One member of the community (@shanacarp) asked if she should get a kindle ..and if she could read it in the bathtub.

…and yada yada yada this drawing popped into my head:

If anyone builds one, or even crazier – makes a kickstarter project out of the concept, please tweet me pics :)

If / when I can convince my wife to get a kindle – I’ll build one for her :)

When I was a kid one of our neighbors was a retired welder (I believe for GM.. his name was Basil Dey). Anyhow, Basil was a super nice guy and had a huge shop in his back yard where he was constantly welding things – artistic and utilitarian in nature. He used to make these large metal mail boxes that looked like a black tin man holding up a mail box.
I used to go over there and watch him work and he would encourage me to put on an arc welding helmet and look closer at what he was doing. I had no idea what I was looking at, but it was totally cool and since then I’ve wanted to learn how to work with metal.

Okay, so a couple weekends ago I dusted off my metal working book (amazon link) and started working on making a metal bowl out of some galvanized sheet metal I had kicking around.

The bowl project is really just an exercise for the beginner to learn about how metal stretches and shrinks as when you hit it with different kinds of tools. Its quite amazing actually – when working metal, you sort of think of it as you might think of dough when baking. It stretches and shrinks – and your job is to understand it and work it into the desired shape.

The key lesson : hitting metal with a metal tool stretches the metal and hitting the metal with non-metal tools (i.e. wooden mallet) shrinks it.

So, in the first picture – I’m showing you the round piece that will become the bowl. I used aviation snips to cut it out of a piece of galvanized sheet metal that used to be a wall mounting plate for a microwave oven. I saved this piece of metal from my kitchen remodeling project.

Here are two more pictures showing both sides of the “work in progress” bowl. I used two different hammers – the one on the left is from my “body and fender” hammer and dolly kit. The right one is just a regular old hammer I used to do most of the stretching. The black thing underneath the bowl is a used leather purse filled with sand – my shot bag. I put the metal piece on top of the shot bag ..and hammer it there. I got the idea for using an old purse and sand from this amazing metal worker.

Its nothing fancy – I’m a totally beginner – but it was surprisingly fun.

I’m off to pound on it some more – this time with a rubber mallet.

I’ll write another post when the bowl is smoother …and eventually get some paint on it.

(note: in my previous post I covered demolition of the old floor and patching a furnace vent hole.)

If you’re thinking about DIY remodeling project – anticipate working very slowly as most projects, despite our best intentions, end up only getting attention on the weekends.

If you don’t have practice with a particular type of project you’ll end up working slowly to get nicer results. Let me repeat that – working slower will help you achieve nicer results :).

You should also break down the project into small enough chunks so that you can consult how-to books and websites and possibly fix errors when they are small. Let me repeat that – fix errors when they are small :).

Don’t let the prospect of a long DIY project scare you away. Doing it yourself might save you a lot of money but it will help you build valuable skills and a real sense of accomplishment!

Before you start – I encourage you to get the required permits for your work. An electrical permit is almost certainly required. Don’t listen to people discourage you from getting a permit with the old “government bureaucracy”, “not needed for your own house” blah blah blah.
I’ve found that the city development services agency and inspectors where I live (Portland, OR) are very easy to work with, helpful and timely in their service. I’ve found our inspectors to be quite appreciative of my being a DIYer who wants to do things right and helpful in making sure my work is correct.

Okay, for our project we bought two SunTouch floor warming mats. I enjoyed working with the SunTouch mats. It was straight forward, the instruction manual was easy to follow and installation DVD was pretty good. SunTouch has a page for DIYers here which provides you the benefit of looking through the installation manuals before you invest resources in your project.

After demolition and patching, I bought 3×5′ 1/4″ thick sheets of hardy backer board. The backer board provides an excellent surface for for attaching tile using thin-set mortar.
I used a utility knife to cut the backer board to fit using the “score and snap” method – which avoid tons of nasty dust. I then used #8 1 5/8″ screws to secure it to the floor.

Next, I arranged the suntouch heating mats in front of the main work areas in the kitchen and attached to the floor according to the suntouch manual.

Its very important at this point, and throughout the project to follow the instructions in the manual for measuring the mat resistance with a digital multimeter. When you measure the resistance you’re really just checking to see if you’ve accidentally broken any of the heating wires or the temperature sensor. Its critical that this be done regularly so that you can fix the problem as soon as possible in the project and potentially avoid having a unusable (and potentially unsafe) heating mat in your floor.

Here’s a picture of the floor with the backer board and heating mats installed.

For the electrical – I ran some new 12/2 romex wire from a dedicated 15amp breaker in my main electrical box. Since my mats only draw 2.5 amp each the 15amp was just fine for the project. In the future, when I add a in floor heating to our bathroom, I’ll connect the new mat’s electrical to this same 15amp circuit!

This picture shows how the wires are run from the floor mats and temperature sensor into the bottom of the wall. Note the small metal nail guards.

Here is a picture of the electrical near the floor after I fed the mat wires through a flexible metal conduit
Originally I fed the wires to the thermostat box (above) without conduit – but when I had the electrical work inspected I was told that in Oregon we’re required to use conduit. My inspector kindly described what kind of conduit was needed and roughly how to do it.

This picture shows the holes in the wall – which I used to feed the wire and conduit up to the thermostat box.

Here is a closeup of the wiring and conduit to the thermostat box.

This is a pic of the thermostat box taken as I was making the wire connections. Note that the conduit in the box is secured with a conduit nipple and a nut so that the conduit won’t accidentally detach from the box.

Here is a picture of the first set of tiles we laid down. Note liberal use of 1/4″ tile spacers.

All the electrical holes are now patched up – with three layers of drywall mud (aka joint compound). I’ll need at least one more layer of mud before I’m ready to prime.

Finally – the thermostat has been installed (and turned on) ..note the “heating” indicator …anticipation was really building in our house at this point :) The suntouch thermostat has several “programmable heating cycles” that allow you to control the temperature for a given time of day. This is pretty cool because you can program it to have the floor nice and warm before you have to work in the kitchen.

…and here is a picture of the finished (and grouted) floor! …yes yes the kitchen is still a work in progress but now when we wake up in the morning the kitchen floor is nice and toasty warm on the feet!

Here is a picture of me removing the old flooring. I used a pry bar to slide under and pry up the old flooring pieces.

Once I had all the mess cleaned up I started in on the patch work. The goal was to patch up the floor where an old furnace vent had been.
The patch must be:

• strong enough for me to stand on (200+ lbs) and take walking abuse for many many years.
• stiff enough to not flex as we would be putting tile on it – and if tile flexes it may crack.
• flush with the surface of the floor to avoid a bumpy or sagging appearance in that area. (which could also cause the tile to crack).

Here is a picture of the hole in the floor after I removed the old furnace vent and duct-work. I used my circular saw set at 3/4″ depth to cut a wider hole out of the original floor boards – the top most boards. The 3/4″ depth was chosen so that I would NOT cut into the sub-floor boards!!

These three pics show how I progressively built up the patch from a 2×4 board that I screwed into two floor joists just below the sub-floor boards with three layers of wood that brought the patch flush with the original floor top.

Here is a diagram (made in google sketchup) to show all the of pieces involved. The floor joists in in the diagram are not visible in the pictures above – because they are hidden by the floor and sub-floor boards. Interestingly, the top floor boards are about 1/8 larger than my 3/4 material – this is why I added a spacer made out of masonite.

Here are couple pics of the final product : a nicely patched floor.

Psst – it could be used to receive regular old tv and other radio transmissions too :)

I built it after reading this page that describes the shoebox HDTV antenna. Why did I not just build the shoebox antenna? I dunno – I just had to do my own thing :)

Okay, so the antenna works pretty good here in the Portland OR area and it will likely work good for you too if you are within 8-10 miles from your local TV stations.

It is a very simple dipole antenna with two 36″ lengths of 12 gauge copper wire. The exact same copper wire that is run inside the wall of a home for 110v electricity. You can buy it at many hardware stores.

Why did I choose 36″?
Well, the shoe box antenna above indicated that 6″ minimum was required. That length is important as it’s related to the TV frequencies being received.
I just multiplied 6″ by a number ( x 6 ) I pulled out of you know where to make it longer and hopefully get better reception.
The reality is that this 36″ length is not really correct and to make it correct I should go back and read my ARRL Antenna book and figure out the right wire length to support receiving the TV frequencies in my area.
…maybe later because this is one is actually working ;)

Why did I wrap the wire around in that funky pattern?
I vaguely remembered reading something about that pattern having a positive affect.
Reality: After talking to a friend about it and getting a really weird stare, I’m pretty sure I was remembering something completely fictional and I don’t think it has an affect other than to get more wire on the piece of plywood.
Again, consulting the ARRL Antenna book is the way to get that kind of thing right.

Materials and tools:

• 2 36″ pieces of 12 guage copper wire
• 75 Ohm coax connector
• 75 Ohm female to female coax coupler
• A splitter that passes frequencies from 40Mhz to 2Ghz
• A piece of scrap plywood
• wire snips
• A soldering iron and solder. Note: I use a 45Watt soldering iron that looks like this
• A hot glue gun and hot glue sticks

A couple pics of materials and tools:

I put temporary screws into the plywood and used them to wrap both wires into the desired pattern. (again – this pattern is meaningless – I just made it up).

I soldered one of the copper antenna wires to the tiny pin that sticks out of the middle of the coax connector. I soldered the other wire to another small wire (the red thing) that I then wrapped around the outside part of the coax connector.

I then mounted the pieces to the plywood using hot glue.

The finished antenna:

…and mounted on the back of my desk using double sided mounting tape. It turns out my desk is pointed in the right direction for all our local TV stations. If your TV stations are not in a single direction you might consider mounting it to a tripod so that you can aim it and get better reception.

By the way – I used a splitter so that I could attach my single antenna to an HDTV receiver with two tuners. So far it is a great product: Silicon Dust HD Home Run. I use it with a PC connected to my TV.

In this post I’m excited to share some progress.

Note that I built a couple trellises to allow the peas to grow vertically.
There is a whole art and craft to vertical gardening that is worth looking into in order to make the best use of your space and available sunlight … especially important for urban gardening!

These two pics were taken a week or so ago…

I took this pic a few minutes ago …we’ve already been making salads with the greens!

Cheers to my wife and daughter for all their planting effort that is now paying off in delicious and healthy food!

We’re planting veggies in these boxes and if all goes well we’ll have enough to share with our friends and neighbors :)

These planter boxes are VERY EASY to build – even if you’ve never built anything. You can do it!
Here are the planter box plans in google sketchup format. If you don’t have google sketchup you can get it here for free: Google Sketchup Download.

If you put these boxes in your front yard, near the street or sidewalk they provide a nice place to sit for neighbors strolling by. You could even put up a small sign inviting them to sit there :)
When the boxes are in the front yard they provide you the perfect opportunity to yak with your neighbors, watch the kids play – create community! Oh, yeah, you get to snack on the veggies you grow (ummm – the freshest tomatoes!).

I’m gonna be hassling the kids: “don’t you dare eat any of these here tasty veggies! (smile , wink, wink as I throw em a pea, bean or tomato)”

What kind of wood ? UNTREATED WOOD!

• Green Douglas Fir. I used this for mine – as did my neighbors who have boxes that are 5+ years old. It will eventually rot, but I’m told (and see) that they hold up quite well. It is very affordable.
• Cedar (aka western red cedar, aka red cedar). This is excellent material because of its natural resistance to the elements. Its smells great.
  It is much more expensive than Douglas Fir.
• Recycled wood is a good choice IF AND ONLY IF you know it has not been treated, painted etc. If you don’t know where the wood has been, it might not be a good choice for a box where you’ll be planting veggies you want to eat.

Here is a diagram of the planter box (click to see a larger image):

Referring to the diagram:

• You should change the lengths of the box sides (the 96″ and 36″ dimensions) to fit the place you’ll be putting your box.
• The boards that make up the box sides are all 2×6 boards stacked two tall. If you want, you can substitute a single 2×12 board.
• The top parts (aka “seats”) are make up of 2x4s on the long sides and 2x6s on the short sides.
• Use 2 1/2″ long #8 wood screws to attach the the 2×4 side braces to the 2×6 boards that make up the long sides of the box.
• Use 3″ long #8 wood screws to attach the the 4×4 end braces to both the long and short sides of the box.
• Use 3″ long #8 wood screws When attaching the tops / seats to the box sides. I drove the screws from the bottom, (at an angle) at side and end braces, but you can also just drive the screws in from the top. Its easier to drive them in from from the top but a little less attractive to have screws in the seats like that.

Tools:

• To cut the boards you need a hand saw or a circular saw.
• To drive the screws you should buy a cordless drill. An average quality 12 to 18 volt drill is just fine for many drilling tasks.

The most important part of building the box is how the corners fit together. Note that in the photos I use a 2×4 for the end brace, but in the diagram I show a 4×4. You can use either, but the 4×4 is better because it provides more surface for attaching the sides at the corner and will be stronger.

Here is a photo showing the corner of one of the boxes I built.

Here is a photo of the inside corner that shows the screws that attach the short sides of the box the end brace.

Here is a photo of the side braces attached to the box side.

Here is a photo of three finished boxes. On my boxes I used a router to make a “fancy” (it’s not that fancy) edge on the seats. This is totally cosmetic and optional :)

If you’re interested in urban gardening you may also like this post: In support of urban gardening.

Our daughter, Annika has started sewing again.

I don’t sew. At all. I don’t count the occasional button as sewing.

My mother, Cheryl, is a great seamstress. A gene that apparently skipped a generation. I have the desire but no skill or machine to practice with.

A few weeks ago Annika decided she wanted to make a landscape scene out of fabric. Grandma Cheryl came over with a bag of fabric scraps and she and Annika chatted about sewing projects and worked on the scene together.

She had given her a sewing kit for the holidays that Annika loves. Their next project together will be a stuffed dog. Annika is excited to start that one!

After the landscape scene Annika started making pillows by hand stitching.

Then she moved on to sleeping bags and pillows for stuffed animals for all her friends.

Her friends have been coming over to learn from her and make their own. Last time they left with a selection of fabric to create their own projects at home.

I’m looking forward to seeing where this leads next.

This was my first solo cheese making adventure.

On Friday I assisted with a cooking demo at our daughter’s school.

The wonderful Claudia Lucero who owns Urban Cheesecraft, was our expert for this demo.

She teaches cheese making classes and sells cheese kits on Etsy and at local Portland Oregon stores.

On Friday she taught us and the kids how to make fresh, fabulous tasting mozzarella.

Mozzarella is a little trickier to make than what I attempted at home. It will take some practice before I can make it look anything like Claudia can!

At home I tried Queso Blanco (Farmer’s Cheese) which was quite simple.

Here’s how:
I simmered a half gallon of milk (not ultra pasturized!) in a pot until foamy and steamy but didn’t let it get to a boil.
The yellow bits you see in the picture is the cream. The milk I used is non-homogenized so the cream floats to the top.

Then I added 1 teaspoon citric acid. Citric acid causes curds and whey to form. You know – Little Miss Muffett :) The citric acid comes in Claudia’s cheese making kit.

I stirred this for a minute until curds started to form.

Then I drained the curds in a cheesecloth lined strainer over the sink. I finally got to use cheesecloth to make cheese! At this point I added salt. This is also a good time to add herbs if you like.
To make a firmer cheese you can place a weight on top of the curds while they drain. I think I’ll try that next time.

After an hour or two this is what they’ll look like:

I pressed this into a small bowl.

I let this sit in the refrigerator for a few hours. I don’t think you have to do this step though. I then turned it out onto a plate.

Queso Blanco can be sprinkled over salads, soups, put into quesadillas or any other use you can think of.
I’ll be using it in my Spanikopita recipe. You can also save the whey for many uses. I used mine in place of water to make rice that evening for dinner.

I’m looking forward to trying Chevre! Claudia was telling me there is a small goat farm in the neighborhood just north of us.

Urban goat farm! How cool is that?! It can’t get much easier than that to eat local.

I grew up in small towns surrounded by small locally owned farms. I even spent some time working odd farm jobs such as picking rocks and weeds. At one point I even milked cows.

Then I spent many years not thinking at all about gardens, plants or where food came from.

The years of ignoring food in that way are gone.

I live in a big city now, but its a city where a growing number of people are interested in gardening and local farmers through farmers markets. (fyi – I count 33 farmers markets on that list!)

Here is a series of short videos I put together based on discussions I had with my neighbors and fellow parents.
These people are actually making life better for my family, in a fairly direct way, by supporting the garden at my kids school, by sharing the vegetables grown in their urban gardens and by bringing local farmers into farmer’s markets near my home!

Cheers to urban gardeners and local farmers and market organizers!

In this video I talk to my neighbor Wayne about his gardening activities.

(part 1 video link)
I enjoyed the veggies Wayne and his family shared with us last summer!

In this video I talk to Gretchan about her involvement with a local farmers market and projects at The Ivy School.

(part 2 video link)

In this video I talk to one of Ivy’s teachers – Kirk – about the School’s Edible Garden project.

(part 3 video link)

In this video I talk to Truli – and Ivy parent and local business owner.

(part 4 video link)

I want to encourage you to build an urban garden of your own and support your local area farmers.
If you don’t have a farmers market – rally your community to organize one. There is a very good chance you’ll be successful because farmers markets are good for communities.

At my daughter’s school, The Ivy School, we are planning an “Edible Garden”. I’m applying for grant from Fiskar’s Project Orange Thumb with the hope of gaining some material support. The grant includes a “creative assignment” that involves imagining things 50 years from now. It has made me wonder what the gardening and local farming scene will be like then. What long term problems will we have avoided? Will our efforts today make a difference to our kids and our kid’s kids?

My feeling, especially when I talk with folks in the videos above, is that we are headed in a good direction.

At The Ivy School I asked the teachers to have the kids write and draw about what gardening means to them.

Here are some images of their work (cuteness alert!):

As a final note, I wanted to let you know that with a little encouragement from my wife and inspiration from my neighbor – I built some planter boxes for our own urban garden. They’re the boxes at the start of each video :)
[Update] Here is a post I did on how to build planter boxes.

If you liked this post, you may also find this one interesting: Today we planted trees