Author: gfox (old content)

Hardware Template

Last weekend I tried my hand at being a handyman. This weekend I took another stab at it.

Yesterday, in the span of an hour, I fixed and hung our bedroom mirror, hung a child gate, and fixed the front door.

To fix the mirror, I needed to reattach the anchor in the mirror, and restring the hanging line. To hang off the mirror on wall I tapped in two drywall anchors, and two screws. All that remained was hanging the mirror and levelling it. That was easy.

Next up was the child gate at the top of the stairs. Sox and I had ordered new mounting hardware and I followed their instructions using the provided template. It was pretty easy. Find a stud behind the wall, tape the stencil to the wall, drill with a 1/8″ bit to depth of two inches through the 4 x marks. With that done I screwed the brackets on and slide the gate in to those.

The gate didn’t fit. The template was the wrong size. One of the bate hinges fit into the bracket fine, but the other one was barely connected. Grrr. I drilled another hole in the wall and fixed the problem, but now we have a visible hole. Lame.

The other side of the gate required some bracket so the gate can secure itself into the wall. I had to trim the baseboard a little to make the bottom one fit. Phew. More work than I wanted, but at least that was done. I went to mount the second one, and realized it will not fit where we want it to at the bottom of the stairs due to some ornamental plaster work. I gave up on the second one and waited for Sox’s input.

Finally I decided to tackle the door again. I wanted to fix how it was hanging, and put in some weather stripping. I pulled out the old weather stripping, and put in some new stuff I had. No go. It was worse than when I started. I pulled off my new stuff, threw that away, and replaced the old stuff. I learned that the gap I was seeing was due to how the door was hanging.

So I tried to fix the door again. This time I managed to get the door back to the way it was before I started fiddling with it. It still catches a little, but not like it did the day before.

All in all I would count that as a success. Hanging the mirror was easy since I have done that many times before. The gate wasn’t too bad, just a little extra fiddling to make it all work nicely. The door was my big victory.

Illumination Shots

The above is my photoblog post for today. I was shooting again in my lightbox after making a couple cutouts to recess the lights a little. This works well, and allows me to get much closer to my subject. I think this also helps the illumination.

FYI, this is my todo list notebook. I am about halfway through the book.

Some other shots from this session:

All the shots.

Overhead Beans

Highlights from a photo shoot I did at home today in my light box. I made some mods to the box to make it easier to work with. Today all I did was cut down the depth, so it was more square. This works much better now. Next time I will make some cutouts to recess the lights a little. I think I will also cut a top flap so I can take overhead shots too.

All pics are here. These are some coffee beans that I am sure to enjoy another day.

Yesterday Confident

Yesterday, in a bout of do-it-yourselfness I decided to put on the weather stripping I bought a while ago for the front door. Easy job. Cut to size, screw in place. Hmm, no hacksaw. I borrowed one from Jim, then I was all set. Measure, cut. Crap, too long still. How did that happen? Measure again, and cut another quarter inch off.

I then screwed the strip down, and voila! Less of a hole around the front door. I just need to buy some stick on foam stripping and I will be done.

Feeling a little confident, I decided to see what I could do about how the front door hangs. Whenever we close the door, it hits the door jam on the top right corner. Should be easy. The hinge bracket screws were not visible, but I tightened some of the available loose screws at the top of the door. The theory was that the top of the door would get sucked left and out of the way.

I learned something: A handyman I am not.

Somehow I made it worse. Much worse, and I can’t get it back to the original bad state. There went the confidence. Some things should just be left alone. Doors are one of them.

Aquarium Level

Today Sprout and I headed out to PetSmart to get some more fish for the aquarium. I had pretty much decided before I got there to get some Tiger Barbs. They are cool looking fish, and I think will fit in well with our tank. Plus they are beginner level fish which is perfect for me.

I am thinking that next week I will get another Plecostumus, and a few colorful guppies. The guppies I was looking at are top level fish. The Swordtails and Barbs were middle level, and the Pleco a bottom level. That should round out the tank quite well I think.

I acclimatized the Barbs and put them in already. So far so good. It looks nice with some more fish in there.

Next weekend I will have to do my first tank cleaning and water change. That will be fun. I get to use my cool water syphon/gravel cleaner.

Destroyed Items

Despite having a walk, Yoshi destroyed some more household items. Like every other time before, we don’t really know why, and it could have been worse.

Every time Yoshi is left alone now, we turn up the couch cushions. This past week Yoshi got up onto the couch, and pawed at out white throw pillows, until he shredded them. There was/is little foam chips all over the couch still. Grrrr.

A few weeks ago we had scrambled eggs for breakfast. We went out, and left the pan on the stove. When we got home he had dragged it off the stove, denting the pan, and putting scrape marks into the teflon. He also left scrape marks on my favorite spatula.

I previously listed his list of destroyed items. Now I am keeping a special page just to list them.

Illegal Nimrod

I know some people think I provoke or attract bad drivers to me. I don’t think that is it, but maybe I am just less tolerant of stupid and bad driving than most? Maybe I pay more attention than most? I don’t know, but this week I saw some yet more Morons while driving.

The first set of incidents were the red light runners. Through multiple red lights along the way home I saw people obviously running them. The worst was when I was making a left turn. I was in the intersection as the light turned yellow. The oncoming car turned right, and as I was about to make my turn, the car behind him went through the intersection. I avoided them, and honked at them with displeasure. Pay attention people! It’s not that hard.

Downtown I saw someone make an illegal turn onto a one way street, and ended up going the wrong way on that street.

The last Moron of the week was just yesterday. There was a Sonoma driving, just ahead of me, in the lane to my right. As we were driving along, nimrod suddenly hits the brakes, flicks on his blinker, moves over to me lane (causing me to brake hard), then half pulls off the road, but half bocks my lane. This was right downtown in the middle of rush hour. He stopped. I honked at him, then had to pull around him.

Starter Fish

One of my Christmas gifts this past Christmas was an aquarium starter kit. I had been wanting one for a while, and knowing that Sprout likes to watch moving things, I thought it would be especially fun for him.

I set it up last Saturday, and had lots of fun doing that. Picking the rocks, and tank decor, filling it with water, setting up the filter and the heater were all the first step. After letting it acclimatize at least 24 hours, I headed out to PetSmart to get the rest of the pieces, and the fish.

After talking with one of the staffers at PetSmart, I picked out some orange SwordTails, and a Plecostomus. Once home I got them adjusted to the water, then set them free into the tank.

It is fun having an aquarium so far, but the Plecostumus died already. 🙁 I will replace him eventually, but not for another couple weeks. Not sure what kind of fish I will get next, but the 3 Swordtails definitely need some friends. I did see some black striped fish that were quite colourful. The PetSmart guy did mention to try and fill the different layers of the tank. Each fish has a preference for water depth it seems. The Swordtails are middle tank fish, yet they seem to be all over the place.

I did have a scare yesterday with the Swordtails though. When I got up I went down and was ready to feed the fish. They were all on the bottom not moving. I though they had all died. I turned on the light, and two of them started moving right away, but the male still didn’t move. Fearing he was dead I started to go get the net. That was when he started swimming like normal again. I guess they were still sleeping!

So far, Sprout likes watching the fish. Most nights when I turn on the light we sit in the chair and watch then swim for a few minutes. Bright colours are key though.