So Many Projects, So Little Time…
It seems like I have had a never ending project "TODO" for more than a year now. Of course moving makes it all MUCH worse, since that's HUGE in terms something that just sucks time away.
This weekend though, I think I can FINALLY say, that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel though. Of course, I would estimate, that I won't "finish" (who ever finishes?) the current list until around December or so.
Well the biggest project this weekend (which many of the others were centered around) was that my new tv is finally mounted over the fireplace. (Thanks to Bonnie, Mike, and Sam for helping out!)
(Follow the link for a more detailed pic on Flickr)
But there were several other sub-projects which happened this weekend as well.
So this project took much longer than it actually should. Mostly because I first tried it in completely the WRONG way, which was to try and glue it. This was a bad idea. You see, this started as a 4 shelf entertainment center. (The two pictures above are 4 separate shelves which all used to be one unit.) But honestly it was just not fitting right in the living room. So I wanted to remove two of the shelves, and use only two for the receiver and xbox (see above). Well the first problem was that when investigating this, the only thing holding it together was 4 steel rods which went through the columns from the top to the bottom. The bigger problem though was that this rod was only threaded at the ends. This is a problem because it means I could not saw it in half (I don't have a tap and die set, and it was 50$ at home depot, which was too much just for this). However, what I DID find at home depot was that I could get threaded rods and just trim them to the correct length. This is what I did, which produced what you see on the right. At first, I had no plans for the extra shelves, but I realized it was pointless to let them sit around when I had the materials to basically double the first one. Well like I mentioned, the reason this took even longer was that I first attempted to just glue the columns together. (BAD IDEA…I really never learn) After I learned that this didn't work, I went back to Home Depot (3 trips this weekend alone) and picked up 4 drawer knobs (silver disks in left pic above) which honestly managed to be almost the same exact shape (different color, but it looks fine) as the metal caps which were on the actual unit. Then I went and found rods which matched the same threading as the knobs as well as some bolts and washers. This system worked MUCH better, its VERY stable, and was rather easy to put together. I should have done that from the beginning and the whole project would have not taken the hours and hours that it did.
So I have this switch that goes to a series of lights outside. There are two on either side of the garage and one over the porch. Whenever I come home, its always annoying that there is zero light on the porch, and I hate leaving them on all the time (my neighbors actually do) since its such a waste. So I decided I would get an X10 switch for them and get a motion detector for the porch (actually I already had the motion detector) which would turn on the lights when someone walks up. (It turns them off again as well after a configurable amount of time.) So, what you see above is the new X10 switch that I put in. It's a relay type switch since I want to use compact florescent bulbs outside. I also installed a dimmer x10 switch in place of the light switch in my bedroom as well (though in THAT case, I had to remove the CF bulb which I had installed and go back to incandescent).
So, even though in the left picture above you can see the X10 receiver from the previous project, the real project here (which wasn't planned unfortunately) were the outlets. So it all started today when I plugged in my Vacuum earlier today to vacuum the living room. I plugged it in and all at the same time, the vacuum started momentarily, there was a loud POP, my new TV shut off and the UPS it is connected to started Beeping and showing 0 volts. I was really scared. Not because the vacuum cleaner was dead. Sure, I'll miss its "value" (I paid 15$ for it and it was awesome for that price), but compared with everything else that happened at the same time, it was nothing. I was sure that I had tripped a breaker, since there was no power to the plug shown on the right above (previously this was not GFCI though). I went out to the garage, and to my horror, there were no breakers tripped. I went inside and again confirmed that there was no power to the outlet. I went back to the one on the left, and there WAS power to it. This concerned me because I thought that breakers were supposed to trip WELL before any component in the wiring system ever failed. Clearly something did though. I was hoping that was ALL that was the problem though. So I stopped what I was working on, went and grabbed a few extra outlets (I have a few boxes of these still actually), one of them GFCI, and then also went through finding the right breaker for these outlets (same breaker of course). So after pulling off the plates and outlets, sure enough, the one on the left feeds the one on the right. I checked for any shorts in the wiring with a multimeter. I could not find any. Additionally I checked to ensure connectivity on both hot and neutral as well all the way through (I was somewhat worried about the integrity of the wire since the other outlet did not have power). Everything I was testing (after pulling off the outlets) was telling me that the integrity of the wires was just fine, so I put on the new outlets, put everything back together, and flipped on the breaker again. PHEW, everything works. I MUST have broken / fried something in the original "left" outlet where the feed to the "right" outlet connected. I made sure that the connections are all VERY solid now, so I am not worried about my replacements. This did manage to take 20 min out of my schedule this morning though. The downside of all this now, though is I have no vacuum cleaner anymore. :(
Here are a few more projects. On the left is what used to be the AV rack in my living room (I used to have a LOT of components in the living room (tivo, vcr, xbox, audiotron, dvd player, receiver, etc)). However, now that I use the 360 for most everything, I hardly need all that (hence the project mentioned further above). Thus, I had to figure out what to do with the previous AV rack. Well, turns out that it makes a great wine case. :) I have a few different types of wine racks inside, but all and all, it looks pretty good (better than the pic) with the smoked glass. On the right, is a small end table I put together to put next to the couch.
And, because, its now somewhat more decent, I took a picture of my new living room. Its still not perfect, but looks MUCH better than it did. Will post more pictures of the place as I continue to clean up and unpack.
J.P.
