State of the Garden Address

What? Why, thanks for asking, yes the garden did survive last week's hailstorms.  Came through them quite well actually, though we did end up putting tarps over everything to prevent freezing at night.  And, as a bonus, the storms filled the rain barrels - we were almost to full capacity.

Yesterday we transplanted the seedlings that I so lovingly started (using LED lights hanging on a drying rack over seeds planted in egg cartons).  Less than half of the spinach came up, and only one basil, but both patty pan squashes looked pretty good.  None of the watermelons started, and the one tomato that came out didn't end up transplanted, because we got a free huge tomato of the same variety two weeks ago at Magic Garden.

The garden now contains:

1) Cassie, the pomegranate bush, who has produced exactly one fruit in the two years we've had her. There are watermelon seeds planted in her basin, as well as a large unidentified wild flower.

2) Jill, the baby pomegranate, now in a half-barrel. She has produced more fruit than Cassie.

3) Peachy, the peach tree (obviously), who is covered in new baby peaches.  We hope to get another excellent harvest from her.  She has a few spinach, a tiny basil, and a couple of strawberry plants in her basin.

4) Quinto, the apple tree (five varieties grafted onto one base). The dwarf anna is the one that is covered in future apples right now.  This will be the first year that this one has borne fruit.  There is a pea planted at its base, which will hopefully climb up the bomb shelter vent behind it.  There were garlic chives, but Quinto killed them off in one day.  This is also the site of last years Compost Butternut Squash Revolution, which attempted (and mostly succeeded) taking over the yard.

5) Wendy, the largest pomegranate, which provides us with almost more than we can eat.  There is some garlic planted in her basin.

6) The Moving Herb Garden.  These pots change location and will probably spend most of the summer on the porch.  We have cilantro, dill, oregano, peppermint, and rosemary.

7) Potato Bags.  Nothing to report here.

8) Paulo's Circle.  There used to be a lemon tree, but he died tragically in what can only be described as a negligent arboricide, when Ryan failed to properly secure plastic sheeting during last year's sudden deep freeze.  Now, in beloved Paulo's memory, we have multiple varieties of summer squash and one pea.

R.I.P. Paulo.  You were loved.

9) East Plot: Three varieties of tomato (sungold, black cherry, and early girl), one basil, and two rows of carrots.  This is our first attempt at carrots, so we don't know what to expect.

10) Central Plot: Ancho peppers, bell peppers, Ring of Fire peppers, one basil, and three tomatillos. Ignore the litter - that's the remains of the egg cartons from the seeds that didn't start.  Ryan decided to use it as mulch.

11) West Plot: Roma tomatoes, spinach, and strawberries.

The Wonders of Carbon Fiber

Far a long time, I have harbored the burning desire to build my own mountain biking helmet light.  Commercial lights are very expensive, and are always behind the curve when it comes to the best,  brightest, and most efficient LEDs and drivers.  They often have sub-optimal thermal management, which further reduces the efficiency of the LEDs, and their beam patterns don't always seem the most sensible (which may admittedly be a function of my eyes and riding style... can't please everyone).

Well, I am now embarking on my adventure!

The core of any light is, obviously, the light source.  I picked up some Cree XM-L LEDs that are rated at about 850 lumens at 2800 mA, which is very bright.  Advertised 1000 lm at 3A, but the response curve from the manufacturer doesn't match that claim.  Whatever, they're freakin' bright.  They're on copper stars, which is great because I can solder them to a copper heatsink to maximize heat dissipation while in operation.  Getting those LEDs was quite the ordeal, due entirely to my inattention the the address that I had logged with PayPal... my old Houston one.  So, the order shipped to Houston.  I mailed postage to the address in the hopes that the kind person living there would ship it to me rather than toss it.  It seems that it could not be delivered, so was returned to the shipper and I got another chance to get my address right.  Which I did, and finally (2 months?) got my LEDs.  They went from Hong Kong to Houston to Hong Kong to Tucson.  Fun times.

I decided that I wanted to make the body structure as light and strong as possible, mainly to offset the added weight of the copper heatsink.  Copper is awesome at distributing heat, but is a lot denser than aluminum... it's a trade-off.  I decided on ensuring proper heat dissipation over weight savings.  So, that means that I need something really lightweight and strong for the body.

Enter:  Carbon Fiber!  Sweet!  It's strong, lightweight, and stiff.  The downside is that it is generally sold in flat sheets, which are (due to the stiffness) not real bendable.  That means that I have to learn how to form carbon fiber fabric into carbon fiber composite by the judicious use of scissors, a form,  and epoxy.

After a lot of research online, and on particular site where the guy made his road bike frame himself, I settled on the following materials:  5.5oz 3x4 harness weave satin carbon fiber fabric (it's a neat pattern of cross-bundles of carbon fiber (called tows) that's looser and more conformable to complex shapes than a standard 2x2 twill), West Systems 105 resin and 207 hardener (makes a clear rather than a slightly translucent epoxy), and a kick-ass high tech toughening agent.

My first layup was 3 layers wrapped around a wooden form.  I then wrapped that in sticky-side out electrical tape, as it was mentioned that the epoxy doesn't stick to the vinyl.  This served to compress the carbon fibers together and squeeze out excess resin.  The optimal ratio is about 50:50 by weight, which is about what you get if you squeeze out all the resin except what fits between the fibers in the fabric.  I let it set up for ten hours, and discovered that my clever plan to simply slide the composite off the mold was thwarted by mold irregularities and the extreme stiffness of the piece.  I ended up cutting the mold/composite into sections and knocking the shorter bits of wood out of the composite hoops.

At the top right you can see two hoops epoxied together.  The top has been coated with more epoxy for a glossy coat, and the insides are the texture of saran wrap.  The outer fabric weave looks wavy because... it is.  Thus, a lesson in how important it is to be careful of the weave to avoid distortion.

Bottom right shows the cross-section, and the consequence of more pressure at the curve than the flat, which is exactly what you'd expect if you wrapped elastic tape around a solid wood block.  It is not, however, what I wanted.

So, a little more research lead me to the concept of vacuum-bagging, wherein a composite piece is sealed into an elastic bag and then subjected to vacuum throughout the cure process.  This has the effect of applying even pressure on all surfaces of the piece and avoiding the elastic tape effect.

Vacuum-bagging will be the subject of my next post.

Lots of sewing to do

I have some a giant stack of sewing to do. In no particular order, this consists of:

1. Lining the baby blanket for J&H (ok, this is probably the most important)
2. A pillowcase for my toddler, so she stops stealing other people's pillows in the middle of the night
3. Finishing the hem on the last two bedroom curtains
4. Fixing the unevenness of the living room curtains by adding an edging
5. Making beanbags
6. Repairing some of Ryan's pants
7. Finally making babylegs out of the pair of socks that has been sitting on the shelf next to the sewing machine for months

My goal (barring any damage to the sewing machine that would prevent this) is to get all of it done in the next two weeks.  Since I don't have a great big knitting project going on anymore (the baby blanket that was taking up all of my evenings is now complete, except for the edging and the lining mentioned above), I should have some evenings free to work on them. 

Past Projects: Book Slings

Every once in awhile, we plan to post projects that we've already done.  They'll be titled and tagged 'Past Projects.' Here's the first: 

I made these book slings for the playroom, following this tutorial.

They were easy, even for someone like me who can barely sew a straight line.  I love them, but someone likes to take all the books out and pile them on the floor.  Of course, that same someone does that in the living room too (then she stands on the pile), so I don't think it has anything to do with the slings.

Prettying up the bomb shelter

Our backyard has a unique feature - a bomb shelter.  Yes, a real bomb shelter.  Interesting fact: it is several years older than our house, and this is the only house that has ever been on this lot.

When we purchased the house, this is what the bomb shelter lid looked like:

The lid is made of sheet metal that has been nailed to the wooden lid underneath.  In the years since it was built it has done a great job, but is starting to rust in places... generally where the nails poke through.  There is now a small apple tree blocking the view of the ventilator shaft from the patio.  Last summer, this whole area was covered in squash vines that came up from the apple tree's compost, so it made getting to the lid at all a little difficult. This year, we decided to make a more permanent fix to the rust issue before any squash came up.

First, Ryan had to remove the old nails and replace them with screws.  Ordinarily, this wouldn't be necessary, but several of them jutted up.  Rowan actually got stuck sitting on it once, because her pants were caught.  Ryan wondered why she was sitting so quietly, until he noticed she kept trying to get up and couldn't.  So, in the interests of not imprisoning our baby (at least, not on top of the bomb shelter), the nails had to go.

Next, he sprayed the lid with a coating to stop the spread of rust.  He's asleep right now, so I don't know what it was called, but he'll edit this post later).  (Ryan: It's called "Rust Reformer," and actually converts the rust into something not rust plus a black paintable surface... like rust primer.)  When he was done, it looked like this:

Also, notice how much nicer the ground around it looks with gravel.

Silicone time.  In order to protect the wood (you can't see it, but the metal covers a very very heavy wooden lid), he siliconed the holes around the screws and remaining nails (I used a paintable silicone).

He primered it next.  (Ryan: I used Elastek's High Tech Base Coat for applying elastomeric roof coatings... I figured, if it was good for roofs, it'd be great for the bomb-shelter lid.)  I forgot to take a picture, so imagine the whole lid white.

And then we broke out the spray paint, and, two cans later, it was done:

Now we have the prettiest bomb shelter in the neighborhood.

The gravel is much pinker than it looks in this picture, so it actually looks really nice.  It just isn't obvious in the picture because the gravel is really dusty and there wasn't great light.

Organization: The Playroom Edition

I should have taken before and after pictures of Rowan's playroom.  I suppose I could still take the 'after' shots, but it would lack impact if you don't know what a messy disaster the room was first.

Yes, tonight I organized Rowan's room, and we cleaned up her area in the living room.  It's part of my overall plan of finding a place for everything and getting the house in semi-decent shape.

To get started, I went to Target and purchased four cloth bins.  I could have made some, and in fact had looked up tutorials to do so, but I decided this was one of those cases where my time could be better served elsewhere.  Those bins are now on the old book shelf that previously stood empty against her wall (because she always took everything off of it and we got too lazy to put it back).  One holds all her little plastic animals, one holds her wooden blocks, one holds all her balls, and the other just has a couple of wooden toys.  She has three toyboxes in addition to these bins.  One now holds all her blankets (because I don't know where else to put them and the linen closet is full), the big bench box is stuffed animals, and the small bench box is everything else.  I'm hoping that now that everything has a specific place, it will be returned there.

It looks really cluttered, but trust me, it is so much better.

I also reorganized her dresser drawers.  I read recently that you should roll clothes and store them in rows rather than in stacks.  As it turns out, that's pretty good advice.  Everything looks much neater, we don't have to dig through to find anything, and maybe now Ryan will finally start putting clothes in the appropriate drawers (seriously, how hard is it? There are only three drawers - short sleeve shirts, long sleeve shirts, pants & skirts. You'd think he could handle that.)  Also, this will help Rowan.  She's at the stage where she likes to help pick out her clothes, but her method was just reaching into the drawer and pulling out whatever was on top. Now that everything is tucked in rows, she'll have to actually look at it and make a little bit of effort.  I have a feeling she'll be wearing her monkey shirt a lot more often.

Play kitchen: Costs

Since Ryan was kind enough to write up an explanation of how we made the play kitchen, I thought I would add a post about the cost.  I'm going to leave labor costs out of it though, because I assume my time is billable at about $250/hour (or at least, it should be), and nobody wants a $5000 play kitchen made out of recycled parts. 

Here's the breakdown:

Used Parts (note additional benefit of shopping at charity thrift shops - no sales tax):

• Cabinet, with one door.  Habistore, $20.00
• Faucet. Habistore, $9.00
• Handles for cabinet and oven. Habistore, $1.50
• Hinges. Habistore, $0.75
• Coasters for oven burners. Casa de los Ninos Thrift Store, $1.25
• Bowl for sink. Casa de los Ninos, $1.50

 Total: $34.00

 New parts:

•  Locking casters (2).  Home Depot, $3.96/each + tax  = $8.64
• Casters (2). Home Depot, $3.47/each + tax = $7.57
• Magnetic closures (2), Ace Hardware, $3.99/each + tax = $6.54 
• Acrylic for oven door. Lowe's, $11.97 + tax = $13.06
• Assorted screws. Ace Hardware, $1.36 + tax = $1.48
• Spray paint for counter top. Ace Hardware, $7.99 + tax =  $8.72
• Screw eye (to attach bungee to oven door). Ace Hardware, $2.49 + tax = $2.72

 Total: $48.73

Already had (scraps from other projects):

• Wood for counter, backsplash, divider and base (from remodeling)
• Cabinet door (removed from kitchen when we installed the microwave)
• Primer paint
• Wood putty
• Grey kitchen paint
• Old baking rack for oven
• Bungee cord for oven door
• Polyurethane

 Overall Cost: $82.73

Obviously, this would have cost more if we hadn't already had a lot of stuff on hand.  However, I think if we hadn't had certain scraps available, we would have figured something else out, and still been able to keep the costs for this project relatively low.  Ryan is actually quite an expert on making things suit his needs, and I am always able to modify my designs (that's right, I'm claiming design credit on this one).

Organization

One of my big goals right now is organization.  Our house doesn't have a lot of storage space (that big shed in the backyard is meant to be a workshop, not a repository for all our stuff), and the space we do have is being used inefficiently. Last weekend I went through the bedroom closet and pulled out five bags worth of clothing to get rid of, plus we cleared out some random crap from other areas of the house.  It felt good to clean all that stuff out, but just getting rid of stuff isn't enough though - we also need to organize the things we plan to keep.

I've come up with two plans towards improving our organization:

1) The Put-it-away-or-get-rid-of-it-box.
     This is simple: we have a box, and everyday we have to pull a couple of things out of it and either find a place for them, or add them to the donation pile (or trash, depending on the condition of the item).  The way I see it, if we pull something out of the box and can't figure out a designated place for it, then we just don't need it.  I don't want to specify how many items we have to take out of the box everyday, because I know Ryan too well.  If I say "put away 5 things," he'll pull out 5 nails and put them in his toolbox and consider his task complete.  I know this from experience.
    We already have a box started - I pulled it out of the shed to see what it was, and discovered that it was a box of things we haven't touched since we moved in.  Better organizers than me would have just chucked the whole box; I can't do that.  I have to look at it all first, just in case.
   Tonight, to get moving on this, I'm adding everything currently on the breakfast bar to that box.  Also, Ryan doesn't know it yet, but tomorrow when he's at work, 95% of the stuff on top of his dresser will end up in the box as well.

2) The Five-Minute-Project-List
    This list does not exist in physical form yet, but it might soon.  Even without an actual list, we'll still be able to get stuff done.
     The theory is that there are always little mini-projects that take less than five minutes to do, but they just don't get done, possibly because they are too small to worry about.  So the goal is to finally tackle these and do a mini-project everyday, and eventually, the whole house will be neat and organized.
    Today, for example, I am in the process of fixing the mirror that hangs next to the front door.  It's been there for about two years, and for that entire time it has angled toward the floor, because of the width of the hook and the fact that there are no bumpers on the bottom to compensate for the hanger.  I just cut up an old winecork and painted it black, and when the paint dries, I will glue the pieces to the back of the mirror.  This has taken me less than five minutes, and it will make the house look marginally better.
    I may even do two five-minute-projects tonight.  I might go to the Arizona room and scrub the two dirty baby handprints off the tile.  They've been there for months, and have survived other floor washings.  Really. We do mop.
     Ryan doesn't know it, but after he finally gets the baby to sleep (she's been fighting him for an hour and a half) he has a five-minute-project of his own.  I need him to finally install the baby safety lock on the bathroom drawer - it's the only way to prevent a poltergeist who gets everything out and drops it on the floor every morning while I'm brushing my teeth.
 
In non-organization news, the vanilla sugar was a success.  I used some to make sugar cookies, and I guess they were good because the whole batch lasted less than 48 hours.

UPDATE: Actual conversation with Ryan regarding my mirror-fixing project:

Me: Where's your gorilla glue?
Ryan: Here. Do you want me to glue the mirror for you?
Me: No, I can do it.
Ryan: You can't just use it like regular glue. You have to read the instructions.
Me: Nevermind. You do it. It sounds too complicated.
Ryan: That's what I expected.

So I guess that doesn't count as my project and I do have to go scrub the handprints off the floor.

Rowan's Play Kitchen

It has taken many months and a little blood, but Rowan's play kitchen is finally finished.

It started off as a used recycled kitchen cabinet from The HabiStore (a really cool recycled/reused home-goods store that benefits Habitat for Humanity). The front frame and door (one was missing) was actually wood, so that made modifying that part easier. The rest of the body of the cabinet was particle board, so that made some of the modifications tricky and delicate.

We started off by sanding the whole thing down as best we could. The trusty Milwaukee random orbital sander was perfect for the job. Since the kitchen would need an oven and an under-sink cabinet as two separate spaces, a divider had to be installed. This was made of sanded and primed plywood from some scraps I had lying around.

As this was a hanging kitchen cabinet in its previous life, there were already some holes in various places for things like lighting etc. This was not a problem for me, because I was going to install another countertop on top of the cabinet anyway. Note the handy label to remind me of which side was up.

What was a problem was the case of the precisely misaligned holes that I drilled to mount the sink-oven divider. Sometimes even measuring twice doesn't help.

This is the view of the installed divider. One note on using screws in plywood: try to avoid putting the screws between the plys versus though the plys... even with nice pilot holes they have a highly predictable tendancy towards splitting and making a nasty mess that requires wood putty and hope to repair. So I hear.

Another complication of the play kitchen's hanging cabinet origin lay in the distance between the floor and the inside bottom of the cabinet... virtually zero. So, I built a 2x4 frame that fit inside the rim of the cabinet which raised the whole thing about 3 inches. Onto the 2x4s I attached casters, so we could roll the whole thing about.  That way Rowan can cook in any room of the house.

I attached the base by shooting screws through the floor on the inside of the cabinet.  An oversize pilot hole through the floor and a slight countersink allowed me to cinch the base up tight to the floor and to use wood putty (my new favorite wood-working tool) to cover up the screws on the inside.


Now, particle board has all the holding power of soggy toilet paper when you put a screw unto it lengthwise, as I would have to do to mount the countertop.  So, I built up a few hardpoints out of a few layers of spare plywood that I could screw the countertop onto.  The countertop was also made of sanded spare plywood I had hanging around from either the shed or the Arizona room remodel (both coming attractions to this blog).

Here I am drilling holes for the countertop.  I waited until after I had added the backsplash (more left-over wood) and sanded, primed, and painted the countertop before actually mounting it.  You can see the faucet (9$ at HabiStore... score!) and the sink-bowl (1.5$ at Casa del los Ninos, a great thrift shop) on the left.  The bowl originally had handles and a bottom flange that were spot welded on... I ground off the spot welds with the ever-useful flexible shaft tool and snapped them off.

Once all the requisite holes and hardpoints and whatnot were drilled and installed, the whole cabinet needed a serious priming.  Although the front piece and the door were real wood, the rest was particle board clad with plastic wood-esque veneer stuff.  So, it got roughed up quite a bit with the random orbital sander and then thoroughly primed with Zinnser Bulls Eye primer (also left over  from another project... it was getting rather thick so I thinned it with a little water).

OK, there's quite a bit of stuff that happened between the last photo and this one.  The backsplash was installed and the countertop mounted. As you can see, the cabinet has been painted grey on one side (matches the grey in our kitchen), and white for the stove.  I used a hinge from The HabiStore to attach the oven door.  The oven door was made out of the original cabinet door with the center panel cut out and replaced with a square of acrylic (purchased from the Home Depot... one of the few things not repurposed).  I found a really slick method of cutting the acrylic online: score the line you want to cut with a  utility knife and snap it like glass.  Made a really clean break, with none of the noise, mess, and melting that you'd get with a saber saw.  The rack inside was originally a damaged baking rack that I repaired.  

 All of the screws and unwanted dents, holes, and features were wood puttied over, sanded down and painted.  The countertop was sprayed with a gritty spraypaint for some texture, and then the whole thing was polyurethaned for durability.  The texture is still easily felt beneath the polyurethane.  To that point, eventually every surface of this play kitchen was polyurethaned.

This is a view from in front of the sink-side cupboard, looking up.  You can clearly see the nut and washer that hold the faucet down onto the countertop.



Here's an intermediate view.  The faucet, oven door, and the sink cupboard door have been installed.  The sink cupboard door is actually one of our old kitchen doors that we removed from a cupboard during the microwave installation.  It did have to be cut down and fitted to the opening, but it is a perfect match for the rest of our kitchen.  What has yet to come is the sink bowl, the burners, and the stove knobs.  The burners, that are epoxyed to the surface, were made from three wooden coasters and one larger stone coaster, all painted black with some left-over high-temp flat black paint.  The high temp protection was obviously not necessary, since Rowan won't actually be cooking here.  It just happened to be the type of paint that was left over from when I repaired a broken glass plate in our fireplace.  We searched forever for just the right coasters, and finally found some at Casa de los Ninos.

To your right you can see the humble beginnings of the knobs to Rowan's kitchen stove.  We searched for a very long time to find some sort of something that could be re-purposed for knobs, but really never found anything that really shouted "Use me!" so we went with DIY knobs from tree limbs.  I grabbed a couple of branches from the firewood pile and used my trusty (and slightly rusty) bowsaw.  I cut four discs of one size for the burner controls and one slightly larger for the oven control knob.  They had to be shaped and sanded individually, at great risk to my tender fingertip flesh.  Then I primered them and Sara painted them to look like real stove knobs.  To attach them, I drilled a hole that was slightly larger than the screws that I was using, so that they spun freely.  I then piloted a hole into the cupboard surface, slid two washers on so there was a bit of a standoff between the knob and the countertop, and tightened the screw until the knobs just spun freely.

 To the left we have the finished kitchen with the doors opened.  You can see the shelf on the sink side and the pan already cooking in the oven.  To the right is the kitchen with the doors closed.  Compare the sink cupboard door to the cupboard door behind it, which is our actual kitchen.  See, they match!  We used handles from The HabiStore... turns out someone had painted them the exact color that we were looking for, but we did not notice that they had been painted until after we got them home.  Bonus points to us!

UPDATE: We added a post giving the cost breakdown.