Mr. Fixit

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Busy Weekend

I’ve been pretty busy lately. Thus the blog-that-writes-itself post earlier. I’ve got a minute now though, so here’s a recap of the past few days.

Friday night I spend some time with Kelly putting together a website for Hallie’s preschool. We’ve made a lot of progress but there is some cleaning up to do. Actually, Kelly has done far more work on this but needed my help with some of the tech stuff. She’s amazing, I tell ya.

Saturday I was determined to catch up on some long-suffering projects. I spent the previous weekend helping my parents with their new HDTV. This weekend was my turn to do some fancy hookups.

My parents gave me their unused, supersized VHF/UHF TV antenna, an antenna so big it barely fit into my car. I managed to set it up in an unused area of the attic, though, and the resulting picture made it worth all the trouble. My temporary solution was to snake the coax down through the attic stairway, but that obviously needed a better solution.

Since we moved into this house, I’ve wanted an easy way to get cables from upstairs to downstairs. I bought some swimming pool vacuum hose to serve this purpose but never got around to installing it. This weekend was the time to do that. I searched the attic for an easy path to the garage but wound up empty-handed. It would take more work to make this happen: I would have to take the house apart.

I took off the soffit vents from the side of the house to get access to the space above my garage wall. I then threaded the hose from the attic down the roofline to the top of my garage wall. I then went inside the garage and cut a 1.5″ hole up through the wall until I had a path for the hose. Unfortunately for me, the hole saw on the drill was a bit tight for the hose, so I had to spend another 20 minutes carving the hole out with the undersized saw.

Eventually the hose went through. I nailed the soffit vents back on the house, nailed the hose to the attic wall so it wouldn’t come loose, and went down to the garage for the coax I wanted to pull through the hose.

Oops. No coax long enough! Back to the parents house for some coax, which they graciously gave me in exchange for fixing their TV. I tweaked their TV a little more before returning with the coax.

The hose conduit worked like a champ. The coax was installed in about 10 minutes, whereas it would’ve taken over an hour to thread it through separately. Putting in that conduit took the better part of the weekend, but now I can wire up just about anything in my attic without so much as getting my hands dirty. The conduit also allows us to drywall the garage some day without sacrificing our ability to run wires. Woot!

That’s not the only thing we did that weekend. I put up three picture shelves in our den, measuring them precisely so they line up with the wall studs. This was one of those rare project where the holes I drilled were all right on target. I was skeptical of how the shelves would look, but Kelly has sold me on them. They really add a lot to the room.

Oh, and as someone already mentioned, the Wolfpack won and the Heels lost their games on Saturday. Gotta love that. I took time out from the projects to watch the end of the State game.

We had some good family time during all of that, too. I will be on the road frequently in the next few weeks, so I aim to enjoy all the family time I can get.

Martha Stewart Would Be Horrified, But In A Good Way

I hoped to post some pictures of the floating ghost effect I created for Halloween. Unfortunately, I can’t find the pictures I took showing how it was set up. Luckily, Kelly did take a few shots of the ghost in action, as you can see by this picture and these.

The ghost was only visible from a spot right in front of the door. Often the kids missed it in their rush to collect their sugary loot. Only after I augmented it with a ghostly moan did it really start to attract attention.

The parts:

  • One flourescent light fixture. Lowe’s, $8 ea
  • Two blacklight bulbs. Lowe’s, $12 ea
  • 24×36″ Poster frame. A.C. Moore, $6.60 (on sale).
  • One bag of poly fill (for ghost). A.C. Moore, $2
  • Roll of 24 gauge hanging wire. A.C. Moore, $1.50
  • Spot of spray paint. Free.
  • Comforter cover. Free.
  • Speakers, etc. Free.

Total cost: $42. Total time: about an hour.

I spread the comforter cover out behind our porch swing, pinning it up on the back of the swing to provide a shield from the ghost. The ghost was placed on top of the comforter facing up. The black light was hung from the back of the swing, illuminating the floor below it.

To reflect the image of the ghost below, I drilled holes in the plastic sheet from the poster frame and hung it at a 45 degree angle from the bolts holding the swing. Originally I was afraid the plastic wouldn’t be reflective enough, but the sheet from the poster frame turned out to be perfect. It was light and thin, which made it bow a bit once I hung it. This uneven surface gave the impression of movement as one looked at one the way to the door.

The effect is that of a translucent ghost, hanging in air. The neighborhood kids were impressed. At least, the ones who looked up were impressed!

Hallie was so excited to help me put it together. She kept asking “Daddy, is it lit up yet?” Once it was lit up, she was still a little spooked by it, even though she helped me assemble it. I was amused.

Still, it wasn’t all perfect. I had hoped it would be visible from the street, but this turned out not to be the case. The neighbor’s porch light shone through it at a certain angle, washing it out. Pointing it towards the street would’ve also helped. I would have also liked the reflecting surface to be bigger. Maybe next year.

All in all, it was a great project. Now, what to do for an encore!