Tag: House

Food Forest inspiration.

My wife has had a veggie garden for the past ten years in two houses. It always struck me as too much work for too little harvest. Add in the fact that the garden plants are annuals and I think our garden costs more per pound than a trip to Whole Foods.

I want perennial plants to feed me so I only have to buy them once. And I would like them to be native, or at least well-enough acclimated to the mid-Atlantic region where I live so the plants can tend to themselves.

Reaching back to my childhood, my immigrant grandfather had a fig tree in his yard. I always thought it was purely decorative as I never saw any fruit on it. I found out long after the death of both my mom’s parents that my grandfather was eating the figs as soon as they became ripe. His tree was barely cold tolerant enough for where he lived. I know that figs have been bred to be cold tolerant enough to survive winters in Chicago.

For Father’s Day in 2020, my family gave me a baby fig tree. It yielded its first fruits in 2021. In late summer 2022, I noticed a plant sprouting at the edge of our yard with distinct human hand shaped leaves. Some bird or squirrel planted a second fig tree for me. In spring 2024, there is a fruit growing on it. Hopefully the fruit is good.

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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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Living room update (part 2)

Project creep (and my parts still aren’t in the country)

I’m sitting with the wife one evening talking about the wall. She mentions that a friend had a deep red accent wall and it looked great.

The entertainment center is going on the only wall in the room that works as an accent wall, now I have to paint it. Of course, the other walls in the room are a pale yellow and they will look terrible with red, so I have to paint the entire room.

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What makes a smart home?

I’m not even sure.

I’ve got some lights that turn in when my alarm sounds in the morning. I’ve got some lights that turn on when the sun sets, and others that turn on when it rises. My thermostat knows to adjust the set point when no one is home, and my front door unlocks when I pull into the driveway.

Does that meant my home is smart? I’m not so sure

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