Making it home

On my other blog, I (sporadically) post about topics of interest to me as a professional maker of things.

Naturally, a house is the end-all-be-all of project muses for someone like me. A Twitter friend said "Get ready for the projects to start lining up!" and my response was, simply, "I've had the projects for a long time; I just needed a house!"

So, here are the things that *I* will be working on in the early days of prehabitation:

• Ventilated catbox- I've wanted this since the first time a cat took a dump in my home. I have a fairly elaborate scheme in mind; I was hoping to piggyback onto the dryer vent but I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen. It turns out to be somewhat difficult to engineer a system in which: 1. the dryer doesn't blow hot air into the catbox; 2. the catbox doesn't blow stank into the dryer; and 3. fire hazards are minimized. Oh well.
• Bookshelves- my one remaining hoarding behavior (at least, until I have a garage again; we'll see how THAT goes) is books. I buy them compulsively, which is not unreasonable since I read two or three a week, or more. I always buy used, and strive for bargains- the Boulder Public Library has a small used books shop (honor system only) where paperbacks are $0.25. At any rate, we're planning a fairly elaborate bookshelf modeled after, well, a bunch of them out there on the interwebs. It'll also give us a place for our records and record player. Finally.
• Yard work- already. There's a big raspberry patch in the backyard that needs love- lots of it. It hasn't been maintained in quite some time by the look of it, so I'll have to go in and excise the non-raspberry plants, the old growth, and all the debris, so the new shoots can get their grow on for the rest of the summer, and then I'll have to put in some supports to hold them up.
• Electrical work- there are a few places where light switches don't do anything, and a few light fixtures missing, and a few that don't turn on when the most likely switch is flipped. I'll have to sort that out while there's nothing in the way.
• WTF pipes- in the sunroom, there is a pipe that comes up from the mini-basement (where the furnace and water heater are) and one that comes down from the second floor, where nothing in particular is, and they both just...stop. I need to figure out what they are and if they can be removed.

As I work on these projects I'll post action shots and results. Maybe someone else will benefit from my work, and maybe a fun story will come from some of them.