home improvement
Ikea Pilgrimage
2Ever since the dust settled on our move, Dede & I have been wanting a few pieces of furniture to round out our home office and replace some old mismatched stuff from our old house. So, we embarked on what’s quickly becoming one of our favorite road trips (from Odessa to Austin, via Brady) on Easter weekend to do some shopping at our favorite store—Ikea:
We shopped, quite literally, until some of us dropped:
We arrived at Ikea Round Rock near Austin with detailed shopping list in hand, having measured very carefully to ensure that everything we wanted would fit into the always deceptively-cavernous Element. As was the case with our Ikea Frisco trip nearly 5 years ago, we had the car loaded to the gills! (I even removed one of the back seats entirely to free up some extra cargo space!)
Of course, since nearly everything at Ikea is flat-packed, the adventure has only just begun once you get your haul home! With cordless drill, mallet, glue, and a deep breath, I started assembling stuff…
Here’s a glimpse of the first pieces put into service—our new Malm nightstands, which are hung on the wall with a pair of 18″ Hangman Picture Hanging System brackets, a.k.a. French Cleats (Thanks for that tip, Ryan!):
Watch for more photos of the Ikea furnishings as they come together and are in place!
Cloudy Forecast
1Cloud computing is a concept that—if you haven’t already been hearing about—you’re certain to be inundated with in the coming months. Even the U.S. government has dubbed 2011 the “Year of the Cloud.” But there’s another type of computing cloud that’s also been looming on the horizon, building momentum, and is becoming popular even among non-techies: word clouds.
A word cloud (sometimes also referred to as a “text cloud” or “tag cloud”) is a visualization of word frequency in a given text (news articles, blog posts, love letters, whatever) as a weighted list. These graphical representations of words are usually constructed out of individual words (although short phrases can also be incorporated) and often use varying colors, font size or letter weight to emphasize more frequently-used words. A cloud can be free-form, but often the text is used to “draw” relevant shapes, so it’s sort of a hybrid of an informational chart and an eye-catching graphic.
(You can see my first foray into word clouds in my Word Up! post from a couple of years back.)
A couple of months ago, I discovered Hardy Leung’s fantastic new word cloud tool called Tagxedo via one of my favorite blogs, Gerard Vlemming’s The Presurfer.
Tagxedo is a web-based app that turns words—famous speeches, news articles, love letters, your website, whatever—into a visually stunning tag cloud, words individually sized appropriately to highlight the frequencies of occurrence within the body of text. It offers nearly-infinite customization of over a dozen different variables allowing you to create some truly unique & artistic word clouds.
For the best results with this, you’ll most likely need to tinker with the contrast and brightness of your source image. To achieve the desired effect, I punched up the contrast, converted Liam’s photo to greyscale, and applied some filters to make the shading even more sharply-defined. Once in Tagxedo, I found that I got better results with a larger pool of text that I had manually removed some of the really common words from (like “the,” “and,” “or,” and such) but I believe there’s even now a way to configure the app settings to do this for you. So the progression went something like this:
So, armed with the cropped and heavily-tweaked version of a recent studio portrait of Liam, the text contents from our Russian Adoption Journal, and Tagxedo, I went to work. Once it had generated a cloud that I was especially pleased with, I saved it and printed the image on a very high-resolution laser printer loaded with high-grade linen paper. I used paper with a very pronounced texture to give the text a bit more character & interest. We mounted the print in a floating frame and hung it in our Den. The end result is, I think, really impressive!
Up close, the grouping of the word cloud text is interesting but it’s a bit tough to visualize the shading and form being suggested by the placement, size, and weight of the text:
But as you pull further back from reading distance, you begin to get the word cloud effect as a whole:
I urge you to visit Hardy’s Tagxedo blog for some usage tips, the Tagxedo Gallery for some stunning examples of what can be done, and finally, the 101 Ways to Use Tagxedo document for an in-depth tutorial.
I’ve discovered that, in the few weeks since I did our word cloud art project and started drafting this article (a few blog posts got pushed to the backburner in the hustle & bustle of the holidays), Hardy has made loads of additions and refinements to Tagxedo. But be forewarned: Although these updates do simplify and speed up the process, you can still easily fiddle away a few hours playing, tweaking & adjusting. But chances are, your cloudy results will blow you away!
Two For Tuesday: Painting Tools
1I’ve done a few Tuesday Tool Twofers posts in the past to highlight software or web-based apps that I’ve come to rely upon. But this time, I’m breaking out of the digital realm and showcase a couple of “real” tools that I’ve been using lots lately.
Not long after we moved into Kirkwood Manor, we asked our trusty handyman Truett to replace a few of the old, cruddy interior doors. (The guy is a wizard, literally replacing a door, hardware and all, in less than 30 minutes!) Well, he took it upon himself to do all of them. Right, he swapped out every interior door in the place except for the bi-fold closet doors in our master bath! Now, the new 6-panel doors do look fantastic, and we were very pleasantly surprised to discover that he’d done them all, but it did leave us with one small problem…
Painting all of those newly-hung doors!
Months later, I’m finally getting some traction on that project. Painting is a bit of a chore anyway and the raised panel styling of these doors made that even more tedious a prospect. Add into the mix an eager-to-help 4 yr old, and you can begin to see why I dragged my heels on getting this started for so long. But I splurged on a tool that’s making a huge difference: the Graco Spray Station 2900.
The Graco is working very well! I do have to thin out the latex paint to get to a viscosity suitable for spraying, and this took a little trial & error to get just right. Otherwise though, I’m very happy with this! It’s an easy-to-use paint spraying system that requires minimal adjustments. And cleanup—the thing I feared the most—is much easier than I had imagined.
So, I’ve got a makeshift assembly-line setup (complete with Dexter-inspired plastic sheeting) in the fenced off carport behind Liam’s room where I’m knocking out the doors 2 or 3 at a time:
In keeping with the painting theme, the 2nd tool that’s become an essential part of my toolkit is a very inexpensive gadget I read about in Family Handyman magazine (a very practical Christmas gift, courtesy of my bro Rich!) called a painter’s comb.
I found mine, a Wooster brand, at Home Depot for about $5 and it makes cleaning out paint brushes a breeze! The stainless steel pins work paint out of the interior of the brush and reshape the bristles after washing so they dry straight & flat. This tool will help you get lots more mileage out of your brushes!
Some painting tips we’ve picked up along the way:
- Splurge on better brushes. They yield much better results when painting, clean up easier, and hold their shape better if you clean them thoroughly (with a painter’s comb, of course!).
- If you’re going to leave your brush idle for even 5-10 minutes, toss it in a ziplock baggie and squeeze out as much air as you can. This will help prevent the paint from setting up within the bristles, which makes cleaning all the more difficult.
- Forget the evil blue masking tape and instead go green! Get some Frog Tape for masking off areas when painting around trim molding, cabinets, etc.
- You can keep your paint cans clean, dribble-free, and easy to reopen by snapping one of these inexpensive spout stretchers on the inner rim before pouring the paint into a tray or other container. These little gems are only about a buck at nearly any home improvement store and while they call them “disposable,” they’ll last forever with a little care.
Have any tools that you find indispensable? Let us know about ‘em! Any painting tips you’d care to share? Please leave a comment!
When Life Gives You Trees, Make Firewood
5It’s been suggested that chopping down a tree in barren West Texas could be considered a sin.
Well brother, if that’s true, we are sinners!
Unquestionably, the biggest, most aggravating, ongoing chore we’ve had since moving into our wonderful Kirkwood Manor has been keeping the swimming pool clean & free of debris. The big old oak tree in the back yard was perpetually dropping something—we were overwhelmed with bucketloads of leaves back in March & April, pesky little pods scattered by the handfuls daily during Spring & Summer, some kind of cottony fluff started falling during late Summer, and of course there were a couple of different types of seeds & acorns that dropped off the tree almost all the time (for which the neighborhood squirrels were very thankful). Especially bothersome, the high tannin (yup, the same acidic compound that gives your mouth that dry, puckery feeling when you drink wine) content causes oak debris to quickly leave nasty rust-colored stains in the pool and surrounding decking.
Even beyond the constantly-falling tree debris, the tree’s roots had already caused some minor damage to the concrete decking that the previous owners had patched up. There was every reason to believe that the this would only continue to worsen since the tree was just a couple of inches from the decking and less than 6′ from the pool itself. And I’m a little surprised that this hadn’t already caused any problems with the pool’s plumbing. Really, whoever had the pool installed should’ve removed the tree at that time.
But maybe worst of all, the big oak tree almost completely shaded the swimming pool except during early morning and evening hours, so even at the peak of Summer in triple-digit West Texas heat, the water was still a bit chilly.
Even as much as Dede & I both really hated the thought of getting rid of a big, thriving shade tree, we finally decided that, for the sake of enjoying the pool and prolonging the life of the pool plumbing & filter equipment—and preserving the pool cleaner’s (that would be me) sanity—the tree needed to go. So, last week, I found a really nice tree guy, Seth Moore, who had the gear to tackle the job, offered to do it for a reasonable price and came highly recommended. And down the mighty oak went…
The mighty oak tree in its previous glory
Tree removal progress - Day 1
About halfway through Day 1, I got a call from Seth reassuring me that, “The firemen said there’s no problem. These things just happen.” I instantly had visions of smoldering embers in a pile where our new house had previously been. Fortunately, the house was in no danger, but the tip of a large branch had snagged a nearby high-voltage power line and snapped it, causing all manner of chaos. Fire department crew and electric company linemen in large “bucket trucks” ascended on the scene to restore service to the neighborhood.
When we came home from work that day to survey the progress, we saw a whole row of birds perched on the nearby power line—yeah, the very same one—and I’m fairly sure they were cussing us fiercely over the loss of their beloved tree.
Tree removal progress - Day 2
Keen-eyed readers will also notice that the pool water went from sparkling, clear blue to a brackish, black swampy catastrophe by day 3. Yup, there’s nothing like a 40′ tree’s worth of sap, sawdust, and stray clippings to thoroughly wreck a swimming pool. So, the cleanup begins again. Seems even on its way out, that danged ol’ tree was determined to get one last cruel dig at me!
Day 3 - All gone!
What else is left in the wake of this carnage? Lots of firewood! My best guess is that we probably ended up with well beyond a full cord of wood but from according to what we’ve heard & read, it probably won’t be “seasoned” enough to use in the fireplace for nearly a year.
Wonder if this is going to negatively affect my Arbor Day Foundation membership…
Let There Be Light
2We’ve been in our “new” house just over 6 months now and we’re finally starting to wrap up a few little projects that we had put off to make way for the bigger ticket items. We love having a nice, big formal dining room and we use it almost exclusively for mealtimes. Liam uses the table for coloring with crayons or squishing Play-Doh. I suppose we don’t use it in a very formal fashion, but we do use the room a lot!
We’ve never been too fond of the rustic chandelier in there though. The size of the fixture was nicely proportioned for the room, but the style just wasn’t “us” at all.
We wanted a bit more modern-looking light in brushed nickel or steel finish, but those we found at the local stores were way too expensive, so we just waited. Finally, Rob found the Pierce Brushed Steel Nine-Light chandelier at Bellacor.com, a web-based lighting & decor showroom. This new fixture is the right scale for the room, the glass shades really brighten up the space, and was available at a price that couldn’t be beat:
Best of all, Rob was able to install it in just a few minutes (with some welcome help from Ryan, a.k.a. “Mr. I Can Touch The Ceiling Without a Ladder.”)
You can see a bit more of our dining room progress and photos of other areas of the house via the interactive floorplan that Rob has been working on here. You can click a room on the diagram to see what we’ve done in each area. Note that many of the rooms don’t yet have a project page, but those will be online very soon, so check back in the coming days & weeks for more updates.
Liam’s New Rain Gutter Bookshelves
12You’ve heard the phrase, “Get your mind out of the gutter,” but maybe in this case, the gutter is a good place to be…
Recently, we stumbled across a blog post about rain gutter bookshelves and decided that these would be good to put on the big blue wall in Liam’s room as a clever & inexpensive (less than $15!) way to the handle some of the oversized books that won’t fit on his regular bookshelf cubbies. So we decided to turn today into “Project Saturday” and get busy. Below is a before picture of the wall:
We spend a lot of time reading to him from the comfy recliner in his room so putting the bookshelves below the window seemed like the perfect spot. After some measuring, leveling & drilling, here’s what we ended up with:
Here’s another couple of pictures with some books on the shelves:
We were happy with the end result and Liam was excited to see some of his favorite books prominently displayed. Now he just has to decide which book to read first.
If you’re interested in putting up your own rain gutter bookshelves, read the tutorial at Raising Olive’s blog post. And be sure to check out the Rain Gutter Literacy Revolution for a more in-depth look at the effect of displaying childrens’ books facing forward.
What are some innovative ways you’ve handled book storage in your home?
Leaping For the Frog
4Y’know how suddenly, you (or more likely, your better half) decide that you desperately “need” to redo a wall with that trendy new “Frosted Mojito,” “Dried Plantain,” or “Hula Blue” color? Yeah, those diabolical little paint swatch strips practically leap off the endcap featured prominently at the home improvement store to snare you as you unwittingly try to make it to the checkout with wallet intact.
Ok sure, a couple of your walls could use a little freshening up, but it’s such a hassle because you don’t want new paint slathered all over your pristine door trim, crown molding, or cabinetry. So what do you do? Well, you could try to be like those smarmy designer guys on HGTV and just cut in free-hand to get that perfectly clean, straight edge. Um, yeah. No, you grit your teeth and reach for the dreaded blue tape.
Oh yeah, we’ve all been there—you lay on the blue painter’s tape with meticulous precision to mask off the baseboards or windowsills, only to find that when you peel off the blue tape, the new paint has seeped right unerneath it in spite of your good intentions and tedious prepwork. Worse yet, as you’re removing the blue evil, you find that it has latched onto the trim paint that it was supposed to be protecting and peels chunks of it right off! You can almost hear the wicked cackle of the evil scientist who brewed this stuff up.
Well, good news is, you may never have to buy another roll of that aggravating adhesive tape from Hell again. Forget the blue, think green!
FrogTape is a new painter’s masking tape with ‘PaintBlock Technology’ that activates When latex paint comes into contact, creating a micro barrier along the edges of the tape that helps prevent paint from bleeding underneath. No, really. In fact, the “sodium-based super-absorbent polymer” in FrogTape creating that barrier is the same chemical compound that causes diapers to gel when wet. No, really! And FrogTape won’t tear off the paint it’s protecting when you remove it. No, really!!
Just smooth the tape down as you apply it and you’ll end up with clean, crisp paint lines afterward. Yup, it’s that simple. Okay, it is a bit pricey at $5 for a roll (wider widths ratchet the price up another buck or two). I know, I know… You’re screaming “$5 for some masking tape?! What kinda crack ya smoking over there?” But this stuff is fantastic! Splurge on a roll and you’ll never go back to the blue junk again.
Note that FrogTape comes in a plastic canister and it’s not just for looks. You want to keep the tape stored there to help maintain its freshness and keep the roll from getting dinged along the edges. And when the roll is all gone, the empty container can be used for storing spare parts or pitched in your recycle can. (You do have a can in the garage for recyclable plastics, doncha?)
New Year, New House
7Rob hinted in a previous post that big changes were coming for 2010. Well, we finally got Liam potty trained so we decided that, with all the money saved on Pull-Ups, we could afford to buy a new house!
So, after more than 17 years, dozens of coats of paint, several major renovation projects, and countless memories, we’ve actually said “goodbye” to our old home, packed up our stuff, and moved on down the road. Scary? More than you could know! Kinda sad? Yeah, it’s tough to imagine that the old house isn’t our home any longer. Exciting? Unbelievably! Here’s the front of our new house, a.k.a. Kirkwood Manor:
We did some prep work before the move-in and after nearly a full day of grueling wallpaper removal, we got Liam’s new room ready for paint — and in his favorite color, of course!
With lots of help from Ryan, we finished painting Liam’s room, the office, the dining room ceiling and the living room before the big move.
Liam was very excited about helping to prepare for the move. He couldn’t wait to box up his toys and put them with our other boxes.
So on February 27th we officially moved into our new house. We couldn’t have done it without the tireless help of Ryan, Martin & Adrian. Thanks guys for giving up your Saturday to help us and thanks to Linda for loaning us your trailer!
Stay tuned for more pictures as we finish unboxing and settling in at the house!
Big Boy Bed
Liam made the transition from his baby bed to a "big boy" bed this past weekend. He was so excited when they delivered the bed on Saturday morning! We temporarily moved the baby bed to other side of his room (just in case) but he kept insisting that we get it out of there because he’s a big boy now.
He did really well with his nap Saturday afternoon and then slept all that night (with only one roll-off mishap). Luckily his giant, fluffy bear Hugo "caught" him when he rolled off the bed at 5:30 on Sunday morning. Rob bought a couple of swimming pool foam noodles that we put under the fitted sheet on each side of the bed to create bumpers for the sides and that seems to have solved the rolling off problem.
After naptime yesterday, we decided to take the old crib apart and Liam even helped remove screws with the cordless drill and bag up the little pieces.
The headboard is still in transit and we haven’t installed the bedskirt yet so I’ll update this post with another picture when all of that’s in place.
Update: The ready-to-assemble headboard finally arrived so here’s the completed bed with headboard, noodles and bedskirt all in place:
We’ve also finally updated the Liam’s bedroom page with some photos and details of his room. Be sure to take a peek!
Liam the Builder
Our little guy has gotten into watching Bob the Builder lately and we frequently hear him singing the theme song at night after he goes to bed.
Recently Rob did some digging in our backyard to get rid of a tree root that was threatening to cause trouble with the patio slab. While digging, he veered off an inch too far in one direction and severed two sprinkler pipes & a sprinkler control wire. Well, that set off a whole chain of events and needless to say, we ended up with a pretty big hole in the backyard by the time he dug out more to fix the damage. There for a moment, I was thinking that I might be getting the swimming pool that I’ve always dreamed of having… well, okay, it wasn’t really quite that big.
But you can just imagine how excited Liam was to see this giant hole in the yard with a mound of dirt sitting beside it… oh, it was calling out his name! For days he was drawn to it like a magnet whenever we’d go outside. The time finally came to fill in the hole so I bought him a new scooper shovel just for the big event. Of course, more of the loose dirt went in the air and on him than in the actual hole, but he was definitely a man enjoying his labor. Here’s a video of him singing the "Bob the Builder" theme while he works:
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