WiFi Cameras

These little DropCam clones dropped to $30 each over the holidays. For that price, I can buy six for the price of a more mainstream camera. So we bought three.

One for the basement nursery:

One for the Great Room:

And one for the upstairs Nursery:

That wall is getting pretty techy. I should probably come up with a cleaner mounting system for the web cam, Echo Dot, and white noise machine.

The screen is a 24" LCD monitor with built-in speakers, running off a chromecast.

*** UPDATE FEB 4, 2017***

I added a camera for the front porch, and ordered another for the gate on our back yard.

I used this software to modify the firmware on the Yi cameras so I could integrate them with Blue Iris DVR software.

Nursery Furniture

Lincoln has been down in the basement bedroom for a while now, and we finally got around to getting him a dresser down there.

It is, of course, from IKEA as-is. And, of course, it is bolted solidly to the wall (four screws into two studs).

We also threw up the picture shelf, and moved the "LINCOLN" letters above Link's crib.

Rearranging Rooms

With our renter gone, and Lincoln getting more mobile and sleeping through the night, we decided to play "musical beds" in the house again. By the end of the weekend, we had two useable guest rooms complete with beds!

Our queen-sized bed left the Office and went back to the basement bedroom (currently accompanied by a pack-and-play):

Our full-sized bed left the Nursery and replaced the queen-sized bed in the office:

Which leaves us with a lot more floor space in the nursery!

Lincoln has been attempting to climb out of his crib recently (and has been getting better at climbing in general), so we're probably going to convert the crib to its toddler bed mode (remove one wall of bars) soon, and baby-proof the nursery's interior door knob - which is going to require changing the existing handle-style latch to a knob-style:

Workout Room

I set up our basement bedroom as a workout room, complete with a "TV" hooked up to our media server.

Now I just have to use it.

Life Updates

Our renter found an apartment with an extremely short commute and moved out this weekend. It was nice to have her around, but I have to admit parking in the snow will be easier with only our two cars.

So we have a mostly empty basement again!

In other news, both Brianna and I are working full-time again! Looks like we'll be able to pay for those solar panels after all :-)

Window Well Liner

Brianna picked up this window well liner for eighty bucks.

It looks a lot bigger laid out on the ground than it does in the window well.

Looks pretty good!

Rental Room Closet

Well, here's the result of that trip to Home Depot with Link:

Sixty bucks worth of materials, and you can do chin-ups on it. If you're short.

Painting the Basement Bedroom

Previously:

Currently:

The closet in here had been converted to a built-in desk. I tore that out in order to paint the walls, and later I'll install an actual clothes rack.

Ran out of paint though. Going to have to pick up more.

Renting Out the Basement Bedroom

Brianna and I have a big house. Bigger than we need. It's been great for being able to move stuff around while working on the house, but the house improvements are largely complete now.

We're renting out the basement bedroom to a coworker of Brianna's. She'll move in in late June or early July, and stay with us for 6 to 12 months.

We still have plenty of room, though! We'll have a bed in the upstairs office for overnight visitors!

Decorating

Brianna's Mom came by to visit with Brianna a little bit. She went through the house like a whirlwind (A lovely, helpful whirlwind) and got us set to decorating.

We got about four more boxes unpacked, and have a lot more decorations spread around the house ready to put up.

Brianna's Mom also dropped off some pillows she made with leftover fabric from the curtains she hemmed for us a couple weeks ago.

Oh, and we put one of the baby quilts up on the wall.

Workshop Electrical and Moving the WiFi Router

I spent the whole morning on this, almost four hours.

When I left the workshop last time, it looked like this:

I wound up just trashing the insulation - it's all interior walls anyway. Then I went to town cleaning up the wiring. Since I wanted to install a shelf up high for the cable modem and router, and since that vertical wire needed to be replaced so I could properly connect everything to ground again, I added a junction box up high and put in an outlet. Oh, and all the outlets below 4 feet off the ground in this room are the new tamper-resistant model now.

Once the wiring was in place and working properly, I cut some pegboard (leftover from the garage) down to size and screwed it into place. I finally got to use my shopvac to clean up all the sawdust and mess!

That chest freezer is the one we found on a trash day. After we cleaned it up, it never actually cooled down, even though it was running. Shortly after, Lily gave Brianna a new, larger chest freezer for her birthday. So for now, that old chest freezer serves as a convenient shelf, and someday when I have spare time (becuase that's certain to happen once we have a kid) I'll open it up and either try to repair it, or get a real-life, non-textbook look at how the refrigeration cycle works. (Also: it was super-heavy to carry down the stairs. I don't want to carry that thing back up the stairs in one piece).

***

Aaaaand after looking for a post to link to, I now realize I never wrote about the new freezer. Thank you for the working chest freezer, Lily! We are actively using it! (it's where we keep the drumsticks!)

***

Anyway, aside from finishing that corner of the workshop, part of the impetus for this project was to move the wifi router and cable modem out of the basement guest bedroom and into a location where the little blinky lights wouldn't bother anyone.

I thought I had a decent idea of how the coax cable network worked in this house after fixing our cable speeds. Turns out I was wrong. I spent nearly an hour (first haphazardly, and then systematically) testing which of the 12 coax cables running through the workshop actually connected to the comcast box outside the house. Turns out none of them do (I have no idea how that's possible). I finally got fed up, drilled a hole in the ceiling, and re-routed the cable outlet in the basement guest bedroom.

It's stupid, inelegant and ignorant, but it works.

Workshop Mess

Currently, our internet equipment (cable modem and wifi-router) are in the basement guest bedroom. I've slept down there a couple of times, and the little blinky LEDs make it hard for me to fall asleep. I usually just unplug the power strip.

Since Ellora is sleeping down there this weekend, I resolved to finish putting up pegboard in my workshop, install a shelf, and move the cable modem and wifi router on to that shelf. I've been meaning to do this for months, but above-ground-level projects have always taken precedence.

I started off by clearing all the crap out of the corner, until I could see all my boxes of books again.

Since there was an extra electrical box there, I decided to throw an outlet it in. During the course of that installation, I discovered that nothing downstream of that box was grounded, which included the outlet I had been using for tools in the shop. Gah!

Unfortunately, when I fixed the grounding issue, something created a short, tripping the circuit breaker.

The wires in the box are a mess, and there is no slack coming into the box. I figure I'm going to have rewire at least two boxes, which is also going to involve taking down at least one sheet of pegboard that's already up.

At that point I lost motivation for the rest of my friday evening.

Lots of Little Things

Brianna wanted a second shower curtain so the curtains in the first guest bedroom could be parted down the middle. The first one came from the "last chance" bin - they had been discontinued and were being cleared out. I stopped by IKEA on the way home from work, and found one last shower curtain in the bin. I grabbed it and ran. (well, actually I walked to the as-is section).

I picked up a small bedside lamp for $5 in the as-is section, and headed home. The filing cabinet from the garage sale this weekend is going to pull double duty as a bedside table in the guest bedroom for now, and the lamp completed the set.

Once I got home, I finally installed the last light switch I had planned to do the weekend before last:

The switch on the left controls the ceiling fan and light in the family room off the kitchen. So I'm done with electrical work for a while (phew! I was getting tired of shocks!)

I had picked up another ceiling lamp last week, to replace the one in the laundry room. I took care of that this evening as well. Even in the laundry room, the existing light fixture was grody and the interior insulation was stained black and brown with tobacco smoke. Now that this one is replaced, I think I only have one more light fixture in the basement to replace.

And I wasn't done yet! I put some wood filler in (and on) nail holes in the trim around the kitchen - I'll sand it down tomorrow:

Finally, once the upstairs had cooled off in the evening, I finished assembling the new bed frame. Brianna strung up the curtains, and I brought up another garage-sale find: a gliding rocking chair and ottoman:

Together, they certainly seem to fill up that room. And eventually we'll get a mattress on that bed frame and dig out some appropriately sized sheets.

Made guest bed - Brianna's Version

I went to bed early last night & Brian did a lot of work while I slept.  This is my very small addition to his work.

We have a couple of bedding options for the guest bed.  We have three sets of sheets that we regularly use, other than that we have two sets of queen sheets... yes, we had 5 sets for 1 bed.

 

I decided that we have enough sheets and pillows to have a B&B, so I decided to use a pillow case from each of the sets we don't normally use as the combination matched the T-shirt quilt that Brian's mom made.  So the bed has 5 pillows, just like a hotel and is ready for the first non-blow-up-mattress guest!

Welcome!

OK, there are not any other decorations in this room, but it does have a comfortable foam mattress! 

7 1/8" Thick foam... my siblings seem to all prefer foam & sheepskin, and this is my mainstream version... come try it out! 

IKEA - SULTAN FINNVIK, Memory foam mattress, Queen, A 2 3/8" thick layer of memory foam molds to your body, improving blood circulation to both muscles and skin, enabling your body to fully relax. 5 comfort zones relieve pressure on your shoulders and hips. High-resilience foam with pressure-relieving capacity provides good comfort. Lamb's wool in the filling transports moisture away and provides a pleasant sleeping climate with an even temperature

An Actual Guest Bed (Not an Air Mattress)

Remember that mix up with the Full-size bed frame that was actually a Queen? Brianna bought a mattress, slats and center beam for it this past Saturday, and I put it together tonight:

Like an idiot, I just went ahead and put the thing together without reviewing the directions. I didn't realize I had installed the side rails upside down until the slats didn't fit properly. Had to disassemble the whole thing and start over. Bleh. Totally my own fault, but also totally could have been avoided if IKEA didn't design the joints to be vertically symmetrical.

Anyway, we now have an actual guest bed! Any guests will have to bring their own sheets and pillows, though (what does this look like? A hotel!?)