Kitchen Reno Part One - Design criteria

The house I live is from 1959, and has a lot of original components to it.  The gorgeous pink bathroom with a commercial grade toilet bolted to the wall and everything.  The kitchen is also mostly original.  The oven was but we swapped it out immediately, the fridge too, but otherwise we haven't changed anything

                                            Current Kitchen View

                                                Current Kitchen View

Now, ideally we want to knock out a wall and open the whole 2nd level (of the 4 level split), but for this year that scope is out of the question.  This year's project is the 1st level pink bathroom I mentioned before. However an opportunity has presented itself to redo the kitchen on the cheap with a scope that requires a lot less structural work.  This reno is meant to pull the galley style kitchen into something to at least this century.

There are two things that will allow this renovation to happen.

Cabinets - My parents are redoing there kitchen and all of there 10 year old modular white cabinets are up for grabs.

Another house's kitchen - In my community of Chinook park there are a lot of houses that are the same configuration as my house, and a few that are on the market.  We found a few pics of the kitchens of some of these places online and with one that we liked, we went and checked it out.  My wife and I like the configuration of this place's kitchen

Other house's kitchen

Other house's kitchen

So we measured, took pictures and documented that kitchen and I decided that pending a few added, and a few less details, I am going to build exactly that kitchen in my house using the free cabinets.



Here is the design scope for this project

• Configure the kitchen using the free modular cabinets from parents.  
• Design to accommodate new cooking range (induction), refrigerator  and dishwasher in terms of size, plumbing and wiring.  This appliances can be purchased and installed at a later date.
• Permanent Hood Fan is to be installed
• Flooring will be updated with new linoleum in kitchen and mudroom until whole level is updated with in-floor heating and engineered flooring.
• Vegetable sink on the opposite wall from the sink to be considered
• Larger size Kitchen sink and new faucet to be installed
• New lighting will be required
• Utilities will need to be moved to accomodate new configuration
• 
  

Here are some of the design limitations for this project

• Have to design so that when we open up the 2nd level, that we can pull out the cabinets and reconfigure them into an island.  
• This means we need cheap countertops installed in the interim until this scope can be done.  After the walls are down all new quartz countertops will be installed kitchen wide
• Temporary countertops means I can't finish the backsplash, need a cheap interim option in the meantime
• Limit need to build new cabinets as much as possible

Bioshock Cosplay - Prop Shotgun

You could almost call it making a steam punk prop, but to complete the Bioshock Infinite costume I needed a weapon.  Now it is not an exact looking prop from the video game, and I had considered chopping the gun up for the handle and replacing it with a longer, bigger piece of PVC and some trim for the pump.  Ulitmately, due to time I couldn't try this, but that was a fortunate consequence.  I am very happy with the result.

Here is how the prop started it's life.  As a Nerf Super soaker.  The other wood one is a prop for the holster but I resprayed it later to a straight black.

First thing I did was sand off almost all the tags on the sides of the gun.  I used a 100 grit sandpaper for this to soften a lot of the material up.  Some parts were a bit tough so I used a wood scraper to shave them off.  Then sandpaper to smooth it out.  Here is the result.  Compare the tagging between the pic above and below to see the result.

 Once the guns were sanded, I dropped them in a sink of warm soapy water and dried them up. To spray them I hung them with coat hooks in the garage and hung them from the garage door opener.  The spray I used was a silver that gives a bit of an aluminum texture right from the can!  I pulled the pump handle all the way out, and unscrewed the back cap a bit to get optimum coverage on the threads.  I also tossed some tape on the nozzles.  After paint it is still a functional water gun.

This is what they look like after spraying.  I taped the handle on the pistol to paint it brown but I abandoned this idea like I said and sprayed it all black.

Here you can see the texture of the spray slightly.  After the guns dried all night and all day, the next evening I started to paint them.  I used cheap paints that you get from Michael's, a craft store, in the following colors.

• Black
• Brown
• Gold Metallic

For brushes I used a 

• Half inch wide soft brush, 
• A wide thin brush
• A small brush I use for model painting. 

To apply the paint I would trim with the small model brush to make a nice 1/4" line and then use the larger brush for better coverage.  To avoid brush marks on the final product go over the areas painted with a dry brush to remove excess.  Here is what they look like after the black paint is applied

The brown paint was applied to the pump and the handle.  It is of note the paint was old and did not dry well.  It took 36hrs to dry in the furnace room which is the driest and hottest room in the house.

On the bottomside of the gun I mixed the Gold metallic paint with the brown paint.  The top part paint was coated with a mix of gold metallic and black.  It gives it its luster and changes the color without needing to buy more paints.  I avoided painting all the bolt bits to keep them the silver color. With the mixed colors of paint, the wet paint bunched a lot.  You really have to go over the wet paint with a dry brush to spread the paint and even it out.  For all the paint I only applied two coats of each for coverage.

The final element to painting the prop is the weathering effect.  There are several methods.  One I have read a lot about is mix some black paint with some water and using a finger apply to the surface and get that dirty look in every single crevasse. My method is the dry brush method, and that is where I take the wide thin brush and lightly put on some black paint.  Then brush back and forth on a scrap bit of paper to effectively knock off as much paint as possible.  Drying the brush.  Then rapidly back and forth run the brush over the surfaces and the edges.  The dry brush not only weathers the gun but it also makes the edges and the detailing pop out.  If I applied too much I used a paper towel to rub off excess black. Compare the pictures below to the ones above.

Lastly, to really make the paint stick, and make it usable, you need to seal the paint, and for me I used a clear semi gloss spray and applied 3 coats by hanging it in the garage again.  This way I can still use it as a super soaker and it won't ruin the paint, and you don't have to worry about any accidental transfer with wet hands or anything.

So that's it.  All in all I think I only spent about five hours working on this thing not including drying time.

Calgary Expo Bioshock Costumes

For the 2013 Calgary Expo my wife and I decided to go all out and cosplay from Bioshock Infinite.
May I present Booker Dewitt and Elizabeth Comstock from Bioshock Infinite

 Us with one of the sons of silence.





Above is some of the costumes we wore.  Here are the images from the game that we we used to make the costumes

As a part two of this blog I am going to show you how I painted the gun from a super soaker!

Rain Barrels

I love to garden.  I used to do it with my grandma when I was knee high before she passed.  My parents had a big yard when growing up and it was a way to earn an allowance by mowing the grass, trimming the many bushes and trees and watering.  What started as a chore has become a hobby now.  I really enjoy tracks of the mower in the grass nice and straight.  Trimming bushes and trees into cubes, or round shapes.  Plucking all the weeds from the green and the dirt become an OCD dream.  I enjoy caring for the perennials, trimming the flower heads and cleaning the beds.  My favorite though has to be my vegetable garden.  It is great putting seeds into mud, watching them grow, and bear fruit (or vegetables) and then harvesting it all in the fall to fill up my stores and share with friends and family.

Something else I also enjoy doing is making conservative efforts.  Living my life I try not to be wasteful and find ways to recycle or make my home and lifestyle more energy efficient. I mean I won’t ever get a hybrid car or make my own clothes but I will rebuild my house so it is more energy efficient.  Things like slowly swap to LED bulbs and eventually install solar panels onto my roof to decrease my carbon footprint.  I love the idea of using gray water from the sink to fill a toilet bowl.

Now watering my vegetable garden does tend to use a lot of water.  So in an effort to try to decrease my water consumption, I have undertaken a project to collect rain and snow melt.  We all know about how useful rain barrels can be for water conservation, but one barrel isn’t enough to effect a lot of change based on how often it rains in Calgary, and considering how much water the garden uses.  So I decided that a series of rain barrels would be beneficial.  So that is what I did and am going to do. 

I have 5 downspouts all around the house that I can attach rain barrels to.  It is better though if I set up barrels so that they are tied together such that the water that enters from the downspout into one barrel also fills a second barrel beside it.  The system is sealed to the downspout so if the barrels are full the water just continues down the downspout.  The water travels from one barrel to the other through the out spouts that are tied together with an off the shelf piece of plumbing that ties two spouts and into one output.

To get better water flow from the barrels and make them more convenient to use it made sense to put them onto their own table.  Like a water tower, the higher the tables the better the water pressure.  So I built a simple wood table to house them on.  A hole in the top of the barrel with a plug fitting helps keep the barrels closed for overflow, and open to increase the flow.  The flow is still a bit weak so I may need to figure a better way to get the water out of the barrel.  Possibly an electric pump attachment.

The tie into the downspout came from where we bought the rain barrels which was part of an environmental sale the city puts on throughout the summer months.  The barrels were about $80 with the spouts attached and the downspout attachment.  The attachment had to be cut into the down spout so it sticks in line.  There is a plastic hose that connects the two and had to be glued and sealed to the barrels.  For the winter months you disconnect the hose on the downspout piece and then stick on a stopper piece that closes the hole.

Now I have only done this with one downspout but my intent is to put this onto every downspout I have to harvest as much water as possible for use in the garden.  It does get a bit costly purchasing the barrels and the wood for the tables.  This is a long term goal though.  The idea is the upfront cost will provide later savings in my water bill and more importantly it will reduce how much processed clean water I essentially pour onto dirt to grow things.

I will make a new post to show each barrel set up as I install them