Dirt cheap furniture that looks great

Having nice furniture doesn't have to cost you a bunch of money. Some construction grade lumber, sand paper, screws and some finish will produce some fairly good furniture.

The tools are what usually scare people away.  But generally you only buy a tool once and it will pay for itself over and over again. You can make furniture with a hand saw and a screwdriver, although somewhat more difficult than with a well stocked garage.

I've built a fair few pieces of furniture since moving into my house two years ago. Most of it out of wood that was stashed under my garage by the previous owners. Mostly I built it on the fly and didn't finish it 100%. The pieces I did take the time to sand and apply finish to looked a whole lot better then cheap Walmart furnishings.

Another little utilized fact is most home improvement stores will cut lumber for you. Making the project more or less just measure, sand, screw and finish.  For under $100 you can buy a reasonable drill/driver.

The project I tackled over the last few days was a laundry table we had quickly built when we moved in. It was constructed from 2x6 construction lumber we collected from somewhere and a piece of furniture grade plywood. I don't have the before pictures, but if you are interested in seeing the progression from a stack of miscellaneous lumber bits to the final product then I will document the process a bit better

I started by disassembling it and moving it outside where it was sanded down to 400 grit and stained. I added some 2x4 braces to stabilize the legs and a shelf  for detergent. I finished it with wipe on poly urathane and left it in a garage for a few days to get rid of some of the fumes.

Most of the lumber here was left overs or throw away lumber. The only things I paid money for where stain, poly urathane, sand paper and screws/glue. The best part about what I did pay money for is I have enough left over to do more projects

Orange cleaner update

Well, after many months I have finally come to a verdict. This stuff is stupid strong. It ate the foam head off of my mop, use caution when applying it to things that may be sensitive to solvents. It will destroy toilet rings and any number of heavily soiled areas.

But again proceed with caution when using it.

Operation advanced compost

  Composting is hard. Turning, watering and moving the finished compost.

That being said, I have come up with a design from mostly materials I have on hand for a tumbling composter.

The material list is as follows

2x4 lumber, various lengths (recycled)

wood screws (mostly salvaged)

1 55 gallon plastic barrel (free acquisition)

Casters (salvaged)

A hasp and latch ( salvaged)

Hinges ( salvaged)

The basic design is simple, a plastic barrel turned on its side, a way to roll the barrel and a place to put the compostable material in.

The basic frame is a box with one brace missing so that a wheel barrow can be put under for emptying the finished compost. As with most things I build it is over built (mostly free materials let's you max out the durability of a build).

The rolling system is made from 4 casters that I acquired with some steel shelving. Rather than spending a ton of time drilling a hole to bolt them in, I drilled a hole that was undersized and threaded the wood with the caster studs. This isn't the best method but it will work until it's time to upgrade the unit.

The hole was cut by drilling holes in a line until the blade on my reciprocating saw would fit then, cutting the hole to its finished size. 

The hinges were off of a standard household door, blocks of wood were screwed to the inside of the barrel to support the hinges and latch.

I live in a dry climate thus ventilation was made by drilling out the caps on the top of the barrel to 1/2 inch until I could determine if additional vents were needed.

The final steps are simple, once you finish building fill up the composter with a 25-1 blend of carbon  to nitrogen material. the definition of carbon material and nitrogen material will be covered in another post that I have Back logged for quite some time as my computer crashed and I lost the all inclusive compostable material list I had been working on whittling down.

Winter, your house and you.

Winter time has been the biggest challenge for my house hold in past years. the age of my home doesn't make it any easier. the first winter we were here our furnace went out, this lead to a discovery of just how expensive using electric heating solutions  is. This post and any to follow are going to be about winterizing various components of your home for maximum heat retention. some of these can save you money year round by making some of your systems work more effectively thus making them cheaper to operate. As with most of my postings there will be the usual free cheap and expensive sections, although it is hard to do much for free when it comes to home maintenance I will put in my share of effort in finding method for you to utilize.

The keywords for this post are: air leakage , radiant heat loss.

The principle of heating your home is keeping the hot air where you want it and the cold where you want it. Thus if your home leaks cold air in, you furnace will have to work twice as hard to heat. Air sealing is a method where you reduce the amount of exterior air from entering your home thus keeping the tempature fluctuations low. Weather stripping around doors and caulking around windows are the most common methods. I personally use plastic sheeting create an air gap between the cold air outside and the warm air inside. In my case I could see the plastic sheeting inflate as the cold air moved in and was stopped. I would rate all of these methods on the cheap side if things and you can do them spread across the warmer months.

You own a water heater I'm sure, but is the heat from your water heater being retained throughout the system?  If your water heater is warm on the outside then the answer is probably no. This can be fixed by a trip to your hardware store which will probably stock insulation blankets made for water heaters, while you are there pick up some pipe insulation as well. Because losing heat into the air is not always a good thing. This also fall into the cheap section, less the $100 bucks over the warmer months to add lasting savings to your home.

Zone isolation, reducing the area you are trying to heat by closing off the least used rooms from the main area. By heating less area you will have lower cycling of your heating system and use less over all energy. This can be achieved by closing doors and putting a towel at the bottom. Having rugs on hard surfaces will help with heat loss through the floor.

Another common theme you will see is dress for the season. As it is said you can always put in more clothing. Blankets and sweaters will help to reduce you energy costs by allowing you to lower the tempature in your home. Cats and warm beverages are a commonly employed method in my home as well. Tea is inexpesive, coffee is slightly more expensive  but may boost your productivity.

The most expensive of my methods is adding insulation to exterior walls. Blown in insulation is the simplest method as you can drill holes large enough to fit the hose in and give it all it will take. The ABC method, or attics crawlspace and basements are where much of your tempature shifts will come from. They often have large seams where they are joined to the home and will benifit greatly from any extra insulation you can give them.

Orange cleaner

My orange based clean has finally finished fermenting. The result is a slightly tangie but super effective cleaner. I used it on everything I could think of and thus far it's left it clean and free of weird residue. It disolved weird buildup in my bathroom and left my floors squeaky clean. It took care of my coffee oops from earlier today. Short of trying to disolve oil from an engine block I would say it is on par with commercial cleaners.

Slow progress

The blog is currently at a stand still, I'm working on devising a new and exciting series of content. The cloning section was a big hit judging by the views but there are only so many ways I can present putting plants in water and waiting.

  So far I have received 200 views, I thank you all for taking time to stop by and read some of the things Ive posted. I'm not sure if there is any other content I am not showing that you would like to read, If there is them by all means let me know by commenting. If I don't know about it, I can play around with experiments and present the results. there are only so many ways I've found to help you save a bit of cash and have a good time doing it.

the cloning experiments have been a great success, all but very few plants survived, Most that died were due to forgetting to contain humidity around the plant and they dried out. the orange based cleaner still smells like oranges and is fermenting under the sink. Ill find something super hard to clean to use it on and present the results in a future post. The amazon mechanical turk experiment is going well and I am almost to my first investment through lending club. The other money generating methods are not viable unless certain criteria are met. Ive been playing around with another one called swag bucks but It is difficult to actually earn points and when you finally have enough to use them they are only payed out in gift cards. The post on smart phone use and money savings didn't get as many views as I would have thought so there may or may not be a follow up post. the budget leakage was a median post and I am unsure If you want to hear more about this.


This is it for the first progress update on the blog as a whole. stay tuned for the next post and comment on what you would like to see in the future.

making technology work for you: part one

The evolution of technology is mind boggling. cars have more computers then the first N.A.S.A space shuttle and we can carry infinite amounts of information in our pockets. Although I will not knock you many hours of candy crush and aimlessly watching cat videos, I will however point out that you can utilize that smart phone you pay so much money for every month to do a  wide array of things outside email, app games and Facebook.

   This Series of posts is targeted to those unaware of the capacity of one smart phone as it pertains to the main subject of this blog.


Coupons: you can download them through apps on your phone and use them at many stores. This being said I will remind you that just because you can get 200 tubes of tooth paste for a penny a peice that you shouldnt do it as it make as much sense as an addition hole in your head

Bar code scanning: your phone is capable of scanning bar codes and this can be used to find better deals on things. the amazon app actually has a feature that allows you to scan the object itself and it will find it on amazon.

Inventorying your pantry: you can scan the bar codes right from your pantry and even build shopping lists and weekly menus from what you have in your cupboards.

Note taking: This is something I use often as it will sync my notes onto my google+ account and onto any devices using the note taking software.

Checking your heart rate: I honestly was surprised by this function when I upgraded my phone recently. It does do it and although shaky at time it does it ok

Tracking your daily steps: got that Fitness goal in mind? your phone can help you with that.

Online Banking: Many companies have an app for Online banking. I personally use USAA, yet another perk of being a veteran is USAA's online banking app which I can use to not only check my accounts but also pay my Insurance through them in one go. Not to mention they have Bill pay, Investments and a Variety of other services


The only limitation is what Apps they come out with to accentuate the phones features. If you would like to read more on this post a comment in the comment section and I will start reviewing phone apps that I have found useful.