Garage Work Shop

A couple weeks ago I was at a party and my brother-in-law asked me if I had any projects going on around the house. I had to answer “no” because I haven’t had anything going on for quite a while. Work had been slow so funds were non-existent for home projects. And as you all know we’re always knocking around the idea of moving, so why bother. Well the last couple months have found me with a couple extra dollars in my pocket, and a raging desire to do something constructive. I have a mental backlog of projects I’d like to do:

• garage organization
• basement ceiling
• storage room lighting and clean up
• bar on the screen porch
• paint the laundry room and bathroom
• paint the trim and doors in the basement
• finish staining the porch and sand box

Probably a lot of other little projects I can’t think of right now. I decided to start tackling the garage because it would be nice to fit two cars in there, and we just recently built that storage loft, so let’s get ‘er done, right?

The existing shelving unit with a bunch of toys stacked on it.

Existing corner metal shelving units.

I’ve started drawing up plans for a workshop in the garage, back in September of 2017.  Here:

The storage loft covers the entire half bay. Below that I’m going to infill with a variety of work benches and shelves made from 2×4 lumber and plywood. These will replace the existing hodge-podge of store bought metal shelves. The red thing in the rendering is my tool chest and the silver thing is a wicked cool little mini fridge that holds frosty beverages.

This shelf has served me well for over 18 years but maybe it’s just time, you know.

I modeled up and drew plans for the secondary work bench on the far left in the rendering, and the larger “L” shaped work bench on the far right. Budget wise the cost for lumber and screws to make these two came out to about $250 total including delivery of the wood to my place.

I put 1/2″ OSB on the shelves, and 3/4″ pine plywood on the work bench countertops. The countertops are all at 36″ height from the floor. I spaced the lower shelves to accommodate my plethora of plastic tool cases I’ve collected over the years. I ran 2×4 supports from the floor to under the loft rim joist as an added measure of support for the loft above. I’ll connect these supports with “L” brackets at the top and bottom. I screwed the shelves and countertops not only to the supports but also the wall where I could. Everything seems very solid. The “L” shaped workbench does not have a center support, but I think it’ll be strong enough as is (look at the photos). I wanted that corner open and easily accessible.

Metal L brackets top and bottom just give me peace of mind that everything will stay where intended.

Kind of unorthodox how I build things in the air but it all works out in the end.

Corner support to finish off the frame. I left it 3/4″ high to be flush with the top of the counter.

All screw construction. Should be strong enough for what I’m doing.

I reinstalled the word shelf below the window.

The finished secondary work bench.

The framing for one part of the L shaped workbench.

Detail of how I simply screwed the sections together. It all should hold together fine,

The assembled frame for the L workbench

3/4 inch plywood for the countertops

the finished L shaped workbench

It took me one day to build and install everything. I think it works and looks great. I have counter space for my bandsaw, drill press, sander and other tools. And something neat: I finally unboxed a scroll saw we bought 18 years ago at Sears which has been sitting in a box because we never had space for it. I did lose some small shelf space, but I plan on installing pegboard and smaller shelves or cozies for small items and fluid bottles.

I finally got to unbox the scroll saw after picking it up on sale at Sears 18 years ago!

Garage Storage Planning

Now that I have the storage loft in the garage, here comes the fun part. I’m starting to plan out the storage shelves and “counter tops” I’m going to build for the back wall and work shop area.

Construction will be 2×4’s mostly, just like the work bench / spray booth I created in the basement. 

I still have to measure the area and inventory what I want to store, and what I want to use the spaces for, but that didn’t stop me from starting to sketch out my ideas on what I envision it looking like.

Once I have a plan I can work up a lumber list and see what the cost will be. I’m hoping to do this this fall or winter because I’m chomping at the bit. I really enjoy working on this type of project. And of course the organization will be awesome and mind-easing too.

-Chris

Concept sketch of the work shop elevation.

Storage Room Workbench & Coat Rack

Finally I had the opportunity to roll up my sleeves and build something for the house. Work and life have been beyond crazy, but I was able to carve out a Saturday and Sunday to work on a couple storage and workspace solutions for the basement storage room.

The first unit is a workbench for the wife. She’s a paper artist and sometimes needs to spray glue large pieces of card stock so there is a spray booth in the middle of the workbench. No more spraying on the floor. To the right is a baker’s rack style set of shelves. And to the left of the booth is a small work bench with pegboard backdrop. I purposefully left space to the left of the unit to access existing storage shelves, and possibly tuck away loose and bulky storage room items.

The other unit I made is a coat rack. In winter we have a ton of boots and coats, but once summer comes we have no place to put them. This two level unit will hold a ton of winter gear. There is also a shelf and under shelf space for winter boots and unused shoes.

It was a very satisfying project to work on. It’s my therapy, meditation or whatever you want to call it. Challenging enough that it takes some planning, but mindless enough to be satisfying. And no one tells me what to do. I can do it my way. Which anyone who’d reached middle age can tell you, is a rewarding situation.

The storage room looks great now. We’re more organized and have some useful work space. We also took the opportunity to move the cat’s litter boxes to an open area in the room instead of in front of the storage room door. It’s all a wonderful monkey to get off of my back, and allows us to focus on the fun, “living” part of life instead of the “ugh, we still need to do that” part of life.

Overall cost was about $117 for lumber, and $40 for screws and misc hardware. It took me about four to six hours to cut, assemble and install everything. The 2×4’s are definitely overkill – but trees grow back, and it’s easy to find lumber in this size at a reasonable price. Plus it’s straight; 2×3’s or 2×2’s tend to be crooked. The units are screwed into the ceiling above when possible. The Superior Walls are difficult if not impossible to fasten into. At the bottom I placed plastic shims to level everything and I will add metal brackets to tie the units into the cement floor so they don’t fall over.

Eventually we will add lighting to the storage room. I’m thinking three overhead linear LED work lights, and then maybe task light bars over the bench work spaces.

Let me know what you think, and what you’re working on, in the comments section. Here are some pics, ask questions in the comments too…

-Chris

A rendering I made of the workbench I designed. Features shelves, a spray booth and pegboard backed workbench space.

Computer rendering I created of the coat rack design. Two levels for shoes and two for offseason coats and apparel.

Instead of doing dimensioned drawings, I printed out my design and hand wrote in the size of all the boards I had to pre-cut for assembly.

The simple frame for a shelf made out of 2×4’s. Nothing fancy; relies on screws and wood for strength.

A good trick, these 2-1/2″ screws are threaded only about 1-1/2″ so you when you screw them in, if you stop where the smooth par starts you’ve started your screw but it’s not protruding the other side of the wood. Perfect for lining things up with one hand then quickly driving the screw home with the other.

Working alone means using clamps and good screws to assemble everything.

Step one is building the shelf rack and securing it to the ceiling. The legs can eventually be secured to the cement at a later date.

Step two adds the framework for the spray booth.

Step three adds the workbench. 2×4’s are overkill for this but they’re are simple to work with and easy to get.

1×2 backing for the inset pegboard panel. Otherwise just surface mount your pegboard and call it a day.

Backing for the spray booth panels, made from 1×2’s

It’s difficult to get a good picture of the coat rack because it’s in a 5′ wide alcove in the storage room. Suffice to say it went in as planned.

The finished work bench.

Looks just like the picture. Note I put plastic shims under all the legs to level the unit and also to create a break between the untreated wood and cement in case moisture is ever an issue.

The storage room is more organized and the cat’s litter is finally moved away from the storage room door.

LED Lighting Update

I’ve been quietly updating the light bulbs in the house in order to lower our electricity costs, as well as re-illuminate areas where I had let bulbs burn out over the last four years without replacement.

First up were three outdoor sconces that each received one of these 7w decorative Philips LED bulbs – 2700K color (warm), 500 lumen rated at 22 years of life. I’ll be 65 when they need replacing. Actually longer than that because there’s no way we’ll use them three hours a day. All three total will use $55 in electricity in their lifetime.

 

Next up was my art studio. I had one of these awesome looking, “flying buttress” 8w, 650 Lumen, 2700K Green Creative bulbs from my LED light bulb test article. So I rounded out the rest of the studio with five more of them. A great looking, great performing bulb.

And most gratifyingly I completed the update of the kitchen light bulbs. I had a single GE Reveal bulb from the LED light bulb test  in one of the kitchen’s non-dimming fixtures, and five other burned out ceiling cans to compliment it. Well by time I decided to pull the trigger on getting five new ones to finish off the set, Amazon.com was out of them and I couldn’t find them online. GE actually updated the model of bulb with a 2800K color. The original was 650 lumens at 2700K color. So the colors wouldn’t match with the new bulbs and it’d look wonky. I did buy six new bulbs from Lowe’s but as it turns out, the lens on them looked decidedly “pink” which was no bueno, so I returned them and forgot about it.

Now you have to understand that every time I go to a retail store, I may spend easily fifteen minutes analyzing their LED light bulb offering. Wouldn’t you know it, a random trip to Walmart yielded five bulbs that matched my original GE Reveal bulb, 650 lumens AND 2700K color. Oh happy day! So I snagged them up an installed them upon returning home.

A comparison of GE Reveal bulbs. The “discontinued” bulb on the left. A newer option I tried, center and right, had a pink lens which I found to be distracting.

As for the rest of the house, the remaining BR30 size can light bulbs will be replaced with 9w 650 lumen, 2700K Philips brand bulbs which have the best overall performance and lower cost.

Overall LED bulb costs have plummeted in the last four years. You can now get a three or four pack of 100w equivalent bulbs at any big box store for around ten dollars. There simply is no reason to get incandescent or even fluorescent bulbs anymore. LED’s are here to stay. They are low cost, last decades, and use very little energy compared to conventional bulbs. They also come in a variety of sizes and shapes. They even come in ultra warm, vintage style finishes.

I recently saw an article on Core77 about a new LED bulb that finally takes bulb design to the next level. This artful bulb by Plumen elevates the bulb from commodity item to work of art. It’s timeless design leverages the two decade lifespan of the average bulb as well. No shade required thanks to it’s incredibly good looks, and multi directional lighting solution. $170 per bulb but looks to be well worth every penny. Images are from the Plumen website

Bee Wildflower Honey

Had to share my impromptu design for our honey jar labels.  I want to get them labeled for this weekend. There’s a village peddler’s day this weekend and I’m going to whore my wares in the center of town; selling honey alongside my old lawn mower and any trash to treasure stuff I can find in the basement or garage.

“bee” is our brand 🙂 I don’t know if anyone else is using that, but I’ll keep using it until someone tries to stop me (I generally always get what I want).

I drew the wildflowers using a photo I took earlier this year of flowers on our land. I don’t know what they are but they are yellow with red centers. There’s a photo on the blog somewhere.

The copy font is avant grade which is one of my all-time favorite fonts. The font choice, along with my black and white trace drawing kind of gives the label a retro 70’s vibe which I like a lot as a child of that decade (and the one after). We grew up in a classic 70’s house and they type of architecture is prevalent throughout the valley in which we live if you know where to look.

You know what’s really cool? Just like wine I’ve labeled the honey with the season, year, type and even which hive it came from. Honey never spoils, which makes it even better than wine. (We’re having a honey tasting later this fall, as a random side note – just like wine tasting!)

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Available in 8oz and 4oz glass bottles, 100% of the proceeds from our honey sales go towards educating our kids, paying for our eco-friendly house, buying wildflowers and trees, and supporting our bees.

Seems legit, right?

Label for our “bee” brand honey – includes hive, season and type information.

Porch Ceiling Trim

This past weekend we got a project completed that had been in the works for over a year. We trimmed out the screen porch and adjacent outdoor porch ceilings. I actually had bought the material this time last year, and just now got around to installing it. The project took me the better part of a Saturday to complete.

Ceiling before installing trim. You can see seams between 4×8 sheets of ceiling plywood.

The purpose of the trim is to cover up all the unsightly seams between the sheets of cedar plywood that make up the porch ceiling. I selected 1×4 cedar boards, approximate 12′ long for the project. I ripped each board in half creating a bunch of 1×2’s. I suppose you can purchase 1×2’s but they’re not always easy or economical to find, plus I think you get a straighter board by ripping down a 1×4 into two 1×2’s.

Last year I drew up a plan on the computer, so I used a print out of my plan as a guide. Originally I had planned to go 16″ on center with the strips, but we felt that would be overkill. By going 4′ on center we could cover up most of the seams. Any seams not covered would be inconspicuous once we stained the ceiling.

I trimmed out the entire perimeter of the ceiling first, nailing a 1×2 flat against the ceiling, and butting the side walls. I used galvanized finish nails, and a nail gun / compressor to make the job easier.

The first cross board in place.

Next I measured out the major seams in the plywood and made marks for the boards that go all the way across the porch, width wise. Since the porch is around 12′ wide, I was able to use a solid board and not have to splice anything. I placed boards 4′ on center, covering up each seam in the plywood above. I also made sure to pound any drooping plywood back in place before nailing the trim boards home.

Detail of ceiling trim near chimney corner

Once all the boards were up, going across the width of the porch, I infilled with short segments running the other direction until the grid pattern was complete.

Finished ceiling with trim. Large squares are 4′ on center.

Trim carries over to the outside porch.

The trim adds a nice level of detail to the porch, making the it feel more room like. We’ll stain the ceiling either a reddish color to match the floor and walls, or we may go bold and stain it a charcoal color to match the center of the house exterior.

Water Supply From The Sky

[Writer’s note: this is an article I wrote last year but was never published. I wanted to share it with my loyal readers. I hope you enjoy. Rainwater harvesting is fascinating and can be utilized anywhere there is precipitation i.e. everywhere on the planet.]

Living with the convenience of “city” water for over thirty years I was a bit apprehensive when my wife and I bought a little piece of rural paradise upon which to build our new family home. As far as I knew there was only one option for our water supply: a well, drilled deep into the ground pulling up water from the earth. As far as I knew a well meant smelly, slimy, water and iron stained plumbing fixtures. I was not looking forward to a lifetime of well water, but the land was so nice I was willing to sacrifice.

We soon discovered that the area of our new land was not a great place to get a reliable water supply from the earth.  So we had to find another source. The only other real option was to get a cistern, which is a large waterproof vault that holds water. Cisterns have been providing safe drinking water to humans for thousands of years. I immediately liked the idea because it meant no sulfur smelling water or toilet rings.

There are three ways to fill a cistern. We could pay a water hauling company to truck in water. Another option is to use the cistern in tandem with a well, the idea being that the cistern would keep ample water available from even a slow producing replenishment well. Lastly the cistern can be filled with free harvested rainwater from the sky. We wanted our new home to be as environmentally sustainable as possible so we decided to go with harvesting.

With the collection decision made, I needed to do some research.  Foremost I needed to know how much water we’d use and therefore need to collect. The U.S. EPA website estimates about 300 gallons per day per family[1] (109,500 gallons per year). Our goal was to solely rely on rainwater as our supply. If we hit a drought (in the heat of summer or the freeze of winter) we could have water trucked in. We selected a 10,000-gallon underground cistern, which meant we could go a month without refilling it. A low level light comes on at 2,500.

I found the Texas Manual on Rainwater Harvesting[2] online and it is filled with a wealth of information. The manual estimates that one can expect to collect 0.62 gallons per square foot of collection surface, per inch of rainfall. The efficiency of the system is about 75% because some water will be lost in the collection process.[3] So for our example, we have about 4,000 sq. feet of roof to collect water from. Our average precipitation (in nearby Akron, Ohio) is around 40 inches per year[4]…. (4,000 x 40 x 0.62) x 0.75 = 74,400 gallons per year we’ll collect. That’s far from the amount we need but that didn’t deter us from our goal of water independence. Our system cost $14,000 installed.

When collecting rainwater for home use, one has to consider the entire system from raindrop to faucet.  The biggest question mark during the design phase was the roof material. Aesthetically we wanted a metal roof, but weren’t sure if we could afford one. Would asphalt shingles be safe for our water supply? The Texas manual recommends metal roofs, sold under the Galvalume trade name for example, are the best for collecting rainwater for potable use. Potable water should not be collected from wood or asphalt roofs as chemicals can leach from them material into the water. Clay and concrete tiles are okay, but there rough porous surface means a less efficient system.[5] Ultimately we stretched the budget and went with the metal roof.

The collection process is fairly straightforward. As rain hits the roof it flows to the gutters, which have a screen on them to keep large debris out. Water is then directed by downspouts and pipes to roof washers located atop the underground cistern. The washers contain mesh and fabric filters to screen out any large contaminants before the water is deposited into the cistern.  As needed the water is pumped from the cistern into the house where it passes through chlorine and pressure tanks. Lastly the water flows through a 1-micron cartridge filter system to take the chlorine out as well as a final step in the purification process.  The filter’s cost about $30 and we change them six times per year.

To minimize water usage we installed plumbing fixtures that use less water. Outside we irrigate the gardens using water collected from a rain barrel. Landscaping with native plants that don’t require supplemental watering helps also. Last year our area saw 33 inches of precipitation through November[6], which is well below average. That being said, our low water light never came on once since we’ve been here. Smaller (and larger) cisterns are available, but we’ve been very happy with the size of our tank.

It was amazing to take my first shower in the new house and realize that the water that was raining around me had fallen from the sky earlier that day. We’ve been very pleased with the system overall and recommend anyone interested in a self-sustaining alternative, look into rainwater harvesting. It’s a viable water source wherever you live.

-Chris

Rainwater harvesting mechanics inside the home include chlorine and pressure tanks, a changeable cartridge filter and low level indicator light.

On the outside, a rainwater-harvesting house looks like any other except for the exposed cistern lid and roof washers. In this example they are hidden amongst the landscaping in the foreground.

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[1] U.S. EPA website, http://www.epa.gov/watersense/our_water/water_use_today.html

[2] Texas Manual on Rainwater Harvesting, Texas Water Development Board, Third Edition 2005, http://www.twdb.state.tx.us/publications/reports/rainwaterharvestingmanual_3rdedition.pdf

[3] Texas Manual on Rainwater Harvesting, pp29-30

[4] The Weather Channel website www.weather.com

[5] Texas Manual on Rainwater Harvesting, p6

[6] National Weather Service Forecast Office, Cleveland, OH, http://www.nws.noaa.gov/climate/xmacis.php?wfo=cle

This Rug in Studio: Yea or Nay

We need to know if this rug looks good or not in the wife’s studio, as soon as possibly preferably. (Don’t worry if we don’t like rug it was free and will go in the basement if we don’t use it in the studio).

Studio Entry Bench and Coat Rack

You don’t need me to tell you today was freezing cold outside. I awoke early to take the car in to get the inside cleaned…detailed I guess is the fancy term. See, we noticed mouse droppings in the RAV4 the other day and that’s all it took for us to decide to hire a professional. The car was filthy and the guys at Wheely Clean did a great job restoring it to like new condition.  With all the cold I guess the mice had enough of living in the cold garage and ventured into friendly confines, replete with old french fries under the seats and a half drunk juice box in the door.  I pray that they are gone now though.

Anyway, it was a pain getting up and going outside in -8 degree weather.  There, that’s my complaint for today. Otherwise it was a decent day. Got to spend some time working on a new home dec design project for my brother. If you ever need a cabinet-maker, he’s the guy to call. I’ve been fortunate to work alongside him on a few projects at our house and we even wrapped up a fireplace surround at a friend’s house. I’m even learning a few tricks of the trade which is always good.

Speaking of projects around our place, I wrapped up a fun, quick project in the studio.  I installed the coat hooks, reinstalled the switch and out plate plates and put hinges on the bench. Now we can enter the house on frozen days like today, through my studio and kick off wet boots and hang up heavy winter coats, and avoid trashing the front hall entry. Remember, you always want to try to have just one entry to your house for various reasons, but if you have two make sure they’re delightful or at least there’s a good reason. I like the studio entry for the above reasons. The cement floor and abundant space in the studio means we can shed snow laden clothing and let it drip dry with no worries or fuss.

It took me three tries before I found coat hooks I liked.  I went to, and bought hooks from, Hartville Hardware, Home Depot and Lowe’s before I found the perfect ones.

Here are the three styles I bought:

Third time is the charm. Here are the three styles of coat hooks I bought.

I like the one’s I ended up using (far left in the photo) because they match the drawer pulls and look contemporary and old-fashioned at the same time. Below the hooks we have an entry bench. The bench is designed, by yours truly, to fold up so that the second entry door can be opened up all the way. I attached two oil rubbed bronze door hinges to the bench and a drop down latch to retain the bench panel in the raised position. I kept everything quick and easy by simply surface mounting the hinges and latch. I could have over thought it but for once I decided just do the simplest, easiest thing and that’s what I did. Everything functions and looks great. It all adds a bit of rustic charm and detail to my studio space.  I like it very much.

Here are the coat hooks I went with, Gate House hooks from Lowe’s in oil rubbed bronze.

Here is a bench hinge installed, I just surface mounted the hinge. It looks and works fine.

Image of the finished studio entrance bench and coat hooks.

This latch holds up the bench when I need to open both doors.

latch in the “holding” position.

Here you can see the bench in the “up” position. On another note, I wish we didn’t have a vent in the floor right below the bench. Takes up shoe space.

Hardware for the hinge included one really long screw. I’m not sure why but I used it in the top center hole to fasten the hinge to the back wall of the bench area.

One other fun thing today, Christine made me a Scrapimal (TM) of Dixon for above my studio sink. I love it; and I hung it up already.  To help pay for all these projects of mine, you should check out her Etsy store and buy yourself, or a loved one, an original Scrapimal (TM) as well. They’ll make your day as they did mine.

Dixon is a Scrapimal! Weee!

One bit of housekeeping, I went ahead and purchased http://www.nineappletrees.com for eighteen bucks so from now on that’s where you’ll find the blog. The old address should redirect there anyway, but just in case. That makes the blog a little more official (and I think more appealing to advertisers….not that’s why we do it but hey, if I can someday earn a penny that’d be good….homeless home projects would be much less compelling I suspect.)

Trip to Hartville Hardware

Today is Saturday. I picked up a paying project on Friday so I spent a few hours working on that. When I reached a point where I needed feedback I stopped.  It’ll wait until Monday when the rest of the world hops back into the office. For me, well that meant I kinda had Saturday to myself. We’re expecting the bottom to fall off the thermometer here by Tuesday, when the project high will be -1 F. The sun was shining so I checked with the boss of this household, my wife, to find out what plans if any we had today.

Nothing planned.

“Cool, how about a trip to Hartville Hardware?” I proposed and she was agreeable to that suggestion.

Up until a few months ago I had no idea what Hartville Hardware was. But I picked up a design project that required me to go visit the store located in Hartville, Ohio which is about a half hour south of us. I found it to be a really cool store. All I can liken it to, is like what Cabela’s is to outdoor gear, Hartville Hardware is to home supplies. Though as far as I know Hartville is a one of a kind store, not a chain. The place is huge and has a wide variety of products for your home. Not really raw materials per se, but more like housewares, but also tools, clothing and fittings such as light fixtures and plumbing fixtures.

Our trip today was not completely random, I did have a need. When I was down there last I noticed they had a totally awesome collection of cabinet hardware in store, much more than you’d find in Lowe’s or Home Depot. And since that trip I installed the cabinets in my studio. The drawers needed pulls. Also the sink stand in the half bath needed some unique decorative pulls as well. I thought taking the family down there would make for a nice Saturday trip. The store has so much for everyone, of every age to look at, I was certain it’d be a hit and it was. I wish I’d known about the store when we were building. And by no means does its country location mean it only carries cheap off brands. We say vacuum cleaners that cost $750, as well as high end faucets and appliances. Their tool selection is beyond anything you’ve ever seen. They have demo houses built right inside the store and there is even a John Deere dealer up front.

We ended up spending more time than we thought we would (but not more money), and didn’t even get through the whole place. We did discover lots of goodies for the house. Grumbling stomachs decided we were about done with our visit. Instead of heading home for leftovers, we decided to make our trek more of a “trip” and we visited Hartville Kitchen next door for a nice family lunch. The restaurant is part of a huge building that also has a bakery, gift shop and candy store. Lunch was simple fare; I had a chicken salad sandwich which was very good. Of course we stopped for some candy after lunch.

If you find yourself in the area, do plan on stopping in Hartville and enjoy a visit to one or both places I mentioned. You won’t be disappointed.

Back home we unpacked our goodies. We looked at the coat hooks we got for my studio and the crystal knobs we purchased for the half bath cabinet.  I didn’t take a photo, but suffice to say we didn’t like either of our selections so I’ll take them back. Surprisingly the coat hook selection was lacking at Hartville, I will say. I may shop elsewhere for those, or at least get double (one over the other) style hooks instead of the meal looking single hooks.

The drawer pulls for my studio drawers were perfect though. I selected simple Amerock pulls in a oil-rubbed bronze finish. They cost around $4 apiece. My drawer faces are 1.5″ thick so I scrounged up some leftover hardware screws from another project and install the pulls easily. Love them.

Amerock drawer pulls in oil rubbed bronze finish. They hole spacing is 3-3/4″. BP29202ORB Conrad is the pull part and name.

The installed drawer pulls look great in my studio, and I don’t think they cost a whole lot.

Next up I installed a towel bar over my sink in the studio. The part I bought is actually a paper towel holder from Interdesign but for my purposes I’m using it as a towel bar above my sink. The folks at Interdesign do a nice job with the design of their products. The cantilever design of the towel holder is simple and easy to install.

Chrome towel rack. In hindsight I should have mounted it a couple inches lower in case I ever want to put paper towels on it but it’ll be fine for a washable towel at this height.

More interesting though is the dish drying pad we purchased, also from Interdesign. It’s a simple fabric pad that I convinced the wife could replace the bulky, ugly, metal rack she’d been using for the last 14 years. Interdesign is a smaller, local design company and they really thought out of the box with this product. Instead of designing yet another drying rack they analyzed the real problem and solved for that. The result is a machine washable pad that looks great in our modern kitchen and can be easily folded and put in a drawer when company comes over.

Goodbye yucky dish drying rack….

 

Hello sexy machine washable drying mat, in a grey color that matches our Silestone counter.

Hot on the heels of our pantry clean up, we picked up a 24-pack of Rubbermaid food storage containers. The “Easy Find Lids” kit is reasonably priced at $25, which compared to $15 for just one Tupperware piece, seems like a pretty good deal. The thought is, If you have a family of four, you only need about 12 food storage containers of various sizes. These new containers allowed us to get rid of the old ones – some of which were not BPA free, and others that were over 15 years old. Most of the old ones no longer held their lids very well, and that’s if you could find the lid.  The “lid basket” was a real mess. Hopefully now with the new ones we’ll be better organized, food will stay fresher. We definitely gained some more space in the pantry.

The new containers, and some old ones that we’re keeping. We did gain some space and organization with the new set. Notice how the lids store right under the stackable containers for easy finding.

 

This mess of old lids and containers is going in a box in the basement until we figure out what to do with them. Some of them are being used by our oldest son as “toys”…I can only imagine.

In the laundry room I install an 18″ Delta towel bar near the utility sink; I want to say it was like $24 (though the Delta site shows it costing more than that). Christine washes her hair  in the laundry room and needed a spot to hang a towel.  I installed the bar at 41″ off the ground. I was leery of the design of the mounting brackets. They are simply prongs that you screw to the wall and them slide the bar posts over them. But sure enough they seem to be secure after installation. Not sure if they come off easy, like when we go to paint the room, so we’ll have to wait and see.

I was skeptical of the prong design of the towel bar mount.

 

The prongs fit into these pockets on the back of the bar posts.

 

The towel bar seems secure though. The grey line is my thought for something down the road…maybe a fabricated “L” shaped metal rod that would allow a variety of towels and accessories to be hung around the utility sink. “She” doesn’t like the sponge just sitting on the sink, and I can’t find the box in the basement with the sponge hanger we had in the old house.

That’s about it, I got everything installed that we bought, including some suet for the birds, on sale for $0.98 a square – I put it out in the feeder along with birdseed in preparation for the big freeze coming up next week. In my studio I installed a couple of pads at the bottom of the Therma-Tru doors, hoping to keep some of the warm air inside the house. I can still see daylight in the center so maybe I’ll stuff a sock in the door for now. We lowered our thermostat to 69 degrees to hopefully cut down on our electric bill. December’s bill was a whopping $308, our largest yet. I wish we had a programmable thermostat that would lower the temp at night while we sleep. I know Nest has one that supposedly works with hybrid furnaces like ours. Or maybe there’s a more economical programmable thermostat out there.  We need to get our electric bills to be lower this time of year.

One other thing, I doubt very much our bees will survive Tuesday if it only gets up to -1 F.  We’ll see but I’m not optimistic.  Fingers crossed.

Alright peeps, stay warm. Let me know if you have any questions on any of the products I’ve been installing or any of the projects I’ve been working on around the house. Until next time, be happy and healthy.

 

-Chris