What better way to celebrate Christmas than to build a frame for holding electronics parts? You see, we own a couple of plastic parts bins. These are 15″ x 18″ units with lots of drawers for holding small parts. In our case, they hold things like LEDs, resistors, and so on. The problem is where to put them.

Normally they are attached to a wall, or sit on top of something (like our dresser in the old apartment). The problem is, it ends up being a poor use of space. So, I came up with a frame for holding them. It’s freestanding and can hold up to six of the units. Take a look:

The first photo is of the bare frame. It’s 34″ wide and 65″ tall. The second is the unit painted with the bins mounted. The plastic bins are attached via mounting holes through the wooden braces that cross the back of the unit. You can see the bolts in the third photo, a rear view of the unit. (The units are shrink wrapped because of the recent move; to prevent all those drawers from spilling out.)

Here are some shots of our homemade room divider. The one view is from the Living Room, looking toward the back of the house (dining area). The other one is from the Dining Room. As you can see, we set up the area between as Evelyn’s electronic workarea. (The dirtier stuff, ex. workworking, will be done in the bench we are setting up in the garage.)

The divider is 5 feet high and four feet wide (to accomodate the pegboard). It’s pretty simple, using 2×4s. We put a rod on one side so that Evelyn can swap out material. (We’re using a cheap piece of material we got second-hand. The final one is going to be lighter.)

What a busy month it has been. Nothing overly exciting to report, mainly getting stuff unpacked and organized. A mash-mash of things.

With the furniture here, I decided to reorganize my office. Originally I had my desk near the window, but the house has settled and the floor is not level, so I kept sliding toward the window. Very annoying, and bad enough to give me back pains. So I moved the desk and everything to the opposite part of the room. It’s actually where I originally wanted it!

The problem is that this house has plenty of outlets in each room, but only ONE grounded one. And the grounded one is ALWAYS where you don’t need it. So, I had to run an extension cord across, along with the cable line, etc. In Chicago it would have been easy–I would have simply replaced the outlet. But no conduit down here, and only two wires to most sockets, so extension cords it is. At least they are white and run along the baseboard.

Got Evelyn’s computer set up in the guest room. That turned out better, though we had the power problem there too. We placed her desk right next to the closet. That leaves plenty of room for a guest bed, and we were able to put all the PC equipment in the closet. It makes for a really clean workstation. Just monitors, keyboard, mouse. Everything else is hidden away. 

The last couple of days we’ve been working on the workbench configurations. Evelyn has an electronics bench set up between the living and dining room area. This works out fine, but means you see all the electronics stuff from the living room. Also, she lost a wall in the new space, so has no place to put her pegboard and tools. To solve these two problems we made a room divider. It’s five feet tall by four feet wide. On one side is mounted her pegboard for tools. On the other side is a curtain. I’ll take a photo once it’s done. The end result is that she gets a pseudo wall for her workspace and the view to the workbench and kitchen gets blocked. A win-win, as it were.

We also started putting together her workbench for the garage. It’s going to be about 6 feet long by 2 feet deep. The last parts we need are the tops, which will have to be pre-cut at Lowe’s since a sheet of plywood won’t fit in the Corolla. Though, amazingly, we can fit up to ten eight-foot long 2×4s in the car–the trunk even closes.

So, it’s been mainly working (at work) and working (on the home). We should be completely done with the apartment after this weekend (just need to take out some empty boxes, etc). And once all the workbenches are in place (very soon), Evelyn will be able to get back to her electronics work. I’m sure she is looking forward to it, after a month and a half of moving frenzy.

Today the movers came and took the remaining furniture from our apartment to the house. Thanks to Evelyn’s hard work, it went smoothly. About an hour and a half all together. Now the place is really coming together. Here are some photos I’ve been promising.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. I’ve had a horrible cold that just now seems to be breaking — the cold weather sure didn’t help. Global warming, my ass.

Over the last week we finished up painting. Did the ceilings in the dining room and kitchen, which were in dire need of a fresh coat. Then did the walls and ceiling of the front room. The bathroom cabinets were looking pretty worn, so I went ahead and pulled all that stuff out and painted the vanity and towel storage area. What a difference a fresh coat of paint makes!

We’ve been sleeping at the new house for about a week now and it’s far quieter than the apartment — at least so far. No listening to people on the other side of the wall. No kids jumping around. No listening to my “hard luck” neighbor on his phone while I’m trying to work.

Evelyn has been spending a lot of time moving things from the apartment to the house. She managed to bring the last of the kitchen stuff over late last week, so the kitchen here at the house is now about 90% set up, so I’ve been able to start cooking again. 

As of yesterday she brought over the final bits of stuff that can be moved in the car. We were able to move a surprising amount in the Corolla. Bed (it’s a Select Comfort, so it breaks down), nightstand, TV, small tables, all dresser drawers, bike, clothes, computers, books, boxes, food, and on and on. Even managed to fit the headboard, our dining room chairs, and our entertainment center into the car–no small feat.

After going back and forth a bit, we decided to make the front room the living / TV area, even though it’s a  smaller room. That stuff just seems to fit better in the space, and we  keep the kitchen splatter away from the furniture. So, we’ll have a pretty big dining room (the paneled part) with space for a cocktail bar. The living room, even though we have only camp chairs set up right now, is looking really nice.

We were also going back on forth on whether to move the remaining furniture outselves. We wouldn’t need to rent a van, as two friends of Evelyn’s were willing to lend us their trucks (everyone has a truck in Texas–give us time). The big sticking point was the stairs at the apartment complex. There’s a set we need to go down, and then a long-ish hallway before we reach the parking lot. I don’t think either of us were looking forward to moving the sofa or the long dresser down those stairs.

So, yesterday, Evelyn contacted some local movers who are, literally, a block away from us. To move the two dressers, bookcase, recliner, sofa, dining table, and three desks is going to run $175. Sold! It was going to cost me $70 a day to rent a panel van, so this is money well spent. The movers will do their thing this Friday, at which point all of our stuff will be out of the apartment. Horray!

Other than that, I’ve been nursing my cold and working. Set up the entertainment center, got my stereo all hooked up (horray!), hung a bunch of curtains, and kept unpacking and organizing. The hardest part is getting stuff to fit into the new space. There is more space in the house, but the cabinets are all configured differently, so what worked well in the apartment doesn’t work well in the house. Little by little.

I’ll take some photos this weekend, once all the furniture is in place. Now if only this cold weather would break, so that I could enjoy my backyard! They are saying upper-70s this weekend, but it’s freaking cold in Austin right now–29!

It looks like Google has put up a bunch of old magazines on the Google Books site. Probably the most interseting to me is the entire collection of Popular Science — that’s 138 years of the magazine! (Though, they were mostly just text until about 1917 when they started doing full-color covers.) Facinating stuff. Take a look.

Popular Science Archives On Google Books

Update: With all that’s on the web page, it’s a little hard to figure out how to read the magazine. First, click on the issue you want in the left-right scroll area in the middle of the screen. When the cover appears in the upper-left, click on the “Read this magazine” button. It should open the Google Book Search page with a full-sized view of the entire magazine. Just scroll up and down.

You can also click on the Contents link to bring you to the table of contents. There you can click on anything with a blue underline and it will take you right to that page. Pretty cool!

Be sure to check out page 218 of the January 1950 issue. You can learn how to build a Labor-Saving Kitchen Designed By Doctors. It has great lines like “How much work is it for your wife to prepare your breakfast?” Ha-ha! The answer, NONE, because I do all the cooking.

Deb was wondering what the Light Effects stuff looks like.

Here is their “Texture 12″ on our door to the garage (from our kitchen). The light is on in the garage.

Light Effects Texture 12

It’s pretty good at diffusing the view, but you can still see too many shadows for a bathroom application (especially since our bathroom window is at chest-level above the tub). That’s why we moved it from the bathroom to the door to the garage. (It just peels off and can be reused.)

We went back and got their Magnolia design, which you can’t see through at all. This is what it looks like installed above our tub:

Lights Effects Bathroom Magnolia

They come in 36×24 rolls at Home Depot. They aren’t cheap — about $20 — but look far nicer than the ugly and dirty miniblinds that were there. And, we can now use the tile windowsill for holding shampoo and shaving cream.

It’s been a super busy week for both of us. On Tuesday I got back from Chicago, signed the lease for the new house, and started our adventure. Since then, we’ve done a bunch of stuff over the last couple of days.

• Went to Ikea and picked up a new desk for my office and a desk/workspace for Evelyn’s electronics.
• Cleaned, cleaned, cleaned, cleaned. Evelyn did all of this work.
• Didn’t like our dirty ceilings in the back/kitchen area, so we repainted those.
• Realized how nice it looked with fresh paint, so decided to do the front room, too.
• Moved just about everything that can go in the car to the new house. We still have the kitchen to break down, probably today. Furniture next week, probably.
• Went to Lowes, got some stuff. Went to Home Depot, got even more stuff.
• Did my best to stimulate the American Economy through excessive Consumer Spending.
• Got data drops installed. AT&T DSL on Tuesday, Cable on Wednesday. Cable Quality Control came back on Friday, found install issues and fixed them. Yet another QC person will be out to check on the other QC quy. That’s night-and-day service from what we had at the apartment. Go figure. AT&T and TWC are fighting over who can provide faster data drops. Competition is good.
• Bought and hung Christmas lights outside the house. We’ll try and take a photo.
• Went to Office Depot. Got stuff for our offices (chair mats).
• Bought a rake. Raked leaves. Got tired. Stopped. Need to rake more. A lot more.
• Removed about a bazillion nails and screws from the walls. Past residents must have had a cross over every door. Is the house possessed? We’ll see. I really enjoyed the 2 1/2″ long screws used to hold a two foot long curtain rod.
• Installed security bar on the rear patio door.
• Ripped out stupid blinds from the bathroom and replaced with removable stick-on LIghtEffects stuff. You can find them at Home Depot. Gives you “etched glass” look without the etching. They also have stained glass designs that look nice. If you have a window with a useless/ugly view, consider taking a look at this product.
• Lined the cabinets with heavy plastic stuff from Ikea. Evelyn did a great job on this.
• Address change, address change, address change, ad nauseum.
• Installed a doorbell. Already used — by the cable guy on Friday.
• …and probably a million other things I’ve already forgotten.

I left wonderful Chicago this morning, escaping the snow and the cold. The check-in and security took longer than last time (though still a tolerable 25 minutes), but the flight left on-time and arrived in Austin almost 30 minutes early. Thank you, Southwest. You may be a cattle car, but your on-time record can’t be beat.

Luckily, unlike my last flight, this one was only about 2/3rds full, so I had a row of seats to myself. I normally like to go all the way to the back to escape the freaks and children, but I ended up being stuck about two rows from two kids — aged baby and three. So much for my quiet flight.

The toddler shut up after takeoff (probably after shitting his pants) and the baby was mostly okay, but went berzerk around Dallas (1/2 hour from Austin by air). This would have been horrible except for one thing: The parent actually cared about her fellow passengers and tried her best to quiet the baby.

This was an amazing thing for me, as many parents these days seem so self-involved as to care two-shits about fellow humans. This parent, however, actually tried to quiet the baby down and even apologized to the people around her once we landed. Thank god there are still people with manners! Kudos to this mom.

A bit later Evelyn arrived and we headed back to the apartment, which is a disaster area — but in a good way. Evelyn has been packing like mad, getting things in boxes, bins, bringing down drapes, and on and on. Even patching the holes in the walls we made.

Around 2 we got an unexpected call from the AT&T lineman, who was at the house. By happy chance our new landlord was also there, so we headed over. 

This was the first time I had seen the house in person, and I was very pleasantly surprised. The bedrooms are bigger than I expected, the garage, while small, is perfect for a workshop. The yard is great, with a nice covered seating area. All in all, I think Evelyn did a really great job finding and locking in the place.

We did our walkthrough, and signed the lease today. Horray! More space. More privacy. More quiet (I hope). Less money in my pocket, but I think it’s a good move.

Toward the end of our visit Evelyn spotted our neighbors to the west. The lady was peeking around her house to see who it was. Evelyn went over and introduced herself, and I followed. The couple are retired and have been living in their house since it was built, over 40 years ago. We sensed that they were a little nervous about the new renters (since the houses on both sides of them are rentals). After a tour of their garden, and about an hour of just talking, I think that they are happy with the new people — us!

Later on we went back to the apartment and loaded up the car with boxes of books and cleaning supplies and other stuff. The great migration has begun.

And so we now have a house, albeit a rental. We have a nice sized master bedroom, an office for me, and a bright and cheery south-facing guest bedroom. Now we can, finally, host guests in comfort. I’m taking reservations.