I like the look of this: Use Gridwall to Organize Your Spaces – Storage – Lifehacker. I really dislike the way our cupboards and utensil storage is set up right now so something like this may be worth trying out. The part I like is that it doesn’t require extensive modification like building new cabinets. If it turns out I don’t like it in practice, I can easily take it down and fill in the holes from the supporting screws.
Archive for category house
Drill/driver settings
Dec 20
Clearing up the confusion on drill/driver settings – Fine Homebuilding gives a good description of the different settings on drills. The rechargeable batteries on my drill have died and I’ve been reluctant to spend the money on replacements but I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunites to use this knowledge in the near future.
I thought this looked like an interesting project: Build a Geodesic Dome Solar Greenhouse to Grow Your Own Food : TreeHugger. Then I looked at the costs: minimum $5,000 setup. I’m going to see if I enjoy regular gardening first and save this for my retirement. 
As we look forward to building our house, I’m thinking of something like this: Use a 20-Year Plan to Build a Stable of Quality Furniture – Home – Lifehacker. The trouble is that the furniture we use the most is our computer chairs. I don’t know of any 20-year computer chairs – though I was eying some Herman Miller chairs to see if they’d last.
Planning Shelterbelts
Nov 15
Unfortunately our lot is a little too small to get trees from PFRA, but they still have a lot of useful information for Planning Farm Shelterbelts.
The front of my parents’ riverlot was pretty much as bare as our lot currently is and now their lot looks like a forest. I need to make sure my kids are out there regularly with a hoe and that the ground is kept black.
This looks as though it would be a useful tool for anyone looking to do some redecorating: ColorJive Helps Visualize Room Colors Before Painting – DIY – Lifehacker. It lets you take a photo of a room and mess around with the room colors to see how they’d look.
Home Health Checklist
Oct 17
I’d be terrified to see where our current house is on this checklist: DIY Home Health Checklist Helps You Fix Problems Before They Blow Up – Repairs – Lifehacker. However, when we move into our new place this is exactly the kind of thing that I want to keep in mind. For me the most effective way of remembering these kinds of seasonal tasks is to set them up to recur yearly in Google Calendar or another calendar application. I always forgot to transfer them when I was using paper calendars to schedule things.
Events Calendar by Yandle
Official Google Blog: Google PowerMeter’s first device partner looks really cool. We’re going to be building in the not-too-distant future and I really want to integrate something like this into our house.
My main motivation for wanting something such as this is to minimize power consumption. If I track it, I can tell when it’s going up and hopefully act to reduce it again.
We have a door that keeps swinging open to an awkward angle – halfway between open and closed so I’ll give this a shot and see how it works: Hammer Hinge Pins to Keep Open Doors from Closing – Repair – Lifehacker.
Totally Together Journal asks: What Are the Necessary Cleaning Supplies? I’m not terribly good at keeping our house clean I’m hoping that some of that is due to it being an older house with lots of nooks and crannies. The hope is that when we move into our new house, it’ll be easier to clean. I’ve made progress on some things over last few years, but still none on housecleaning and that really frustrates me.
from krisandapril's photostream
Build a Beneficial Bug House
Sep 13
This looks like a useful garden project: Build a Beneficial Bug House – Garden – Lifehacker. The site we’re looking at building on is quite large and near a river. We will definitely have plenty of bugs flying around, so if something such as this can improve the ratio of beneficial to noxious bugs I’m all for it. I wonder if there’s a way of attracting mosquito predators?
photo by macrophile