carbon based design technologies

3/4″ scrap mdo! What more can i say!

i forgot i even made these! a few summers back, we had a bounty of peppers n thangs we’s done did grew, so i figured it would be a pretty bad-ass christ mass gift if i made home made hot sauce – complete with label! – for all the friends and fam! reports came back quick that everyone loved the roasted flavors, while the habenero’s really brought some flame to the forefront!

i need to make some that again! that was pretty good stuff…

so there is a reader submit section in my favorite magazine – this old house – and apparently my idea was good enough to post on the site! course, the page is buried way the hell deep into “total nerd level” of readership (ie, not front page by any means) but still, its nice to think that the magazine you like to read because you respect its tips and tricks, in-turn respects yours enough to post ‘em!

voyage onward here!

you know, where you keep cats. because they’re easy to control. right.

no so actually, whenever it got freezing cold at heidi’s her cats – Mitch, after Mitch Headberg, and Nikka (prounced “NEH-cuh”, after no one) – would congregate around whatever radiator was available. however, because their ridged tops are not really conducive to cat butts, they could only ever get so close, so heidi asked i make some sort of platform for them to chill out… er… warm up on.

voila!

mitch, giving the new shelf a very luxurious test-sprawl.

nikka, giving it an investigative strut-return-and-strut-again.

both made from reclaimed wood.

so ive been thinking it might be nice to break up the heavy pattern action of the wallpaper. even though its a small room, mind bending patterns might not be the most *ahem* friendly in the morning, nor for any other time when youd want to shower. you know shower, pleasant time, peace, whatever.

so ive drafted up some sketches of what id like using some found imagery on the net. basically its a three panel triptych with the widest being the middle that runs the length of the shower. the images dont necessarily have to match, so much as give the impression you are showering in an awesome space.

so at SOME point im going to pull all this houses carpet. this lovely splotchy salmon brown weird carpet. and actually reuse it in the man-basement. but anyways! so it needs to come off everywhere its stapled 417 times-per-square-inch to the mostly-beautiful hardwood floors beneath. (and just to qualify that last exaggeration, there are not one, not two, but three distinctly – as in “takes three different guns” distinctly – different staples holding this carpet to just the landing. MAN my knuckles were KILLIN me by the time id finished what felt like a 10 square foot section – and thats just the landing!)

so heres the landing, as seen from the big room, with the little closette just visible on the right. and whats this?!?! giant black stain from hell. and its deep. like sanding for years deep. like all you can do is replace the wood deep. yeah. roof leaked, and there the water sat, replenished, until them roof guys came and patched up. and so now the boards are toast.

any one with any amazing ideas is more than welcome to send em my way!

fudge.

ive sanded out most of the textural differences, but the discoloration runs more’n skin deep, my friends.

more’n skin deep.

theres this LITTLE teeny tiny closet (closette?) thats assumedly for linens, and was gross and dark and weird and coated in pink fluffy wallpaper, and approaching-mustard yellow painted shelves.

right.

pulled them shelves… and painted that beotch right quick!

then sand the crap out of (and off of) the shelves and whack em back in!

yeah, picked up some big-ass letters from the junk heap at work, and stuck ‘em on my wall in my living room. +cheesy purple christmas lights = awesomeness.

and then wit dem purple sizzurp lights:

visually very messy – as well as very actually messy from sitting in the rain and mud and such – i will freely admit. but there is something cool in there, somewhere, i just need to figure out how to coax it out without spending 5 arms and 3 legs to get there. i think the secret – like a good paint job – is in uniformity; get the lighting even and equi-distant, and / or get them faced!

so, basically, when i moved in to haus wynbrook, the basement was owned by the washer machine. and i dont mean like “he pays the mortgage” kind of own, i mean like PWN TO OWN, chair-across-the-back, leaping from the ring-side with knee-to-face double whammy kind of own.

why?

because the damn thing would always overflow. see, for like 50 years that thing drained directly into the sink which, im guessing, after 50 years, would and did get clogged with all sorts of lint. but so it was, every load i did, meant a soaked basement. not like tides-of-destruction, biblical-tale style water, but enough that youd take that last step off the bottom of the stairs whilst rounding the corner *SPLISH* and immediately regret it.

solution?

pipe the damn thing into the main waste pipe. thats, oh, 6 inches to the washers left. thats also luckily recently replaced with 3″ pvc, which means normal human tools – as apposed to trying to tie into 1,000 pound cast iron pipes! what the hell! who invented that idea!?!?!

the before:

and the after:

yes, i made that thing, that haloed beast, that angelic creature. oh i revel in its beauty, perhaps the most manly thing i have ever made. i mean, ive worked on car engines, built houses and smoked cigars. and its by far the most manly thing i ever made. ‘things got more one-directional flaps, traps, pipes, bits and bobs than a small hardware shop. and man, that was fur-sure a crash course in pvc-plumbing. but it works!

attack of the matte black again! and red. and yes, this post is really only about the paint job that i put on a 20 dollar second-hand vacuum cleaner. yes, all my coworkers think i am insane.

before:

but look how much better it looks! and faster! i did, incase you wondered, clean the BUHJEESUS out of that thing which anyone who has ever painted anything knows is pretty key to a decent paint job. also helped that thing gain about 4 more horses, i swear!

heres my newest table. erm,… it was designed to hold all my media stuff including my records. its made of 3/16ths 1.5″ angle iron, mig-welded together, and sports an annoyingly rare (read: hard to get hands on) all birch plywood top and shelf, which was quarter rounded and tung oiled. ill probly expound on this one later (im super tired right now, and about to hit the sack) but for now, im just lobbing a bunch of photos on line.

enjoy!

another thing we knocked together at work with some spare wood i literally chopped out of old pallets. REALLY raised flower beds, 4 for the back, 3 for the front, all hand stained and (for a while) actually playing host to herbs & flowers! don helped me put em together, while camilo helped me knock up the little “7″ brackets.

heres a little something don and i knocked together using some scrap bits i had laying around. its intent and current use is to give my main bass / guitar amp – 1983 acoustic control corporation b115 – some mobility while in use, and provide effect pedal and cable storage when not. thing works great. thanks don!

not sure how this slipped, but i never ever ever posted completed photos from my preview. my bad! anyways they have been doing me wonders, helping maintain some semblance of sanity throughout the office, and generally keeping things upbeat.

yes i straddle my sub, but atleast i HAVE a sub at work, which is something to speak of.

i threw all my curve balls into this one. now its sort of rattle-y. no but, for real, i did all the maths i could do, all the cross bracing’s, stuffings, spacings, glueings, and what not that an amateur speaker builder could do for these guys. even got me a router so i could round the front edges. i mean really! two 8″ 12 ohm Peerless India woofers wired in series, with a 3/4″ large range Dayton Neodymium tweeter wired in parallel; bass output – per that kick ass tweeter- is lacking. takes an eq with bass on full to even out that sucker.

havent made the second one yet, tho. got all the parts. just was underwhelmed by the outcome, so… maybe ill try to get it done over xmas oh-10 break? yeah…. look for a walk through. might try a three subs in series… should lower impedance to… 4 ohm? i think thats right…

now these are some nice speakers. tang band 3″ bamboo cone, with aluminum “phase plug” that looks like a bullet nose. enclosure made of CnC milled MDF, in six layers and of 3 shapes (similar to the 4×4′s, face, middle and back). currently they are painted blood red, and fuel my tunes in my office. im a super poor documenter (i could like never do an instructable) only i cause i would only ever be able to remember to photo at the end, or like at one random point. below is post enclosure design (with 4.5 inch square foot, maybe .125cuft enclosure), and testing, and now these are the final to-be-glued-at-some-point pieces, but of course i don’t have any images of the glueing, sanding, primering, painting or installation process.

last spring, i decided that some garden boxes would be a good idea for the house, a good learning experience for me, and they would be a good place to grow some hot hot habenero’s.

there are officially two sets of Fridge Face Brand Fridge Face’s in the world, one in Baltimore, Maryland, US, North America, the other in Oslo, Norwegia, Scandinavia. the norwegian owner just sent this photo, saying “my flatmates made this one, so i added the ‘cool!’ part!”

wicked.

heres a nice cross section of what we grew (pepper wise) this summer!

thats: serano, habanero, old jap, young jap, cayenne, habanero, cayenne, and in the background is the garden boxes i built and from which they sprouted!

home made pizza is something weve been working on (especially just getting it round! it so wierdly hard!) but uh, anyways, yeah, this was probly our best yet (as far as final outcome went); trader joes garlic and herb dough hand rolled, fresh tom’s, crushed tom sauce, fresh basil (from OUR basil plants, mind), schredded fresh mozzarella, fresh local goats cheese crumbled about, slivered bell peps from our garden, fresh japs from the garden, brocolli and i think thats it.