We are expecting a new addition to our family, and no, we are not getting a pet!
My wife is now two months pregnant, and we are excited for the upcoming arrival of our next child. The baby is due around the end of April 2011 and we have lots to do to prepare for his or her arrival…
What’s wrong with that picture? If you can’t tell, click on it and have a closer look…
There is no clearance around the heating ductwork!
There has been quite a few bone head things that we have found around the house since we moved in, but I think that this one takes the cake as the most foolish and potentially dangerous. Unfortunately it is something that our inspector did not pick up on, and something that I was not aware of.
We had a contractor come through to look at possibly doing some work on one of the rooms in our house. He took one look at the cardboard taped around the duct work and told me that I needed to take it off right away, or at least before we fired up the furnace again for winter.
I was told that for safety there needs to be at least two inches (2â€) of open space / clearance around the ductwork. For some reason the cardboard in our basement was actually taped to the duct work!
The reason why there needs to be the 2†of clearance around the ductwork is so if there is a catastrophic failure or problem with the furnace and the ductwork heats up dramatically there is a better chance of ductwork not catching the house on fire! The cardboard would provide a perfect fire starter, don’t you think?
Maybe the previous owner had put the cardboard on to prevent noise transfer or something, but I don’t think it’s worth the safety risk, so the cardboard came off tonight…
I’m visiting a mate at the moment who wants to turn the huge shed on their property into the “Ultimate Man Caveâ€â€¦
The shed is 45’ x 20’ high with 13’ ceilings (13.5 metres x 6 metres with 4 metre ceilings). In addition that that area there is also an annex at the back that is used for storage and will continue to be used as such.
They’ve had a good start with picking up gear for the man cave. So far they have acquired:
They’ve also got a line on a dart board and possibly a pool table. Of course I reckon no man cave is complete without proper man cave signs, which will probably need to be custom made (I reckon a man cave neon sign is a bit excessive, I prefer the wooden variety).
It’s a huge area to work with and really quite a dream space to work with. The walls are partially covered with plaster board / drywall. There is also ample power points in the shop and cable television has been run into the shop. The future man cave is within range of the wireless network from the house, although it might benefit from a wireless signal extender (like the Hawking HWREN1 Hi-Gain Wireless-300N Range Extender) mounted on the wall closest to the house. In one corner it looks like there has been some plumbing roughed in for a small bathroom / toilet.
We’ve been inspired with man cave ideas by sites like:
But we feel like we at a bit of an impasse with what to do in setting up such a large area as the ultimate man cave. So we wanted to as you …
If this was yours, what would you do to make this space into the ultimate man cave?
After a minor mishap that involved a slipped screw driver and a few extra holes while installing the shelf, we have finally finished and mounted the wall mounted photo shelf that our daughter is using as a bookshelf in her bedroom.
We described how we built the self in the Build a Wall Mounted Photo Shelf Article. Our daughter loves the shelf and quickly went to work putting as many books as she could on it.
So that it could hold as much weight as possible we mounted it directly into two wall studs using 2 inch wood screws. Unfortunately screwing it into the studs left it looking lopsided, so I put one screw on the right side of the shelf into a drywall anchor. We then covered up the end of the screws with white screw hole plugs that seemed to do the trick pretty well.
We placed the bookshelf at the head of our daughters Ikea Hemnes Daybed. Given the fact that the books are always in different places come the morning I can guess that she is using the book shelf a lot…
