Tag: home improvement

Backsplash Success

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Remember that disaster contractor I had back when I moved in a year ago?

To recap, I had hired this grifter to remove a floor to ceiling skinny cabinet, install my dishwasher in it’s place, lay a butcher block counter across the cabinets instead of the plastic countertops, build a cabinet box on the other side of the dishwasher, and then install a sink, a hot water dispenser, and the faucets.

I found him on Angi’s List and it was so bad, I won a judgment against him for the work he screwed up. It’s just stunning. I basically had to redo all his work, or fix his work, because it was so terrible.

One of the things that killed me was that he installed the butcher block backsplashes crooked with up to 3/8ths between the back splash and the counters, and cut all the backsplashes short from the counters.

His work as a self professed “finish carpenter.”

Every edge was like this. It’s like he didn’t take his saw blade position in account when he cut the backsplashes.
The backsplash was raised up at least 3/8″ off the counters.

Turns out the backsplashes were super easy to pop off. They were held on with white silicone sealant which scrapped off super easy.

Blobs of silicone sealant I just scraped off the backsplashes after I popped them off.

The galling thing was I had an entire new board he could have used in case he’d made mistakes and had told him to use it freely, and I didn’t care because I could not return it.

Before I cut any new boards, I dry fitted the existing boards he had across the back, with the biggest gaps, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t just sit fine? Like no gaps. He’d just installed it crooked and running upwards at an angle.

I’d asked him about the gaps when I saw it the day of the install, and he’d told me “you have to expect irregularities in wood and it would not be perfect.” He’d also told me he was a finish carpenter, so that was a fascinating bit of bullshit. I told him I needed it fixed and he said it was impossible.

I am a total amateur, but if I can fit the backsplash pieces better than a self professed finish carpenter, I think I have some issues with his credentials.

I was able to recycle most of the pieces of backsplash, use some liquid nails and finish nails, and cut them to the right length. I even filled the nail holes, and sealed it with clear silicone sealer across all the edges, especially behind the sink where water is a concern.

I guess my amateur self can cut wood to length.

I paid him a lot, and he took advantage of my wife and I because I guess I was too forthcoming with having a disability that prevented me from doing the work. He never paid us the settlement he owed from arbitration with Angi’s List, either. They eventually yanked his business from the site.

No gaps.

The side piece was a bit wonky, so I scribed it, and made it fit. It was the first time I have ever done that. It took me 20 minutes to fix it so it had no gaps.

My wife came in and said it best. We were not looking for perfection at all, but we could have done it together with just me directing and her helping and get this result the first time.

I guess I was really lucky I could afford to take the hit financially, and had the ability to fix it myself when it was clear there was a problem. I don’t know how long I have where I can work like this with my degenerative joint issues, but at least for now I can. I am grateful for that.

I am also grateful that I can now look at my kitchen counters and know it’s done. They may not be finish carpenter level, but they are good enough. That’s all I ever wanted.

The last thing I need to do, is have the electrician we have coming in this year look at his electrical install of the dishwasher and make sure it’s not a problem. Then I will be able to put this all behind me. 

Cutting a hole in my wall for cables.

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Remember that shelf I put up for the router and modem?

On the exact opposite side of the wall is my wife’s workspace. Our living room is actually the front bedroom in the house as we live in 899 square feet, and it’s not a huge place. My wife has her desk literally in the bedroom closet, and it’s worked out great for soundproofing for her video creation.

My wife’s desk.

The top shelf is where she keeps her gaming PC, and KVM switch, and all the other wired things. We wanted to punch a hole between the modem and router shelf in that room into the top shelf of my wife’s workspace in our living room.

Needed Tools.

The plan is to use a long drill bit to drill a guide hole, then use that to use a large hole bit to drill into each side, then put in a 1.25″ PVC pipe, cut it off, and use paintable caulk to glue it in. it’s pretty easy, and you don’t need much to do it. PVC is easy to work with, and can be cut with a hand tool, and the drill bits were not expensive.

Drilling with an extra long drill bit to make a pilot hole between both sides of the wall.

I knew where the studs were already from hanging the shelves, so I just put the hole along side the stud.

Drill bit sticking out of the other side of the wall.

The long drill bit creates the hole so you can use it to line up the hole bit, and it will match on both sides.

Using a hole bit for my drill.

It’s important to drill the hole in from the outside, on both walls. That way if you have any blow out, it will be in the interior of the wall. It just gives a cleaner round hole to work with.

PVC Pipe to put in the hole.

I didn’t want to just have a hole in the sheetrock. I was worried cable and cord movement would degrade the sheetrock in the wall over time and I didn’t like how it looked to just see inside the wall. Not to mention I didn’t need anything important falling into the wall, where I’d have to rip it apart to get it out later.

The PVC pipe was a good solution for me, as it could be just caulked in, and would protect the sheet work, and keep me from dropping anything in the wall.

PVC in the hole of the wall.

This is where I realized, I had grabbed my larger sized hole saw, and had a full on panic that it would not work well. The last time I did this, I had the exact hole size as the PVC, and it was a bit more slick, but this worked too with enough paintable caulk.

Caulked in PVC pipe so you can run cables from the other room.

I just caulked it in with a bit of extra caulk. This is still wet in the above picture. It needs sanded down, but I am lazy, and I’ll sand it down when I go to repaint that room.

Finished hole into my wife’s work space.
Cables in another cord run from one closet to the other.

It actually worked out really well. My wife likes to wire her computer gear in instead of using the wifi, so she can now do that without running cables around the doors into the other room.

I know there are some grommets you can buy, but they didn’t extend through the wall and only were on the surface, like a desk grommet for wires. I also have exceptionally thin walls in this circa 1910, so an out of the box solution probably wouldn’t fit my house.

They do need a little sanding and painting, but that’s for another day. I am just happy my wife’s workspace set up and be organized the way she likes it.

Insulation and Roof Venting

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This last month we had to upgrades to the house related to insulation and heat issues.

Insulation

Over the last winter our house could not maintain heat. The floors were icy, and the heat cycled on every ten minutes. At one point during an ice storm it felt like the heat was running constantly for 24 hours straight. It was just that cold and the heater could not keep up.

Notice no insulation under my home.

We were recommended Boulton Insulation from our home inspectors, and we had them come. The inspector (Kevin) was honest, and really fair in his assessment. He was also super knowledgeable about heat pumps which is on our home list. He said it would be an easy job to put the insulation under the house.

If I was 20 years younger, or didn’t have my disability, I’d have done it myself, but I just can’t anymore.

Our quote came in at approximately $1200, after a power company rebate. That is less than the iPad I was eyeballing. Sold!

They scheduled us and had it done in a week. It was a one day job, and the next morning we noticed an immediate difference. The floors were warm. We could walk barefoot. As the mornings are getting colder, we have only turned the heat on for ten minutes in the morning and our tiny house just heats up and stays heated. If we cook or run the dishwasher we don’t even need it.

Best of all, my wife is comfortable. That is worth a lot to me.

Roof Venting

The second issue we had was the house roof was done by the previous owners, and while it’s a fairly good job, there is literally no venting in it. Like none! The blown in insulation in the attic is five star good according to Kevin from Boulton, but the lack of venting means it heats up in there, and just cooks us in the house.

On a sunny day you can literally feel the heat in the ceiling start drifting down and making the house hot. In the most recent sunny day, it was 74F, and the house was 85F just because of this with windows open. On a really hot day, our air conditioners struggled to fight it.

Kevin at Boulton gave me a recommendation for Patrick at Sound Roof Care, and I got a quote. Like Kevin, Patrick was fair, and gave me a reasonable bit of information that mirrored my own experience and research. Basically, I was risking mold and reducing the life of my shingles because I had no venting.

The quote to add venting along the entire roof was approximately $2700. That’s great, because I went up there to seal some nails and the roof cap on the recommendation of the home inspectors report, and I hate doing that. Even if my body was able, nope! There is no fucking way.

I helped my father roof two homes when I was a kid, just being up there and nailing down shingles. I don’t remember having an issue. Now, I apparently am not okay with doing this at all.

So as far as I am concerned $2700 is a fair price. We got scheduled and they were pretty quick at finishing the job.

Super heroes adding roof venting to my roof.

I probably won’t know for sure how this feels until it’s warm again next summer. I do know it’s a good preventative measure to make sure my roof lasts and I don’t end up with a moldy attic crawlspace.

I do know, it can’t hurt, and I can’t wait to see how a hot sunny day is in my home now.

A Transgender Aside

My wife and I are both trans, with my wife being visibly transgender. Part of hiring people in during the current political climate is fraught with concern that people might refuse to work with us, or treat us terrible for being transgender. Since my wife is the visible one, that will fall on her. She takes more than enough abuse when we go out, that bringing it home to her isn’t something I want to do.

I have to say these were concerns we had when we looked for professionals to work on our house. Yet, both Kevin from Boulton (and the office staff when we went in the pay it off) and Patrick from Sound, were kind and respectful.

If you have never had to consider this, it might seem strange to worry that someone you are paying may not want to work with you. It happens though. It might seem like a low bar to have to be happy someone treats you with respect, but we’ve had companies in recent years refuse our business. Not everyone takes a cake lawsuit to the Supreme Court. Some of us just go somewhere else and put our money in small businesses that are not staffed with bigots.

I can say these two companies were fantastic, and respectful, and safe for transgender clients as far as our experiences go. I am so happy we chose them, and will definitely be recommending them to everyone that asked now.

Current Garden Project List

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We might be winding down, but I still have a few things to do before next season. This is the list of things I am planning.

  1. Squirrel Interdiction. They are getting into the back wall of my garden. I think it’s under the wall I created, so I am going to buy some hardware cloth and bricks and try sealing that area up. Then I have to see if that works. It’s an arm race between me and the squirrels.
  2. New front bed. I need to buy some soil and fill it. I used the garbage dirt I had in a pile for the bottom of the raised bed, but it still needs real honest to god good dirt. I plan to transplant my strawberries come spring, in it.
  3. New back bed. Same thing. Except I am going to plant sunflowers in it. They will be beautiful to look at, pull in pollinators, and block my neighbors Arlo house cam from pointing into my bedroom window. That’s a lot of wins.
  4. Two raised herb garden beds. I have two picked out at Amazon’s and need to buy and set them up. I want to move my herbs onto the deck so I can grab them for dinner faster. it will also open up areas for planting other vegetables and flowers.
  5. Soil. I need soil for the rest of my beds. They settled down a lot. I hadn’t realized just how much they would, so I need to top them off, with soil and some compost.
  6. New composter. I am close to being down with my first compost bin. I have filled it, and it’s been good. However, it is still cooking for next spring. I need to buy a second one. I am thinking one of those rotating composters because with my physical issues, it’s actually kind of hard to turn it otherwise.

On a sad note, for reasons that elude me, the cabbage I was going to make into saurkraut today exploded and looks half eaten. maybe too much water with the rain, and maybe squirrel action. In any event, no saurkraut from that. I have two smaller ones I am going to pull. So we will see if I get to that.

I am also trying to grow clover in the raw dirt areas in my yard, because I am tracking so much mud into the house. I probably will have to pay a landscaper to come put a walkway around the garden because I am not physically capable. That would help and I could go barefoot to grab the watering can.

Housing Upgrades

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This is the layout for my 899 square foot home from the sale paperwork. We use the front bedroom as a living room, and the living room as a kitchen/project room.

When we moved in, we knew that the house needed some upgrades. The floors were icy to touch with bare feet, and in summer the attic crawlspace might have a lot of insulation, but would hot box the entire house anytime it was sunny and over 75F.

We held off on any more work because our nightmare experiences with the last contractor.

We had gone through Angi’s List and it was so bad their arbitration process gave us back $675, of which the contractor never paid us. Angi’s list when they suspended him for that, but my experience as an auditor says he’ll probably just pick up a new business license and start all over again. But at least his absolute trash fire of a predatory business will be inconvenienced a little before he takes advantage of someone else.

As an aside, the craziest thing about that was the last day he was at my house when he told me he never gets repeat business, and some angry man called him on the phone to tell him his plumbing no longer drained where the contractor worked on it. This was literally as the contractor was destroying my plumbing. Never again without word of mouth references.

Issue 1:
Turns out I have no insulation under my house for like 80% of the home. I called Boulton Insulation, and this really cool guy named Kevin came out. he walked us through it all, and answered questions about things that weren’t even insulation related. He talked to us about the roof and mini splits. He was really on top of things. I cannot suggest them enough. This is the second time I have worked with Boulton.

What I liked was he didn’t try to upsell us. The bid was under $1300 to fully insulate the underside of my home, and wrap the pipes. That is doable. He even gave me the name of a reliable roofer.

They are coming out next week to do the insulation. My wife will no longer have icy toes when it’s chilly. I can’t wait!

Issue 2:
I also don’t have any venting on the roof. the previous home owner did the roof himself, and while he did a good job, you have to have venting.

This is deceptive becuase you would think the more airtight the better, right? Totally wrong. Without venting on your roof, on hot sunny days, it just cooks in there no matter how much insulation you have. I have great insulation, too, up there. As it gets hotter and hotter, heat then radiates down into the house, and cooks your shingles, lowering their lifespan. Plus it can create moisture trapped in your crawlspace that can mold. You just have to have venting.

I received a bid from Patrick at Sound Roof Care. Venting out my entire 899 square foot roof will cost me about $2700. Once again, very nice on price. I liked Patrick. He seemed honest and pointed out things I hadn’t even seen but were obvious to me once he saw them. He was well educated in his trade, and what he told me aligned with what I researched. He also didn’t try to upsell me.

I haven’t got a start date for him, but that will be soon too. With that done, next summer will not be so miserable every time the sun comes out.

Issue 3:
Our next plan is for an electrician to come out so we can solve the issue with the kitchen circuit flipping every time we run the microwave, the fridge, or the dishwasher at the same time. We also want to run some electrical to the shed. This will probably be a big ticket item as I think we need a new electrical panel, and I am not sure if we need it run to the power lines from scratch.

We simply use more electricity than the elderly lady that lived here before us. We run a lot of electronics for work, and have appliances that are much more modern than the original house versions.

I also want to make sure everything is safe after that contractor put in an electrical plug for the dishwasher. I don’t trust his work at all after I had to redo like 60% of it for being dead wrong and detrimental to my home.

Issue 4:
The last item on my list is to have mini split heat pumps put in for heating and cooling. I would like to have air conditioning, and get rid of all the portable air conditioners. There are some rebates from our local power company for this, so hopefully that will not be too expensive. We will look at that later next year or so. Getting the first two issues done will make this home much more comfortable temperature wise so even if we are starting to get 90F days here in the Pacific Northwest, it won’t be like this last summer when the entire house felt like an oven.

I feel like I am in a real life Minecraft game. I am building up my base, and making it cool.

Diamond Pickaxe, Baby!

Unicorn Spit & Rough Wood Projects

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There is this gel stain finish called Unicorn Spit. (This is not a paid for spot, because nobody would ever pay me!) Its claim to fame is it’s near universal in what it covers, and it’s very vibrant. It comes in a rainbow of colors. If you want the official user’s handbook on their website, you will have to pay $27 for it. I’m not really up to paying someone $27 for how to use their product so I read the directions, and watched some clearly promotional YouTube videos.

I had two projects I was working on. One is a large wall mounted spice rack for my approximately 10 billion spices, and the other is a basic box for a coffee table made out of plywood.

After I finished making and sanding my projects, I used an old chip brush to paint on the Unicorn Spit. If you use it straight it doesn’t cover raw wood very well, and takes a lot of stain. However, I found using a spray bottle filled with water really worked well. I would dab a bit on the wood, spray spray spray, then brush it back and forth. It covered shockingly well. I was very impressed with that.

I did several coats, and put my brush in a ziplock bag and froze it between coats so I didn’t have to wash it out. The brush thaws right out, and it’s like you never stopped, when you have to take a break. This works with latex house paint as well, incidentally.

They actually recommend to dilute it and seems like you can dilute it with a lot of options per their directions. I wanted a super deep color so I went with my spray bottle technique and it worked out well.

There were spots that I had a hard time getting, but I just kept touching it up until I was satisfied. I used a rag to rub it around for maximum coverage after I did the first coat.

Yes I do use my can goods to prop up my projects when I paint them.

When it dries, it dries to a chalky texture. The website had some options for finishes, and I was going to use a wax sealant initially. I just wasn’t sure it would cut it. Just touching the wood would give me a light blue dusting on my skin, so I needed something more than that. I decided to use Minwax clear poly on it, and put on three coats, with light sanding between it.

You have to be careful if you use poly to seal, I did my second coat too soon, and smudged off the blue in some areas of my 1 x 4 spice rack. I fixed it by mixing some acrylic blue paint with some triple thick varnish and you can’t even tell. So nothing to worry about too much.

Here is the finished coffee table top. It’s hard to get a photo of the color. In this photo it looks like washed out patches, but in real life, it’s really stunning and nice. It’s like a sea of blue variegations.

This is all I wanted in a coffee table. It holds my crochet bag so the cat can’t get to my yarn, and my pot box, and soon to be home for my Arizer. No longer living in an apartment means I don’t have to hide everything in a closet anymore, so I wanted my coffee table to have space for it all.

I looked at all sorts of options for a coffee table, but I just didn’t like any. It had to be a bit tall because my couch was tall, so I just made a simple plywood box. The ones online seemed overpriced, and cheaply made, and weren’t the right height. Plus, I like to keep my feet on it, and eat off of it so it had to survive me.

For the spices, I have tried numerous organizational processes in the new house. The problem is, I have a lot of spices, and I make my own blends. I can’t digest garlic, it seems, so I do all my own blends for my most used items. Add to that, I cook a lot of different styles, so I need spices for Indian food, Chinese food, Japanese food, Italian food, you name it. My wife also bakes, so we need that too. What we have on hand is usually indicative of what we’ve been cooking in the last 6-9 months or so.

Even better, we can see them all. My wife has ADHD and if it’s out of site, it doesn’t exist. To a certain extent, having them all crammed back in a tiny cupboard meant I was over buying as well.

I will probably use the Unicorn Spit again. I have bedroom night stands I am making out of plywood, so I will probably use the same blue Unicorn Spit process for them.

While I sanded the coffee table, the plywood was still too rough. I think if I do it again, I am going to really sand the crap out of it. The spice rack was sanded 1 x 4’s and it was so glossy smooth and the color came out so great.

I am still learning to work with wood, so while this is a really rough beginners project, I am still super happy with it.

Changing Refrigerator Door Opening Direction

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The thing about moving into our own home is that we get to fix things that bother us. The downside is my list of fixit’s is so long that some items, like this morning’s fridge door fix we talked about, but just never made it to the physical list. My list is like a 5 year plan with marvel-esque phase roll outs.

This morning’s issue was the refrigerator door. For some reason, the way the fridge door opened was away from the cooking area in the kitchen. You’d have to walk around it, open it, then bring everything back to the counter.

It kind of breaks my heart that the little old lady that lived here before us had to shuffle around the fridge door every time she cooked. Someone should have fixed this for her.

My wife and I hated it from the day we moved in, but I while I had a hazy idea it was possible to flip them, I didn’t really know how, and honestly there were just so many more pressing things that needed done.

Last night, I had insomnia and was up at 3am, and for some reason when I got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the door irritated me again, and with nothing else to do, I started watching videos on it.

I found this video with my make and model fridge, mostly:

Video on how to reverse a refrigerator door.

It took me about a half hour to 45 minutes from gathering tools to putting them back in the shed and then it was fixed!

I had two white plastic door hole caps that were so old they broke, but they were decorative, and you can’t even see them on top the door. I could care less. I am so happy to have the fridge door facing the right direction now. My wife and I are both ecstatic.

Funnier to me, was when I popped out the bottom grill to move the bottom door post over a bunch of rice came out. That is my rice, from the day I moved in.

I dropped somewhere around 5 pounds of short grain rice in its plastic tub, which spilled literally all over the kitchen. You cannot appreciate how far 5lbs of rice will scatter until you drop it. I was so exhausted and sore from moving that I almost had a five star meltdown. I was in a hurry, and had to get so much else done as I was bringing it over before work that day, then I ended up sitting on the kitchen floor laughing at the absurdity of it all.

I told my wife, even after sweeping it all up, that rice was going to keep showing up for the rest of our lives. This bunch of it came out from inside the refrigerator grill. I guess I was right.

This is one less thing on my giant list, even thought it never made it to the list proper. I can stop thinking about it every time I open the door.

House Improvement Baby Steps & the Physical Impact of Projects

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I am in my 50s, and I have a degenerative joint condition. As a consequence I work 4 days a week at a sit down office job, not five, because sitting in an office chair is painful. This is in stark contrast to my younger years, when I would not only work 5 days a week as a floor nurse, but also do 12-16 hour project days on the weekends. This means that small projects can wreck me for a few days.

With this in mind, yesterday was a nice day, so I pulled out my saw horses and tools, and built a cabinet box for next to the dishwasher.

I haven’t put the trim molding back because we are contemplating putting some sort of panel on the wall there. Something more water resistant due to the dishwasher. We are waffling between a traditional bead board look, or just abandoning all sense and doing art under acrylic sheeting.

This was just a gaping hole under the unsupported butcher block counter tops that the shit contractor left. He was paid to make a slide out cabinet but didn’t do the work. This is an ugly cabinet box made of 3/4″ plywood. I plan to paint all the cabinets and I will edge band and paint it when I do the rest. I was mostly concerned about the unsupported heavy butcher block drooping onto my $600+ dishwasher. Now I feel my dishwasher investment is protected, and we will be fine.

While I did this, I also cut up two closet sliding doors that we had to get rid of, so I can slowly feed them into the garbage can.

It also was good practice for using a circular saw guide that you clamp onto the wood. I’d never used any kind of guide before and this is my first circular saw.

This is a Bora WTX clamp. I really like how it works, but the reviews are right. The sled was just a pain in the butt for my Dewalt saw, so it’s got no use for me. I got straight cuts without the sled just fine.

I don’t have the most experience with circular saws, because when I was a kid I looked like a girl and my father refused to let me use any tool you had to plug in. I’m mostly self taught with the help of online videos. The guide came with a saw sled, which pretty much all the reviews said was garbage, and they were right. I tossed the cheap plastic thing, and just did my thing without it.

Turns out circular saws are not as scary as I had originally thought. I feel pretty comfortable now. It’s definitely weird going from being treated like a girl, and disallowed all access to the tools to make my life easier, to now not only being given access, to being supported and having other men in stores get excited to walk me through it. If transitioning from female to male ever taught me anything, it’s that sexism around home improvement and gender rolls are pretty damn real.

Speaking of ignoring gender rolls, I also finished sewing the curtain for my work room.

The house came with these thick white blinds. They aren’t terrible, but the cat and I hate the blinds. We lost about 6-7 inches of window at the top of these like you see in my half thought out before picture below.

That cat tree is going to be replaced with a built in wall unit for our fat princess. It will take less space and be in less dire threat of being toppled by her antics.

Below here is an unfairly better taken after picture in which I opened both curtains, and also washed the windows because I noticed how filthy it was.

Ignore the potting bench that I am using for delivery drivers to hide packages behind, when they can be bothered. I am buying a bench to put there instead. Also, ignore the portable air conditioner. Getting mini splits for air conditioning is a few years off.

We will probably always keep the sheers closed because there is a lot of . . . activity across the street and we don’t necessarily need to live in a fishbowl.

I mean, The windows look so much bigger with that 6-7″ of space back. Also, look at that nice new window sill! I did that a few weeks ago, mostly because our cat is fat and can’t get up on there without it.

These projects are all a part of Phase 1 of the house plan. When I get all these little things done, I will deep dive into each room. That means better curtain rods, painted walls and cabinets, and finishing touches. Right now? I am just trying to get things functional and ready for a full launch into next year.

After all this, which I don’t think is much, I spent the rest of the day laying in bed sore as hell. I will probably not do much today either. I have to accept I am not 25 anymore, and pushing my body this hard has consequences. I’d be very kind to anyone else fighting with this, but I always feel like I could have done more.

After I finish writing this, I will probably make some breakfast for the wife and I, and go lay in bed again. Not a bad days plan, overall.

Most Underrated Kitchen Appliance – Instant Hot Water

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This picture is my homemade instant hot cocoa mix in front of my wife and my coffee and tea set up. The white jar is for loose sugar for my wife, the dark blue one is for instant coffee, and the teal one is for sugar cubes for me.

This is not a sponsored post. I don’t have affiliate links. This is just me, in my first home, marveling at the small upgrades I can make in order for my life to be a billion times better. I just like to document and link things.

My incinerator. Ignore the gap between the backsplash and the counter. I have to fix that. It’s relatively mild here, but is like a 1/4 inch as it creeps larger at the end of the counter. I haven’t sealed it yet because I am waiting to fix it.

This is an Insinkerator. That’s the brand name of my infant hot water system. What it does, is deliver water hot enough to make tea out of. You can increase of lower the temperature to fit your needs.

In my home, my wife prefers instant coffee. That is probably horrifying to folks, but she grew up on it, and prefers it. Over our 30+ years of marriage we have had normal coffee makers, high end espresso machines, you name it. She always goes back to instant. This actually frees up a lot of counter space, and reduces waste from Keurig and espresso machines, presses and coffee makers.

I am a hot cocoa and tea drinker because I am a very high energy person, and caffeine takes me into the arena of damn annoying real quick, so I stick to my caffeine-free tea, and my hot cocoa. What little caffeine I get from the cocoa is about all I should ever have.

In the apartments we have been in, we were in a constant hot water kettle search. We would burn through one every year or so, because between the two of us, we would have tea, cocoa, and coffee all day long. We just killed them from over use. I was even considering one of those massive zojirushi how water dispensers.

Add to this, my wife has ADHD, and she would always come start the kettle, then leave, and an hour later come back to start the process all over. Just waiting for the water to heat was enough time in ADHD for her to end up distracted and not get her coffee. Some mornings she would realize she’d have related the task endlessly and never gotten her morning coffee.

With this in mind, one of the first items I bought for the house was a hot water on demand system. It’s like a mini on demand system that holds a gallon or so of water for your use. The Amazon listing says 3 gallons, but that’s wrong. I think it’s closer to 2/3 of a gallon.

This is like a $250 luxury. I can get my cocoa in the morning instantly. My wife no longer circles the kitchen in a remember & forget coffee dance.

I think this is the single most amazing item we have in our home. I had no idea when we put it in that it would help my wife so much. This was worth every penny. When or if it dies, I am replacing it immediately.

Being able to modify my home in such a tiny way, to help make our lives easier? I really want this for everyone. We were so lucky to get out of the rental racket, and into a home, and I just really want this for everyone.

It’s just so shocking to me that with such a relatively small purchase I can make such a huge impact on my enjoyment of my home.

Garden, a Dragon Onesie, and iPad Storage

Wolsey2 Comments

I got the stakes to fix my broccoli. It’s been windy and rainy here, so all my broccoli fell over. I had no idea it needed staked, because I hadn’t ever grown it before, but now it looks much better. No more sideways plants, with upside down leaves. Ignore that tiny one. It’s a replant when that square of broccoli didn’t come up. He’s doing fine.

Also, my Amazon purchase for my wife came in. I like to buy her things. Today? It was a red dragon onesie. I love it and she was thrilled with it. The cat? Tally is really not too sure about this development. She’d only just gotten over the balloons my wife got as a get well soon gift from her coworkers for after surgery.

Behind her is a router and all sorts of internet cables on the shelves. I was supposed to drill a hole through the wall, install 2″ desk grommets, so the wires could go through, but instead I made wall pockets for iPad and laptop storage next to our bed.

I found a unicorn tote for my wife, the lovely disaster unicorn, and a hail gay satan one for me. Yes, yes I did find a hail gay satan tote bag on Amazon. You can find anything there. It’s amazing sometimes.

We both use an iPad in bed, and my wife also uses an old laptop for writing her YouTube scripts and gaming notes. I am always concerned they will get stepped on, so I made them a place to go up off the floor. We can’t use a normal nightstand arrangement because our bed is literally in the closet, sticking out, which is cool with star lights, but I don’t want to do pictures until I finish the canopy for it. This means we have to get creative with storage.

Also, my wife has ADHD, and tucking anything in for a nice clean look was out the window 30 years ago when we married. I find keeping everything in easy to access and visible areas increase the likely hood that it will get put away, and that she will remember where it is.

This is actually straight, but the picture makes it look crooked.

Construction was just a fabric envelop made out of tote bags with pictures I liked on it, and then I used the straps for the totes to make a small loop at the top, then I put some hooks in the wall, with carabiners I had laying around. The rainbow ribbon was just what I had on hand because I bought 100s of yards of it on Amazon once, so I use it in my projects when I need a bit of ribbon tab.

The most exciting part about this is I own the whole damn house, and I could use actual hooks that screw into the studs in the walls. It’s not a rental, and if I want to put holes in my walls, I sure as hell can. The sheer freedom to put 6 cup hooks in the walls? Worth every penny of my mortgage.