I was asked if I could build a floating desk as a Christmas gift. The below pic is what was requested. The desk shown below is 60” wide and has a lock on the front. The requested desk needed to be 36” to fit the space where it was going to end up and no lock. The plans for this desk can be found on Shanty 2 Chic.

I had a couple of 2x4’s on the rack. 

I had to pick up a 1x12. Some half inch plywood.  

A couple of 1x6’s and a 1x4.

I cut all the pieces I needed to size. 

 I drilled all the pocket holes.

 Everything was sanded before assembly. Then I started gluing, clamping, and screwing everything together. 

 I put the corbels together.

Then I sat them where I thought they would look and work the best.

Here is a shot of the inside of the desk.

I put a back on the desk. I didn't like how the plans called out for a cleat. I thought it looked kind of tacking inside the desk, plus it takes up 3” inside the desk. I glued, clamped and nailed the back into place along with the back top piece. 

I set the top lid on, measured out where I wanted the hinges.

Then I marked and drilled pilot holes. 

I went ahead and screwed the hinges in place and made sure the top fit and opened correctly.

I stained everything as requested and put 3 coats of poly on everything, with the exception of the top and the inside of the desk where I put an additional coat on. The surfaces that are used the most always get a extra coat or two. 

Here it is finished an mounted. I marked were the studs where on the back of the desk, drilled holes and used two cabinet screws to attach the desk to the wall. I had a helper for that part.

More later...

So here we go. It takes 4 2X4's ripped down to 3" wide and 4 2X6's ripped down to 5" wide. 

I cut most of the lumber to the lengths I need. Here is most of what is needed for the legs. I will save the diagonal cuts for lasts so I can make sure they are the right size.

Now I can rip them to the right width.

I drilled all my pocket holes and now I'm attaching the feet...   ...or top rails, depending on how you look at it. 

Here is the bottom shelf. I failed to get a shot of the cut lumber along with the pock holes. This is the first sanding. 

This is how it will look once its attached. 

Here it is attached to the sides along with the top center support.

I finished gluing and screwing the top together. 

Here it is with the top attached. 

The original plans only show one pocket hole at the end of each 2x6 for attaching the end pieces. After going online to look something up, I saw they used two pocket holes for each board. so rather than trying to drill the pocket holes in the main top, I drilled them in the end boards. It doesn't look that great from the underside. If I do another, I have made notes so it will look better next time. I measured and cut the cross support. Yea, I stood on it just to make sure it could be used as a step stool. You never know.

 Here is it stained and poly'd. She wanted it dark. It's dark. I used a flat polyurethane to give it a more rustic look. You don't need a coster. This stuff is just about bulletproof. 

And here it is with the Bunny touch. 

More Later...

I used 1/8" underlayment plywood cut to 6" widths. 

Here is what it looked like before I started. 

I marked the studs so I could keep things straight. 

Progression shot. 

Done.

Here it is painted and the light installed. 

I used pennies to space everything. If I do it again. I will make the gaps a little wider. 

Wow. I just noticed the gaps between the vanity and wall on each side. Looks like I need to get back in there and caulk. I will get that cleaned up. 

More later...

Bunny:  I want to call him Vincent.
Me: Why Vincent?
Bunny: He should be named after one the Santa’s reindeer.
Me: Vincent?
Bunny: Yea, Vincent.
Me: I don’t think there is a Vincent.
Bunny: Yes there is. Hey Alexa, What are the names of Stata’s reindeer?
Alexa: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen + Rudolf the red nose reindeer.
Me: Hmmm. No Vincent.
Bunny: I meant Vixen.
Me: Well, we could but its too late.
Bunny: Why?
Me: His name is already Jeff.

Here is Jeff and Rudolph.

Here are a couple more I made. (I don't have names but we can call them Tom and Bob.)

Good times.

More later...

So here we go. Back down the rabbit hole. OK. I get signed back up, post a few pics, post a few messages, etc. Done.

I go to my next small group meeting and say, 'Hey everyone, put your Facebook names on this sheet of paper so I can friend you and we can keep in touch, let you know whats going on, when thing will be happening, etc, etc. I get the paper back and there are only two names on the sheet. LOL! OK, I get it. You don't want me keeping an 'eye' on you. Thats cool. Its the response that floored me. "No, we don't care about that." So what then? "Well, Facebook is for old people." Whhaaaaa? Yea, Facebook is for old people.

What have I done?!?!?! 

I have learned one thing. Something I couldn't undo with my old account. DO NOT 'LIKE' ANYTHING!  Thats right. If its worth giving a 'Like', leave a comment instead. Because I have not 'Liked' anything since I have been back on, I don't get tons of junk. They tried to slip in a few things, they though I might like, but I marked them 'Offensive'. They quickly apologized and haven't really pushed anything else on my. I am basically ad free. So far, anyway. 

I still see a bunch of reposts of pics with some form of verbage added. Or some sort of video repost, thats supposed to be funny, but I typically block all of those. If you are one of those that just repost other's stuff, I truly do not mean to offend you, but I am more interested in whats going on in your life than anything else. I can't hardly give more than 5 or 10 minutes a day to Facebook so if I have to wade through a ton of junk to find a few good things, or important things, it will not be seen.  Anyway....

I hope that everyone is having an awesome week. 

Oh, Eds Lyfe to find me.

More later...

Now, keep in mind, Bunny doesn't sew, or anything else that comes to material, fabric, etc. so that's me.

So here is the material we are going to use. 

Here is where they are going to go. There are a couple of angles that need to be dealt with as well. 

So I grab a couple of 2x4's, measure the length wanted for each window and cut them to size.

Because they are going right above the windows, I know there is going to be header inside the wall to attach to. So I drilled holes into the 2x4 about 2.5" inches down. I used 3" in. deck screws to attach the 2x4 to the wall. 

I had to calculate the angle need to turn the corner on the two end windows and this is what I ended up with. The test fix was good. 

Now on to the fun part. I used velcro to attach the fabric to the lumber. I couldn't find the super industrial sticky backed velcro so I bought plain white non-stick velcro, .5" in wide, and a couple of rolls of Gorilla Double Sided Tape. 

I cut the Velcro into 1" in lengths.

Then stuck them to the double sided tape, then cut them into individual pieces. I did this for the hook and the loop.

Then stuck them to the board spaced about 3" in apart.

You have to put the Velcro on the board before you measure your fabric. The Velcro adds a little to the width you will need. 

I started by folding the primary top edge over and ironing it. Then lift the edge you just created and put hem tape under the flap and ironing it again. Let it cool before you move or bend it. 

Then do the sides. 

After I finished that, I test fit it to make sure it was correct then stuck the Velcro on the fabric. Once that was done, I screwed the boards to the wall then attached the fabric. 

So here is the finished product. Happy Bunny!!

More later...

Here is Bunny working on her project. 

Here is the turtle I was working on. Here is the before shot.

Here it is with the glaze on it. I have no idea what this is going to look like when it comes out of the fire. 

Here is the finished product. 

More later....

eds.life

I will be setting up email for it soon. I will still have edsplace.com and, more than likely, continue to use it as my primary. I have some fun ideas that I need to take a closer look at. 

More soon...

The coset is on the left and shower/toilet on the right. 

Needless to say, Bunny asked if I could close it in. Well, yea, I guess. But that would mean pulling trim, removing sheetrock and flooring. What a pain. Then...   ...what if, we put a pair of sliding doors up instead. Yea! Thats a great idea. Right?!?!  Lets find out. 

First, I pulled a little sheetrock out at the top of each side, measured the span, then cut a 4x6 beam to fit. Thats a pressure treated 4x6. That was the cheapest thing in could find. A couple of taps with a hammer and its in. I drove 6 8" bolts in. I don't think its going to move. 

So, it looks OK, sorta. But it would look a lot better if it were wrapped with cedar. Yea. Lets do that. Then I can stain it. 

So this is from the sink side. I have half of the wrap complete.

Heres the outside view. 

Full wrap. I extended the cedar across the wall on both sides so it would be behind the track. You can see, on the right, I had to add a little extra. You will never know once the stain is on. 

Bunny wants it done NOW! So, while I was at work, she stained it. She used the same stain we used on the mantel. 

Its hard to tell but I have the track up. I did that so I would know how long the doors needed to be. They will be a little longer than standard. 90 1/4" long x 32" wide. She already has the handles picked out. Now I just have to get the doors. The next size up is an 8 foot door, so thats what I'm getting, times 2.

So the doors are finally in. What a beast. I need to remove 5 and 3/4 of an inch total from the door. So I calculated what the percentage difference was between the top and bottom, (the bottom of the door has more space between the bottom panel and the floor than the top), took that percentage and calculated how much I need to remove from the top and bottom to get my 5 3/4 inches. I marked my lines.

I stacked the two doors on top of each other so I only had to mark and cut once and I knew they would both be exactly the same. I used my 4 foot level as a guid for my circular saw and made my cuts. 

I set the door in place to see how it would fit. (Ha! It turns out an 8 foot tall 5 panel door is really 6 panels.)

Next, I laid it down, drilled the holes for the hangers. 

I bolted on the hangers and hung them to test how they would really fit and to make any adjustments before they were painted. They seem to look OK and roll really nice. 

Yeah, thats me taking the shot. Oh, and one more change back there. The mirror. 

So now, take them down, unbolt everything, paint both doors, bolt the hangers and handles on, hang them both back up and see what it looks like. 

Mote Later...

I hope you enjoy.

WARNING! THE BELOW VIDIO CONTAINS GRAFIC IMAGES OF KIDS (AND ADULTS) HAVING FUN. 

This video is rated 'J'. 

Here is what it started out as.

So i pulled the top off. 

OK. Well I didn't like that there was open space on each side of the cabinet and, I would like the the new top to go wall to wall rather than have that open space on each side. 

But, if I make the top go wall to wall then there will be an open space below it and that will look dumb. So I needed to create a filler to go between the cabinet and wall. But then I needed to remove some trim. What a pain...  ...but here is what i came up with. 

Now I'm thinking, how am I going to match the stain. Then Bunny says, "Lets paint it black." I am thinking, black granite on a black cabinet is going to be a lot of black. So I say, "What if we paint it white?" That was a hit and this is what we've got.

The top was delivered. Here it is. 

Here it is with the bowl and fixture setting on it. 

And here it is finished, with the sides, backsplash, drawer fronts and pulls back on. What a hug improvement.  

More Later...

*** Scroll to, about, the bottom to see the last entry.  ***

Here is what I started with. Well...   ...thats not my stuff. That is a 'staged' pic of the previous owners stuff. But that is the basic space I had to work with. It is/was definitely a man cave. But...   ...it could be better. Right?  Its demo time. 

So I had to start with removing the ceiling, light fixtures, paneling and wallpaper. Then I pulled all the aluminum wire that I could and replaced it with copper as well as pulling several new runs (from the panel and NOT tied in to other aluminum runs like I found).

Here is some of the crazy I found inside the cabinets (Oh, and the stuff on the shelves, is mine). Yes, thats right. Steel shelving inside the cabinets. Yeah, so I have more work to do.  :)

So, now I'm here.  I installed can lights.

As you can see, in the black hole. there is some metal duct work running in the crawlspace. 

There is nothing but good times going on in there.

I raked the dirt to smooth it out, lined the floor with plastic.  

Pulled the metal duct work out.

Installed insulated flex duct and cap'd a run that was over kill.

Tied up some electrical runs. It does look a little better than that. I should have taken a shot when everything was complete. Tip: I filled every hole that leads out, with foam insulation. I did that throughout the crawlspace and in each room I work on. 

Then Bunny says 'Can we use something besides sheetrock on the ceiling? Maybe bead board?' Hmmm...   ...sure. Why not. So we decided to use this on the ceiling.

And here we go. The first run is in. I added a soffit around the drain and then added a few more can lights. There will be a work surface below, so Bunny can do her arts and crafts. I have no idea what that will look like yet.

Here are some progress shots.

Next, I had to build a soffit for the duct work.

Then its sheetrock time. Mud and sand. Mud and sand. Mud and sand.

Mud and sand. Mud and sand. It seems like it never ends. 

Next, I framed the opening to the crawlspace and made door. I used the reclaimed oak I pulled off the walls during demo. I did fill all the holes.

The door is finished. Now I need to pick out the hinges. 

***UPDATE***

I put the trim up around the ceiling. 

Bunny painted all the cabinets and doors. We put the hardware on and I got them hung.

I was looking at putting some tile down so I would have something between the shop and carpet in the office. This is what we picked out. 

I hit a snag a couple of nights ago. I was working on another side project when I felt a drip. I thought I had flung some of the finish I was laying down. I didn't really think much more about it until, a couple of minutes later, another drip hit my leg. 'OK. Whats going on?' I looked up and saw a bead of water hanging from one of the boards on the ceiling. Awesome. 

I pulled out my drill, put a whole in one of the boards, put the jig saw in and cut the board and pulled it down. Yeah. I suck. I drove a nail into one of the water lines. 

Here is a shot of the damaged part. Drove the nail right through the middle of that think. 

I replaced it with a piece of PEX plastic tubing. Its a lot easier to work with. Any time I have to replace any water lines, I will use PEX. 

Not my best work, sweating the brass fitting to the copper, but it doesn't leak. 

I fixed the ceiling and you can't really tell where I had to open it up. Back to filling nail holes then I can paint.

I finally had a minute to start laying the tile. First, I put down Hardybacker underlayment. I don't care what anyone says. Never lay tile right on concrete. That is, if you don't want to replace cracked tiles, over time. 

Now its time for the tile. 

Here it is finished. Now I have a landing pad/transition between the office and my shop. This way, I will be less likely to track anything bad from the shop onto the carpet in the office. Now its time to start painting the walls. 

The walls are finally painted. I'm going to pull all the carpet and pad, fix any cracks in the concrete floor and clean everything up. Then we are ready for the carpet guy next weekend, then I'll put in a little trim. The room will be officially complete minus the extras that will go in afterwards. 

The carpet guy came today. The carpet is in. He also did the stairs. It is amazing. Now I need to install the baseboards. 

I finally add the last piece of trim and am officially done. Well I have to add the built-in, but that will be a different post. Bunny has already started to put her spin on things. I am still setting up my workstations and sound system. I also have pics to hang, but the rest is complete.

Please forgive the vacuum. I am going to hear about that being in the above pic.

Thanks for checking it out.

More later...

It's nice to have them all the same. It makes things look so much better, and looks thought out. I found a place here in town, Mill Creek Lumber, that had doors Bunny and I liked. You take the door off, remove all the hardware and take it down to them. Pick the new door style you like, and they take the old door, match it to the new door, cut it the the right height, cut the hinges, and holes for the handle to match. You take the new door home, paint it, attach the hardware and it hangs perfectly where the old door was.

You would think that's the best part of the whole deal, and maybe it is, but the other thing is, it costs less than buying a door at Home Depot or Lowes. That's what I'm talking about.

Here the doors we have now.

The door leading to the garage. That was a lot heaver than I thought it would be.

Bedroom 2 and hall bath.

Bedroom 1.

Master bath.

Master closet.

Office door leading to the shop.

I guess I forgot to get a shot of the basement closet, but you get the idea. 

Here are a few shots I took while there. At the bottom, I will put a link to all the shots I've posted. Also, if you would like to stay a little more up-to-date, you can see me on Instagram @eds_place.

This is a shot looking through  the window of the room we stayed in.

Cape Meares Light House

Friends and family.

My nephew and my new niece.

Pacific City, OR

This guy was in a tidal pool. 

http://www.edsplace.com/p742750460

More later...

I have been busy in the basement. I was getting ready to add more pics, but after having to scroll down for 10 minutes I decided it should be broken out into sections. So I will be starting on that shortly. The sheetrock is finally done and the first coat of primer is getting rolled on. The ceiling is done along with the trim on the can lights. The carpet guy is coming in a couple of weeks, then the last thing will be to add the baseboard. Well, then it will be cabinets and a work surface in the back corner of the room. 

Then its back into the attic. I'm adding some insulation where they complete missed, adding some vents, 6 new can lights for the front room along with wiring needed. I'm sure I will be able to pull more aluminum wire out, add grounds where they were too lazy, and add, maybe, an extra light switch. We'll see. 

I promised to help someone else with some lights, so I need to make good on that as well. I know there is more that I'm not thinking about right now. 

More later...

Tidal disruption events are caused by black holes. This is when a star, gets too close and is pulled apart by the forces generated by the black hole. Some stars can be massive in comparison to the black hole. The black hole will always win. As most know, black holes are so strong, not even light can escape. 

A black hole can have the same mass as the sun but be only a couple of miles in size. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, has a super-massive black hole that is around 2 million times the mass of the sun. This is the force that surrounds us and binds us together.  : )

I have also added a few images of tidal disruption events.

http://launch.newsinc.com/embed.html?trackingGroup=90923&siteSection=weatherchannel&videoId=31109580

More later...

The inspiration came from this link from Shanty 2 Chic. But it needed to fit a 30" wide sink rather than the 24" displayed in the photo. 

Then I was told not to put the cross (or X) on the front or sides and to make it look more like the photo below. OK. 

Once the sink was picked out, I had the dimensions I needed to work with. 

I started with the sides. Here is one.

Here is the other. The plans call out for pocket holes and screws. It make for an ugly inside so I used biscuits instead. 

Then i put the front and back rails on.

Added some detail to the side. 

Made the door.

Here is is, completed. I turned it over and the owner stained it.

Here is what it looks like finished. 

Here is a pic of it installed. 

Version 2

More later...

The inspiration came from this photo.

I didn't have any dimensions to go by so here is what I came up with.

My job was to deliver it raw. Here is what it looked link after it was stained and in production. The total cost was about $15. 

Page after page of junk to sift through. People posting rants. More junk. Reposting other peoples junk. No one seems to have time to post what they are doing but they have time to post their opinions or what other people are doing. "Its not fare." "I don't like that." "I can't believe they did that to me!" "I'm so mad right now." Back in the day, we called it 'dirty laundry'. 

Don't get me wrong, I know there are those out there that do post nice things, but it has become increasingly harder to sift through the gigabytes terabytes of junk (garbage) to find a few K worth of things that are valuable or noteworthy.  

As I conclude, I had to laugh as I realize I have just posted a rant, and my opinion, yet again. Its harder to not do it than you might think. So to all my FB friends, I love you and safe travels. 

More later...

http://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/nanowires-battery/3313100.html

More later...

Anyway, with all that said, I have seen every one of these and have had the opportunity to play with a few of them, at one time or another. Some of these are truly junk. And I am not saying now, I mean even then when they first came out. But this is what hardcore Mac users have endured over time. I got this short video from Mac. 

Enjoy.

Mac Evo

Click on the link below and watch the video.

https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/?cid=CDM-US-DM--&cp=em--&sr=em#film-design&Email_PageName=-&Email_OID=0014021732763b891012136df541be21ded0f44107e7448dbe483e5d2f408ffc

Just in case anyone was wondering. I would like to have this for Christmas. :)

More later...

The first thing was to figure out what it should look like and how to mount it on a very uneven, irregular wall. 

OK. So she wants something that looks like it was from one huge piece of lumber, rough cedar. I am thinking, make a box from 1" x 12" cedar. 

I decided to use a 2" x 6" for the ledger and 1/2" x 5 1/2" studs to secure it to the stone work. I really needed 7" but the only way to get those was to move up to 3/8" bolts and I don't own anything that will handle a 3/8" bit. 

I marked out there I wanted the bolts to be and drilled the holes. 

Checked to make sure the holes in the board and bolts line up.

I always put my name on everything I build and sometimes leave a note.

I have the ledger, now to add some supports.

I decided to use pocket holes to attach the supports to the ledger.

But, after thinking about it, I decided it wasn't enough. So I glued and then screwed from behind.

Now its time to hang the ledger, make it level, and secure. I also put Locktite on the bolt threads to make sure it didn't come loose. 

Now its time to start building the cedar box. I had to notch out a few spots so it would fit better against the stone. 

I cut all the angles at 45 degrees. The long sides I cut on the table saw. The short sides, I used my miter saw. I put the top, front, and bottom together and put it up to see how it fit. Then I measured the end caps and then cut them. 

The 45's turned out OK. In most cases you can't see a seam where the lumber comes together. It is super hard to make a perfect cut on an 8' long board with all the irregularities. Because we are using rough cedar, when seams do show, you take a hammer and tap on the edges to close the gap. That works most of the time. I cut the ends and attached them. 

Now its time for some stain. Under these lights, it looks a little darker than it will be when it has the polyurethane on it. 

I put three coats of flat, water based, poly on it. It fits on the ledger fairly snug so theres no need to secure it with anything else. 

**UPDATE**  Bunny couldn't wait to do her thing. Here it is. 

More later...

I hear someone yell at me. I look around and there is some guy in his backyard, standing on his tiptoes looking over the fence. (The part of the highway was on runs along a neighborhood.) The guy yells, "You out of gas?" I replied, "Yea, it looks like it." I get off the bike and check the take switch orientation. It looks like it had been on reserver the whole time, so it was really out of gas. I look around and the guy is gone and then thought to myself, I guess I will call someone and see if they can bring me some gas. Looks like I will, at best, be late, and worst, won't make it.

The next thing I know, the guy is back at the fence yelling at me again, so I walked over to the fence and he has a gas can. He says, "Can you reach it if I hand it over to you? " "Yea, I can." He hands me the can, I walk back up to the bike and splash about a gallon or so in, put the cap back and walk the can back to the fence. While i was walking back to the fence, I pull my wallet out and look in and have a 10. The guy reaches over the fence to grab the can and I slap the 10 into his hand. He looks at it and says, "No way. You didn't put $10 worth of gas in your tank." I said "I really appreciate you being here, right at the very place where I ran out of gas, and it was worth every penny." He says, "Well, I don't know about that." And I said, "Well, I do! And God bless you." He said thanks, I handed him the gas can, I said thanks again, then walked back to the bike, hopped on, hit the starter, fired it up and took off. 

This may never happen again but I love people that make an effort to help someone in need and make me strive to be a better person. I hope I see him again sometime and its awesome to know you have someone always looking out for you.

More later...

https://www.amazon.com/All-New-Echo-Dot-2nd-Generation/dp/B01DFKC2SO?th=1

The Official Review

https://www.wareable.com/amazon/amazon-echo-dot-review

My Review

I am still figuring it out but here is what i have so far. I have Alexa plugged into a small Bose system. i have Alexa setup to tell me the weather. "Alexa, What is the weather going to be today/or this week?"

I have Alexa setup to play any of my Pandora stations. "Hey Alexa, Pandora, Bassic Radio." "Alexa, Turn it up/or turn it down."

I am going to replace the old irrigation timer next spring. Once that is in and setup I will be able to control it with Alexa. So, if its raining, and I see the sprinklers are on, I can say, "Alexa, turn the sprinklers off." Or if its really hot out and I need a little extra water, I can say, "Hey Alexa, Run zone 2 for 6 minutes."

I am working on getting my calendar setup right now. "Alexa, Whats on my calendar for tomorrow?"

Alexa can get me the news.  

You give Alexa "Skills" so it can do what you need it to do. We have a couple of lights (so far) setup. One in the front room and one in the bedroom that we can control. Philips Hue. So far, I am really liking these. "Alexa, turn on the light in the front room." "Alexa, set the light, in the front room to 10%." or "Alexa, set the light in the front room to full bright" or "Alexa, turn off all the lights." I use that one when I'm in bed and don't want to get up to turn off a light I left on. I am working on automating the rest of the lighting in the house and soon will be working to setup specific outlets in the house as well. 

It took Bunny only a few minutes to figure it out. But it was fun teaching her. She was yelling at it. Bunny: "TURN OFF THE RADIO" Me: No, you have to say its name. Bunny: "ANDREA!, TURN OFF THE RAIDO!" Me: "No, Alexa. And you don't have to yell at it." Bunny: "Alexa, turn off the radio." And it worked. 

Its only been a day so there is more to do but I will post more as I get it configured. I am thinking of changing Alexa's name. You can call it Echo by default as well, but I am thinking of something more fun and maybe give it a guys voice, if I can.

More Later...

Super easy to install, if you have a power screwdriver or impact driver. They do not require anything else. They work on standard cabinets and do not require a pilot hole to be drilled, that is, unless you are driving the screws by hand, then I would.

Here is what they are.

Blumotion Hinge Adapter, Compact w/ Spacer

You can get these on Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006R7X3PY/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

They are awesome.

More later...

Before

After

Before

After

I finally got the hardware installed. 

Here is a fun fact, in case you find yourself in need of a fax machine.

There are over 17 million fax machines in the US, or one about every 4.47 square miles.

More soon...

Click on the link below, scroll to down and then click on the 'Make Reservations > >' button.

Its going to be awesome.

Judgement House

There are now belly dancers, pirates, bag pipes everything you can think of and things I would not have considered to be relevant. The thing i miss the most is the time they used to take building sets, castles, and, well...   ...cool stuff. If I had stumbled across this, I would have said it was a small county fair with a slight medieval theme. 

Here are a few of the shots I took. Its always nice when I can get my B/W going. 

More later...

Anyway, here is a pic of the room I have been working on. This was taken with the house was on the market. 

Here is where I am at now.

That hole is a crawl space. There are a couple in the house. They are open to the basement so the humidity is super high. I crawled in and leveled out the dirt and rolled plastic out. I started cutting insulation have half of it in right now, so I can do a better job at closing this space off from the rest of the basement. This should reduce the humidity and keep it warm in the winter. What a pain.

There were a couple of 6" heavy steal ducts running into the crawl space. I am pulling both and running one new flex duct, in order to reduce the size of the soffit needed. I also temporarily tossed one of the florescent lights I pulled down, in the crawl space so I can see what I'm doing. 

More soon....

All the walls were a dark drab olive green. It was like walking into a cave. We have switched it up to a light gray. 

Seth is getting ready to start painting the blue room. 

Sam is prepping the blue room.

The place is looking clean and bright. 

Rare glimpse of the Bunny.

Dude is liking his new home. 

Lots of nasty stains. I would have taken and posted pics but did want to make anyone physically ill.

Once the carpet is down, All I have left is to replace the outlets and switch along with covers and it will look better. I will post pics of it when I'm done.

More later...

I am in the process of replacing every outlet and light switch in the house. Some are yellow, some are dark brown, some are square and some are traditional. All are covered in black nasty hand prints. I don't think any of the plate covers have ever been cleaned. I am putting in bright, shiny white replacements. Just that alone is making a big difference. I have only gotten buzzed a couple of times. So I'm not doing too bad. I am also running new power down to my shop. I have to pull new wire from the breaker panel. I hope to start working on my shop in the next few months. 

So much to do. 

More later...

There is a section in the basement that was originally setup as a shop. I am going to try recreate, what I think it should look like. 

The people that lived here were not the cleanest. We have spent that last few days cleaning and painting. Mostly cleaning. I do have some pics of Bunny painting. I will post those as well. 

Bermuda grass. I hate Bermuda grass. It has crept into the yard. Next weekend I will start the process of elimination. I am thinking it will take two seasons to get it under control. I will try to take some before and after shots of it. There is only one product that I know of to get it out of the yard, and it is not RoundUp. Turflon Ester. It typically comes very concentrated. One teaspoon to a gallon of water. 

I will post more soon. Back to unboxing.

Screenshot

When we were done. We stumbled across this place. One of the best hamburgers I have had in a while. I would recommend this place to anyone in the KC area. 

I will use these pics as before shots as we go through and start doing the renovations. 

Now, we have inspections, appraisals, second walkthroughs, finding years worth of documentation, etc., etc. Did I mention that I hate moving...

So anyway, here are the pics. I also fixed the HERE link in the previous posts to point here as well. 

I hope everyone is having an awesome day.

I am hoping this will be the last move we make. Ever. But if have learned anything, never say never. I have a big task list once we get in the new place. At least most of the items are 'do at my own pace'. I will try to do a better job of taking before, in process, and after pics as I go. The yard is going to be a huge undertaking as most of the front is Bermuda grass. I hate Bermuda. So I will be spending the rest of the summer getting ready for next years battle.

I have always wanted to build my own shed, so it looks like I may finally have the opportunity to do that as well. Good times.  :)

More later... 

**UPDATE**

It looks like we will make an offer tomorrow. I think I am going to miss the east side. But we will be more centrally located. If all goes well, I am going to have a pile of new projects. 

More soon....

**UPDATE**

So HERE is a link to the listing of the house we are not going to try and get. We could really us the prayers. 

More today. There are a couple that are going to be close to what we can agree on. We'll see how it goes. 

To all friends and family, I hope all of you are having an awesome day.  :)

**UPDATE**

We found out that the house we were looking at now has a contract on it. We were going for one more look tomorrow. Guess it wasn't meant to be. We looked at a couple more this afternoon. Both were duds. Tomorrow's picks should be better. Can't to see them. I will post a link to the MSL listing if it gets a thumbs up from Bunny.

So after a year of have Siri turned off, I happened to be at Simply Mac. Wichita's only real (almost real) Mac/Apple store, getting a laptop worked on, and while I was waiting, I thought to ask, what's up with Hey Siri? They were a little surprised and asked what I was talking about. I handed them my phone. They played with it for a minute then plugged it into a dock. With in a minute or two they said, 'Oh, your front microphone is dead'. Great. So much for the bug idea.

So a couple of months go by and I Google'd 'iphone front mic' and found that lots of people have had this problem. After a little research, it turns out, the mic is on a ribbon cable along with a sensor, and front camera. I also found that this little ribbon cable, with all of its attached devices is about $8. So I hopped on Amazon and ordered it. 

Once I had the cable I looked at what it would take to get into my phone which turns out to be only two tiny screws at the bottom of the phone that keep it together. I also found out that they are special tiny screws and I didn't have anything that I could use to get them out. So back to Amazon. I found a kit with everything i needed (and more) for $8.  

With that, I was able to open up my phone and replace the bad cable. It seems that the front mic is very susceptible to moisture and will fail. I don't remember getting my phone wet but who knows. Anyway, Siri lives and I am now using her as much as I can. 

With that, I don't recommend that anyone try taking their phone apart, everything inside is very small and easily damaged. Almost every screw I had to remove on the inside was a different size so you have to pay very close attention to where everything came from. I have seen a few YouTube videos of people that work on phones all the time. Some of these people have no business being in that business and quite frankly, I cannot believe some of the phones worked at all after they had touched them. The thing is, if you have a broken phone and take it to them, they work on it, and it doesn't work when they are done, or, they say you need this and that part to fix it, there is no way for you to know if they broke it more phone due to negligence. Its sad.  

1. Launch the browser on your mobile device and open http://edsplace.com/blog.
2. Scroll to the the bottom of the page, find the RSS Feed icon and click it.
3. Your device will ask you if you want to save it to the RSS Feed app you have installed on your phone. 
4. You are done. 

Your phone will have a default app that will contain your News feeds but there are several apps and widgets out there you can download for managing feeds if you don't like the one that came with your phone. 

If you find any mistakes in this or have any helpful comments (as I have just recently starting playing with feeds), please leave comments.

I hope you guys are having an awesome day!!  :) 

Well, more over, the race to find a house is really on.

We did look at a cool house in Eastborough. Here is the LINK. But, it needs about $200K of reno (or you could say a complete gut job). And when I say that, it technically isn't a place you would want to live in until its done. 

It would be very cool in the end but that is one project I don't think I want. 

**UPDATE**

Did I mention that I hate the dance? Well...   ...we are officially homeless. Well not for a little while, but very soon. Now the real pain begins.

Here are the pics.

We drove by the other day. I know these pics are not the best, but Bunny swears she is the one in the pic waving. I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised. You can decide for yourself. 

The few pics I have taken are below. I will add a couple of more when I am done.

http://www.edsplace.com/p412499075

Maybe there is one thing to shout about, and when I say shout, I don't mean "YES!", but rather, "NO!". It looks like Apple has decided to remove the 3.5mm headphone jack. If you want to listen to...   ...well...   ...whatever, you will have jack into the Lightning port. Yes!!! Another adapter to purchase. Apple will provide EarPods with a Lightning connector.

There are other improvements that look like may be here late 2017 or 2018. These changes would mark true update stature in my book.

The Home button may go away. Just touching the display would unlock your phone. They are calling it TTDI (touch and display driver integration) 

Long-range wireless charging, which does not require devices to be as close to a charging source or mat.

5.8-inch display that will wrap to the sides of the phone for better alerting and possibly adding gestures.

It looks like Apple is moving away from the all aluminum body and going back to the glass back like in the iP 4 and 4S. This would help with biometric recognition as well.

It is also rumored that Apple may be looking at a curved phone in the next year or so and in 2017 may skip the "S" upgrade and jumping right to the iPhone 8.

We will see.

These are growing in the cracks of the driveway at my sons house. What to do...

Finishing the last bedroom in the basement. I should have been taking pics throughout the process. We got the carpet in and I was wanting to cut trim and finish it up over the weekend but I need to be outside to do the cutting. 

The dog is pucking at both ends. Poor puppy. He is a sweet boy.

Tried to look at a couple of houses yesterday in the rain, but all-in-all didn't get much accomplished. 

I know I can do better. 

Ingredients:

• 2 carrots, chopped medium
• 2 celery stalks, chopped medium
• 1 medium onion, chopped medium
• 7 garlic cloves, smashed
• 3.5 lb of beef bones (from US Wellness Meats; or your local farmer)
• 2 bay leaves
• Sea salt
• 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
• Water

Here’s how to make it:

1. Dump the chopped vegetables in the bottom of a big pot
2. Drop in the beef bones
3. Tuck in the bay leaves, sprinkle on salt, drizzle the vinegar on the bones
4. Add enough water to cover everything and cook on a low simmer for 12-24 hours
5. When it’s ready, pour the broth through a strainer and discard the solids
6. Let the broth cool in the fridge and all the fat will settle to the top in a thin, wax-like layer. Scrape that layer off and the broth underneath looks like beef Jell-O

When you’re ready for a steaming cup of the stuff, just scoop the meaty Jell-O into a small saucepan and bring to a boil.

Voila!

(Note: The broth will keep in the fridge for a few days and in the freezer for several months.)

I Want This Camera!!

UPDATE: When I went back to FireHouse Subs I got to try this out. It is HOT, but still good. I've got to get a bottle of this. 

https://vimeo.com/160540590

It was awesome. 

If people only posted what they were doing along with pic rather than reposting others junk and adds. It's not worth exposing yourself to things you don’t want to see. It's really time to focus on what's going on around you. I don’t watch the news or see commercials anymore. Any TV I do watch is on Hulu or Netflix. It's too distracting. My attention is needed elsewhere.

Right now, the question isn’t if, but when I decide to close my Facebook account. I will post a message to everyone letting them know and I will be pointing them to EdsPlace for updates on what I am doing, as well as allowing them to post here as well.

More later…