Bagels

 I whipped up some home-made bagels this morning to try something new.  Pretty amazing good taste.  Yes, they are ugly schmugly, but they are super tasty.

Box Spring Dissection

We have given our 9 year old boy a new box spring and mattress.  He has jumped on his old bed so much that he squashed it in half.  Springs were popping out all over the place.  When we took out the old bed, it actually jingled with all the broken parts inside.  

I did some math:  15 minutes of bouncing per night for the last couple of years yields about 11,000 hours of bounce time.  

From the top down, the old box spring doesn't look too bad, eh?

But, of course, it was bad.  I'm not expert in box springs, but I think the top should be flat.

I cut off the fabric to see what lies beneath.  I found an array of broken springs and wire mesh.  I can also see my previous repairs to the wood stringers are mostly in tact.

Here's another view

I removed all the broken and loose hardware and set it aside.  

It easily filled a 5 gallon bucket.

With all that loose junk removed, the remainder of the box spring looks pretty bare.

I removed all the repairs I did from 6 months ago (which was simply adding some 2x4s to beef up the broken slats), so after this there wasn't much left.  

The good news?  Our boy has strong legs from all this bouncing, and is the fastest runner in 3rd grade.

Next up - dissect the mattress.

Fine Woodworking? A first for me.

I have ventured into the realm of furniture making the past couple of weeks in an attempt to make a coat rack with shelf.  I've always been curious to see and learn more about pocket holes, and hidden joinery, so I splurged and bought a $30 Kreg pocket hole jig.  First impression - Why didn't I buy this gadget earlier?!  I really liked it, and it opens up a lot of potential for ideas.

So, I designed my own "mission style" coat rack for the front entryway.  This is a prototype for a larger style rack for the main shoe-room of the house.  I chose red oak hardwood, and stained it in a similar color.  All joints are pocket holes, of course.

I used keyhole brackets on the back to hide my mounting hardware, so there are no exposed screwheads that are visible.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased, but I would do a few things differently.  I found that pocket holes get a little dicey depending on the grain of the wood.  I should either use an undersized screw, or drill a pilot hole into the piece to be joined.  I ended up clamping the joints in nearly all the axis to prevent splitting.  I don't think that is normal - it just so happens because of my design.

Phase 2 - take what I learned on my prototype, and apply it to a new design that is slightly larger for the main house entrance.  And, I need to find a better (cheaper) source of lumber.  All in all, a good first project and good learning experience.

Hardwood Floor Part 2

We were all so happy with the new hardwood floors in our living room that we started pulling up the carpet in the hallway. 

I'm always amazed at how gross the carpet and pad are when you peel them apart.  This is what 50+ years looks like. 

And at the same time, I'm always amazed at how well the hardwood floor beneath the carpet pad weathered those same years.  It is a little dull, but that is easy to shine right up.

It's not a big area, but it is still a lot of work.  We removed wallpaper and are painting prior to fully removing the hallway carpet.  

All Schnazzed Up

Here is Kiddo #1 all dressed up with her big monster sousaphone.  

She is the only girl sousaphone in the marching band.  

Pretty cool.  I'm very impressed!

New Paint and Hardwood Floors

 We had a rare sprint of home improvement motivation, and started painting our living room and entryway room (what I call the "shoe room") just last week.  Part of this motivation is:

1.  Cleaning up and moving the desk to a more suitable location

2.  Repairing many nail pops in the drywall, and subsequent painting

3.  Pulling out the old carpet and checking out the hardwood floors beneath.

I don't have many good "before" pictures, but below you can see how we have a ton of furniture crammed into a corner as we paint the opposite side.  Not the half-walls which are removed in pictures later.  

The breezeway entryway room.  I call this the shoe-room, but I think it is a formal dining room.  We removed the piano and all the coats and shoes from this room for this shot:

In the living room, the blue carpet was pretty faded.  

But beneath all that blue carpet is a beautiful hardwood floor.  It was in near perfect condition with only a few blemishes.

This is the shoe room leading into the kitchen.  That transition will need a little help.

We painted an accent wall, but I only have pictures of it late at night.  It is dark blue and it is a good contrast to the rest of the "latte" walls.  The patch of white on the wall is from where I removed the half walls that used to divide the 2 rooms.

I'll get more pictures in the days ahead.  But suffice it to say, these are big changes and it really makes the house feel different (in a very good way).

New Tires for the 420

This past week, I bought some new tires for the old 420.  I'm not for certain, but I would venture to guess the old tires are the original tires - circa 1987 or so.  The tire size is 26-12-12.

I measured the tread depth of the old tires, and I measured 0.200 inches - right around 3/16 of an inch. 

The new tires are Carlisle Multi-Trac, and the depth is approximately 0.430 - about 7/16 of an inch.  That is a full 1/4 inch more!  Pretty amazing.

And they look real good mounted on the 420.  I expect much better traction, so I kept my wheel weights off.  That, and all my mole hills are pretty well mashed down anyways.