House – Page 2 – Modern Anachronist

Living Room Update (part 1)

A place for the grownups

The new house has both a family room and a living room, where the old house only had one, so I’ve been one entertainment system short since we moved. Also, my wife and I like to watch some things that a bit too adult for the wee ones, so it will be nice to be able to watch an episode of Vikings while they are playing on the Switch in another room

When I bought the seating last Christmas (we got volunteered to host and had ZERO furniture in the room) I decided that I was going to decorate this room.

I don’t believe there is a single room in the house that doesn’t have hand me down (or road side found) furniture. I want a room that looks designed & planned.

This is going to be a room for the grownups.

Smart home platforms & protocols

When you finally start looking at home automation, it’s easy to get lost in a sea of technology, platforms, protocols, and marketing hype. The goal is to make sure that you spend money on equipment that will work together and continue to be supported in the future.

As of January 2021, there are three major platforms – Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple HomeKit. There are probably hundreds of manufacturers who support some combination of these platforms. Personally, I use HomeKit with equipment from probably a dozen manufacturers.

Adding smarts to an old house

This summer, as I invoked Siri to light up the dinner table on the patio, my father-in-law’s girlfriend said, “You have a smart house?”

I’ve never really thought about it, but I suppose I do. I’ve got lights that are tied to sunset & sunrise. I’ve got lights that turn on if the wife or I come home after dark. I can control the HVAC system from anywhere in the world.

It’s not something that I consciously set out to do, it just slowly happened over a course of several years. In this post I’ll describe some of the lessons about “smart homes” that I’ve learned the hard way over the years.

Getting stone(d)

Shortly after we moved to the new house, I spotted this stone in the woods behind my house. Originally, I planned to haul it out of the woods when we replaced the fence, but since the fence was down for the mulberry tree, I moved up the time table.

It took me a few hours with the come-along to get this stone out of the woods, now I need to get it to the front yard

Gutter cleaning tool

This didn’t work out as well as I hoped. I’ll probably end up modifying the design to improve the performance. It may also be that the gutters were too clogged and that this tool will work fine if it’s used on 4-6 months worth of debris as opposed to several years.

Birthday Chair for the Wife

Decided to make a nice chair for my wife to enjoy her garden. I did a google search for Adirondack chairs and asked her to pick the one she liked best. Thankfully she chose one that was within my abilities.

The fine folks at Lowe’s have the plans on their site.

The Cursed Swing Set

At the old house, we had an ancient wooden swing set for the kids to play on. I wasn’t going to move it to the new house. My wife convinced her father to buy one for the new house as a Christmas present to the little ones. All we had to do was to pick one out & he would break out the credit card.