Archive for Home Projects

DIY Glass Whiteboard Turns Whole Wall Into Creativity Space

// January 24th, 2012 // No Comments » // Design, Home Projects

Love this, though I don’t really have a place (or need really) for it in my home office, though I think my son would get a kick out of it as well.

I could see this being utilized in a lot of offices and home offices alike though.

This DIY Glass Whiteboard Turns a Whole Wall Into a Space for Creativity

DIY Slim PVC Cable Management Keeps Your Computer Cords Out of Sight

// August 13th, 2011 // No Comments » // Home Projects

I’m posting this one to the blog as much as a reminder and motivator for myself. I love keeping things neat and tidy. Just don’t look behind our living room home theater setup. Lifehacker always seems to have a few projects we’d like to tackle around the Keefer household. This is definitely one of them. I can think of at least three rooms that would benefit from this: my office, the living room and our master bedroom.

Anyway, I would love to give this a try in the coming weeks (or more likely months) at least for my office.

I may try to document it—or minimally take some before and after photos. Anything to clean up cable clutter is a wonderful thing in my book. Cheap and easy help too.

Upcycle an Empty CD Spindle into a Desk Lamp

// January 30th, 2011 // No Comments » // Hacks, Home Projects

Upcycle an Empty CD Spindle into a Desk LampGood ol’ Lifehacker — always has great.. well life hacks. This one takes an old DVD or CD spindle and with a few parts from the hardware store, you’ve got some nice ambient lighting.

I wouldn’t mind trying my hand at this one, but you have to make sure that wraparound print is done right. That would probably be the most difficult part of the project:

Upcycle an Empty CD Spindle into a Desk Lamp

Float IKEA Bookcases For Maximum Shelf Space With Zero Footprint

// January 16th, 2011 // No Comments » // Hacks, Home Projects

I’m all about having maximum storage space, along with floor space. This Ikea hack from good ol’ Lifehacker is pretty sweet. Thanks as always to Lifehacker for their sweet ideas (or at least passing them on).

Float IKEA Bookcases For Maximum Shelf Space With Zero Footprint

Bicycle Work Stand for $10 in 5 Minutes

// July 21st, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Cycling, Home Projects

This is pretty cool. It’s obviously not as sexy as a nice Park Tool professional work stand, but pretty cool and pretty cheap.

Bicycle Work Stand for $10 in 5 Minutes

Consolidating Our Den

// September 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Home Projects

So recently, with the pinball machine vacating the premises (*sniff*), we’ve been working on decluttering the office, partially by getting rid of some stuff, but also just setting up the room with more stuff that makes more sense for the space. I love the space of the cheap-fiber board L-shaped desk, but with the windows around the room, and a half wall, the L-shaped desk’s positioning is fairly limited.

That being said, we’re looking at some new ways to clean up the office, and one way is by researching building a custom desk that makes more sense for the space, while also saving some cash and ultimately getting a higher quality. In our quick research tonight, we found this cool article linked below.

How To: Build a Custom Ergonomic Computer Desk

We may do something similar — utilizing piping as the base of the desk.

Uses for WD-40

// June 28th, 2009 // No Comments » // General Posts, Home Projects

This weekend, Amanda and I got a email forward about the myriad uses for WD-40. It is a very useful compound, though WD-40′s manufacturers whittled down the email forward’s list of recommended uses a bit:

Uses for WD-40

Where did the weekend go?

// May 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Home Projects, Personal Crap

Seriously, where did the weekend go? Oh wait, it was another one of those weekends spent busting our butts around the house. All of yesterday and this morning was spent installing the nursery wainscoting – utilizing three different saws (miter, jigsaw and circular). We took a little bit of couch time, but then it was back to caulking and cleaning. Unfortunately, the bike never left the garage this weekend, but it definitely will later in the week and next weekend.

I need a weekend after my weekend.

Wainscoting Panels Up. More Work Tomorrow

// May 2nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Home Projects, Personal Crap

So this is definitely turning into a full weekend project. Starting last night, we got the supplies to install wainscoting in the baby’s room, including the panels, but also a compressor and a brad nailer. We didn’t actually do any work on it last night – just got the supplies needed to start first thing this morning.

I skipped doing a bike ride this morning to work on the project. As I write this quick post at 10:15pm, I was really hoping we’d be completely done with the project, save painting, but alas, we’ve got a lot to do still. We started out this morning realizing the compressor we bought had a faulty valve, so we had to take another trip back to Lowe’s to get that replaced. After that, it was probably close to 11am. We got a single wall finished before lunch, when we went to downtown Raleigh for lunch and to borrow Bret’s miter saw for making the 45 degree cuts for the chair rail.

As it turned out, we did not get around to that. That will be first thing tomorrow morning that we play around with the miter, prior to cutting our chair rail pieces. Then, we get to put the baseboards back in place, and then it’s onto paint.

It’s been slow going overall – lots of measurements, back and forth between the nursery and garage, and a bit of frustration again seeing how truly not squared our walls and floors are. We luckily made it through with enough raw materials and have learned some with the new compressor. But man, it’s been a lot of work.

In the end, I’m sure it’ll look great for little Tyler’s nursery, but it’s definitely not going as fast as I would have liked and hoped. I’m

24 Rooms Tucked Into One

// January 27th, 2009 // No Comments » // General Posts, Home Projects, Personal Crap, Tech

24 Rooms Tucked Into OneWith our recent initiation of moving the office into what was the game room, we were striving to declutter, maximize space and utility. But man, our efforts have nothing on Gary Chang, a Hong Kong architect who has setup his very tiny living area into a very customizable and variable space. It’s so cool, innovative and amazing at the maximizing of [small] available space in the guy’s apartment.

24 Rooms Tucked Into One

Box of Tricks (Gallery)