House – Page 2 – Modern Anachronist

Re-lamping the upstairs hallway.

In which I attempt to correct the poor decisions made 50 years ago by the lowest bidding electrician; five years ago by a corner cutting house flipper; and ease the unease of a 9-year-old boy; all with an overly complicated hardware and software solution.

Irrigation Manifold

Four years in this house and the plan for the vegetable garden is finalized. (I think. The wife might not be settled yet.)

Five raised beds surrounding a garden shed / work space. But now we outgrew the irrigation system that I threw together when we were prepping to be out of town for two weeks and she didn’t want the garden to die.

I’m a gas utility worker by trade, so I’m used to working with valves and fittings, but water isn’t something I deal with on a regular basis.

Raised Garden Bed

Simple but labor intensive, I told my wife she only gets one of these per year. We decided on dry stacked concrete blocks for the beds the winter after we bought the new house.

Construction complete – still needs compost & soil added.

Screw hole repair / upgrade

We bought the house from a flipper who “redid” the 45 year old kitchen. And by redid, I mean he replaced the old solid wood cabinets with the cheapest builder grade particleboard cabinets he could source. (My neighbors are still rocking the original cabinets, and while dated, theirs are holding up better than mine.)

After three years of use by my kids, hinge screws are starting to pull out of the cabinet frames.

Holiday lights are made for smart plugs.

I’ve been putting my holiday decorations on smart plugs for probably five years now. It really makes things easier when you can automate your decorations.

Where to put the brains?

Back in the analog days, your light was controlled either at the lamp or at the switch. If you were going on vacation, you might plug it into a clock work timer so no one noticed the house was unoccupied. As we move to home automation, you have a lot of flexibility in how to control things. Do you want to control at the wall, the lamp or the bulb?

Worst sink drain design I’ve ever seen

When we bought the new house, I was happy to see that both upstairs bathrooms had new vanities. I didn’t realize then that the new fixtures were probably worse than the 50 year old units that they replaced.

The thing I hate most about this house (Photo taken after cleaning, I couldn’t post a dirty shot)

More smarts for an old house

Or adding physical controls to a virtual system

One of the pain points on our smart home journey has been allowing visitors and children without i-devices to control the lights. So far I’ve installed two different solutions, and one of them actually works. The one that doesn’t work is due to the construction of my home, the device itself seems fine.

Better still, the one that works is easier to install and cheaper to purchase.

Hidden in Plain Sight

Not so much hidden really as trick the brain to ignore the power cords for the rear speakers.

In the beginning

While the cloth covered cable is nice, it’s not really something I want to look at.

It is Finished

Finally, six months behind schedule, my living room wall is finished.