of your windows in the middle of a blizzard.
Baby gate door for the baby’s room
I picked up a baby gate this morning on freecycle. It’s a weird cloth one like I’ve not seen before. The prior owners evidently used it to keep dogs where they belong so as soon as I got it home the thing got disassembled and the cloth got tossed into the washer.
I took this and made a door for Bella’s room. We need a door to keep the cat out of her room but we don’t want to use the current door as it stops the room from heating well as it blocks the cold air’s path to the cold air return.
The door frame is just 1″x1″ wood scraps from the snowshoe building adventure. I used the existing door hinges so when we get tired of this, I can just re-hang the original door.
One feature I did add is an auto-closer. The door closes behind you, so you don’t have to worry about leaving it open so the cat can sneak in. He LOVEs her room. Probably because he’s not aloud in it.
Overall, I am only ‘meh’ about this door. It doesn’t quite close all the way. I think the cat will be able to push it open too easy and get trapped in Bella’s room. It doesn’t look bad, I just wished it looked better. It’s got a bit of a torque to the frame as well.We will probably use it until the cat becomes a pest about it, and then I will need to re-build it a little bit differently.
I think original baby gate frame will become closet clothes hanger rods. Re-use all the pieces, right?
Installing a baby gate for the front entry
Today I installed the baby gate on the front entry as a half-door.
This gate is an expansion gate designed to span a door way. This won’t quite work for the front entryway. The trim buggers stuff on on one end, and the whole thing can’t clamp down tight enough to hold it in place with any amount of sideways pressure.
So I made it a hinged unit. The baby gate now opens and closes with minimal fuss.
For the hinges, I used some cabinet hinges I found in one of my parts boxes. I don’t even remember why I had the hinges, but they will work well here. I screwed a small board to the wall so I had something to attach the hinges to at the correct angle.
As you can see, I needed to re-manufacture the hinges a bit.
I needed to stiffen and secure the gate so it wouldn’t lengthen or shorten while in use, so I used some zip ties. The natural colored ones are hardly noticeable, and look no worse than the gate itself.
The gate latch is where I think I am quite clever. The gate just needs to stop a baby/toddler from going down the stairs. It also needs to auto-close and be easy for an adult to use. I figure by the time Bella has enough coordination to manipulate my gate latch, she will be old enough to be mindful of the rules and able to handle the stairs, basement, etc. If this is not the case, the latch can always be re-evaluated in the future and adjusted as necessary.
I used velcro as the latch mechanism.
I cut a strip of wood to follow the contour of the end-post of the railing and zip tied it down. I didn’t want to put screw holes in my nice wood. A bit of velcro down the whole length, and my gate is complete!
I am pleased with the idea of the curved cut wood strip, but not exactly happy with the results of my first attempt at making it. When I find another piece of wood that I can butcher cut I will try my hand at re-making the strip so it follows a little closer.
The hole project put 5 holes in my sheetrock wall that needs paint at some point in the future anyhow, and 4 holes in the baby gate. Pretty non-destructive for such a modification to a commercial baby gate.