The Diary of A Simple Man

I picked up the supplies for my next bookcase today. Had to rent a van to get it all home, but that only cost $20. The wood was all cut to my specifications, so all we need to do it stain it, varnish it, and build it. When it's done, it will give me 29 and one-third feet of shelving for paperbacks. I'm guessing it will hold about 425 standard paperbacks.

My collection is far bigger than that, of course; it's easily over 5,000 books at this point, most of which are in boxes in my basement. But I'm going to start by moving all the standard paperbacks off my large bookcase. That one has 12" deep shelves with considerably more height to them, so it will take larger books well.

I'll be able to shelve more of my favorite books (and alphabetize them, yay!). That will make it easier for me to write more recommendations for my working doc. And I'll have more space in the basement, which might allow me to set up a better work area to make more bookcases!

Oh, I also picked up a large board to slide under Sebastian's mattress. His boxspring is only five and a half years old, but it has HUGE holes in it - two or three people could literally stand on the floor THROUGH it. It was from Bob's Discount Furniture.

He sanded it and we brought it upstairs. He's on the bed now, reveling in being flat.

My AC has been getting a bit smelly. I'd looked a while ago for an AC-cleaning service, but there don't seem to be any. So today I decided to clean it myself.

I snapped out the cooling vent and washed it thoroughly by hand with dishwashing fluid. I used isopropyl alcohol to wipe down all the surfaces inside the output housing, which was quite a lot of it. Then I got a clean old toothbrush and used it to carefully clean off the metal intake. I also used paper towels with isopropyl alcohol; on some parts of the intake, that worked a lot better.

I used canned air to clean out dust from further in, did some more cleaning all over with paper towels and alcohol, let the alcohol evaporate, reassembled everything, and started it up.

It smells nice and clean and it's running colder. Mission accomplished!

The Pack Pinewood Derby race is tomorrow. Sebastian and I hadn't been able to go to the cutting event, so we emailed a design to one of the dads and he cut it for us. But it came out rather flatter than we'd intended. It's considerably flatter than last year's car, and that was the thinnest car in our whole pack (and the fastest, probably not by coincidence).

But this time I was worried...very worried. We'd picked up another metal stud plate at Lowes to weight it, but unlike last year we didn't get a second smaller plate to put under it; there simply wasn't enough thickness for me to fit another plate under the first. In fact, I had serious doubts that I'd be able to hammer in even one plate without destroying the car. There just wasn't enough wood left to work with. It didn't help that I didn't have the leftover wood that the car had been cut from to use as a support when hammering in the stud plate, as I did last year.

So after some thought I decided to skip the stud plate entirely. Instead, I used as many car-weights as possible. I hollowed out the car, carefully; it made a mess. shavings everywhere, but this year I didn't cut myself and the process went more quickly and smoothly than I'd expected. The weights fit well into the hollow, almost flush with the underside, and were fastened in with little screws. We're still light, so one more large weight will be fastened on top, towards the back. It should look pretty cool. It may produce a bit of drag, but the rest of the car is very smooth and flat, and the top weight doesn't stick out too much I think. Besides, we're not going to beat the cars made by professionals anyway!

Sebastian and I sanded it out back - there were a few flakes of snow falling, go figure - and the car ended up very smooth indeed. Then I used a pencil to put a heavy layer of graphite over the points where the tire hubs may touch the car body. Teri and Sebastian laid down the first paint job. They'll finish things off tomorrow, and I'll screw the top weight into place. Then we'll race. A lot depends on how well I fit the wheels in, of course, but all in all this car seems to have a smaller body than last year's, and it's so close to five ounces that the paint job just might take it over the limit! I'll bring a piece of sandpaper just in case.

I think we'll do well, barring accidents.

I don't want that incredibly annoying encounter in WoW tonight to be the end of my day, so:

Teri complained yesterday that the living room AC smelled bad. She didn't think I could do anything about it. So while she was out, I did some research.

Vaccuumed and cleaned with a toothbrush, vinegar & water; it's amazing how much gunk & fur was in there! Then a little Lysol. Now it has no odor and is much colder. Felt good to have accomplished something!

I also recorded some lullabies for Sebatian. I'll spare you having to listen to those, though. ;D

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I must remember to pick up a leather punch to make new holes in my and Sebastian's belts. I wonder who might sell them?

My phone cross-posts status updates to Twitter and Facebook - but not LiveJournal. There are a few Droid apps for LJ available, but I'm not at all sure which one is best. Any suggestions would be very welcome.

Last night I staple-gunned pipe insulation to the exposed edges and corners of the wooden platform of our bed and Sebastian's bed. I think it worked pretty well. With any luck, we'll never hit our shins against those frames again.

And I have to say, the platforms really worked out well. Our mattress has great support now, and the bed is absolutely, startlingly silent.

Tonight I worked on the platform for Sebastian's bed. I screwed down three new slats across the underside of the two plywood boards that make up the platform, and then screwed down the original central slat, which has a central support. It had never worked right, but screwing it into place made it perfect. I broke two drill bits in the process, and the drill battery ran out of power towards the end, but I finished it off manually. Fortunately the drill had just enough power to make shallow starter holes for the last few screws.

Then I took a cheap flat bedsheet that Teri had bought for the purpose, and stapled it into place - on both sides of the platform, including the underside where it wraps around the edges.

It wasn't an easy project, but I got it done and it looks good. It's certainly MUCH sturdier than the two loose boards were! And it looks nicer, too. Time will tell if it holds his mattress in place; it has tended to creep off the foot of the bed, and all his pillows fall into a trough between the headboard and the mattress. That's what a bed salesman told us recently. But if it doesn't help, I'll buy some of that stuff that's used to hold rugs in place on the floor. That should work!

Next I have to think about a platform for our bed. I'm thinking that the bottom can be a pair of open boxes, kind of like large bookshelves with the back sides made of heavy 1" MDF and turned upwards to support the mattress. The frames can be made of 2"x6" wood, with "shelves" of the same wood across the underside to give support. It would actually have to be in two parts, the size of two twin boxsprings. Cover them with a pair of cheap twin-sized fitted sheets, staple them securely, and we have a nice king-sized platform for our bed at about 1/5 to 1/3 the cost of a commercial one - that is, around $125 instead of $300 - $500.

But things could go wrong, I suppose. In which case I'll be wasting $100 worth of wood. Has anyone else tried to do something like this?

I wasn't really ready for the Pinewood Derby, and we had less time to work on the car than I expected. We went shopping at Lowes for materials on Saturday; the first set races, for our troop, would be Tuesday. That gave us only three days, really, to work on the car.

The block had already been cut at the previous Tuesday's meeting. I'd managed to persuade Sebastian to go with the absolute slimmest design possible; I'm no handyman, but I couldn't help noticing last year that the winners were always the slimmest designs. The design we used was flat on the bottom, and a shallow even arc on the top. I'd guess that 70% of the original block was cut away. The father who was doing the cutting on ours seemed kind of surprised and dubious about it.

The design indicated that we should drill four large holes through the side of the car and fill them with lead (or some other heavy metal). That would require very precise drilling, since there wasn't much wood left to spare. I'd guess those holes were nearly a 1/2 inch across, each! And with nothing but a cheap electric hand-held drill, I was feeling less than confident. I'm really NOT very handy at all (I'd already called my Dad and hinted that we could use his help. He told me it was a father and son type of event. ).
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Any thoughts?

Had I mentioned that our new kitten Widget - well, he's pretty much past the kitten stage now - has been making me pay the price for saving his claws?

He was tearing the liner in the litter-box to shreds every time, so I had to clean it out and wash it every Tuesday. It was disgusting. I tried a lot of different solutions; multiple liners, filling the box more, taping the liners down...all sorts of things. But I finally seem to have worked out a solution.
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Ridiculous, I know, but it's really nice to have taken a horrible chore and made it much less disgusting!

One of our shower curtains was getting pretty grungy. It might have been mold, or soap scum...I don't know. It was a translucent gray-black stain that covered four or five square feet.

It was a decent shower curtain, a $3.99 one instead of one of those cheap $0.99 ones from the dollar store, so I decided to see if it was cleanable. To tell you the truth, money wasn't a factor; I just felt like giving it a try, and since the vinyl was on the heavier side, I thought it might survive the experiment.

First try: Formula 409 and paper towels.

I took the curtain down and spread it on the bathroom floor (it was dry, of course). I squirted it with 409, waited 30 seconds, and then went over it vigorously with paper towels. Result: dirty paper towels, and some reduction in the grime, but the curtain still looked pretty dirty.

Second try: dishwashing detergent and scotch-brite.

I put a few drops of dishwashing detergent on the curtain, wet an old piece of scotch-brite, and scrubbed fairly gently with a circular motion. Result: the grime came off like magic, instantly, with no visible damage to the curtain. The whole thing took less than two minutes. I put it up again, rinsed it off in the shower, and it has been fine for days.

I also found that dishwashing detergent works great for cleaning the toilet, the bathroom sink, and the tub. It just takes a few drops, too!

Jeeze. How do I end up making posts like this?