On Shelves and TV Mounts

Wow, long time no blog, huh?  Much of the reason is because I’ve started a new job with a place called Prime Controls.  We program PLCs (the things that controls pumps and stuff at water/wastewater plants, oil rigs, and even Dr. Pepper!).  It a completely new field to me and its taking a while to get into the swing of things.

But enough about that!  As the title says this is about shelves and TV mounts.  Amy and I have constantly been working on the TV location since we moved into our home.  The only place for it really is on the fireplace, but there are lots of things in the way there. 

So the first thing we did was take the mantle down.  It protruded far away from the wall meaning the TV had to sit on the very end of the TV stand.  One good push from the cat would knock that TV right off to its untimely demise.

With the mantle gone things were good for a while.  The TV could sit far back on the stand and was safe from curious cats.  But the area itself  still created a lot of clutter.  Wire were strewn all about, the stand itself was large and detracted from the natural feel of the fireplace, it just didn’t work for us.

Ideas were tossed all around, we considered knocking a hole in the wall next to the fireplace and making a recessed shelf area where all the equipment could sit so we could get rid of the stand and mount the  TV, but we didn’t want to do anything so drastic to the home.  It didn’t really seem like the kind of thing that was good for the resale value of a home one day. 

Suddenly it came to us.  We already can’t use the fireplace because the TV is in the way (and because we had covered up the hole with Plexiglas to cut down on drafts), so why not build a shelf in the fireplace to hold the equipment?

But no no, it wasn’t enough to just slap some wood in there and call it a shelf, I wanted to maximize the space available to me.  So I talked to a co-worker (and the guy who got me this job), Colin, on how I should cut the wood to get it angled right (he’s been doing a lot of wood working too, so I knew he’d know) and lo and behold, this is the final product!

Yes, I packed it to the hilt with electronics!  But the best part of all, it Amy made a curtain for it to cover it all up!  So with the TV mounted it now looks like this:

  Yes for whatever reason when this house was made 30 years ago they put the fireplace off to the right instead of centering it.  We decided to center the TV on the wall rather than over the fireplace.  It’s hard to tell, but off to the left, behind the wedding photo is a little white cord cover that is filled to capacity with wires.  All in all, Amy and I are quite pleased with the way it turned out, it really brings our living room up to a much more modern condition and feels… adultish rather than college dormish.

On Shelves and TV Mounts

Does Anyone Else Hear the Sound of Water?

This Super Bowl weekend brought the following things:

1) An embarrassment to Jerry Jones as his ultra elitist stadium failed to have enough seating for everyone he sold tickets to (not to mention all the sound, and operations issues)

2) An embarrassment to Texas as our power grid couldn’t handle the influx of people and cold weather at the same time

3) The sound of rushing water and an impromptu lake forming out in my garage

That’s right, when the weather finally warmed up on Sunday, Amy and I were shocked to find that a pipe in our garage burst.  Fortunately, it was not attached to the water heater, but rather it led to a faucet in the backyard.  I had placed one of those nifty faucet covers over it, but apparently it just wasn’t enough to protect this poor little guy.

When we finally discovered the leak it had accumulated about 2-3 inches of water in our garage.  Thankfully, our garage is a step or two lower than the rest of our home so the only thing that got wet was some concrete floors.  After turning off the water to the house and sweeping the water out of the garage I discovered some interesting things.

The first was that the previous owner of this home clearly experienced this problem as there was replacement piece of drywall covering the exact location where the pipe had burst.

The second was a reconfirmation that the previous owner of this house, was not the handiest of men.  That or he always got his repairs done by the lowest bidder, which in this neighborhood is about 10 minutes east, you’ll find a group of very handy, hardworking men who will work dirt cheap all standing outside a gas station starting at 6 AM, and then bought sub-par parts for them to work with.

Here’s a picture of the pipe that burst. 

Now I’d like to point out that the shiny silver pipe in the wall is the faucet I purchased to replace this broken pipe and faucet.  I had to cut off the pipe at the elbow and sweat on a new piece (thanks again Mr. Pait for teaching me how to do that!).  Here’s a picture of the burst  pipe after the fact.

If you can’t tell, that pipe is paper thin, it’s really not the kind of pipe you should use in a location that is going to have to endure cold temperatures, but you could probably get away with it if you at least put some insulation around it.  It only costs 2 bucks for a six foot long section of copper pipe insulation, come on!

Regardless, in its place, I’m putting an anti-freeze faucet.  The concept with this faucet is that every time you turn the faucet off, it empties the pipe behind the faucet preventing the pipe from bursting from the cold (If you don’t quite get it, just google “Anti-freeze faucet)

Unfortunately, since I had to cut off some of the pipe, things didn’t quiet connect.  So I just brought the faucet inside the garage for a little bit until I have a Saturday when I can solder on a little extension.

The final thing Amy and I did this weekend was to take the mantel off the fireplace.  We have our TV there and the mantel is just in the way.  We were hoping to place it higher on the brick, but it turned out that rather than being attached via mason screws, they had actually replaced a layer of brick with wood and nailed into the wood.  So we decided just to put it into the attic until we leave the home or we decide we want it back.

We also decided that we wanted to prevent our cat from crawling into the fireplace, but didn’t want to shell out the bucks for a some sliding glass doors in front of it.  Amy mom’s had the excellent suggestion of putting Plexi-glass to cover the opening, a trip to Home Depot later and here’s the results!

(For those interested, other fun home projects Amy and I have done include putting lights in the attic, putting on a water heater blanket, and if the weather get’s warm and dry enough for us to finish it, rain gutters)

Does Anyone Else Hear the Sound of Water?

Shogi Boards, Stories, Fish Tanks, and Certifications.

  So, long time no update.  Which is kinda strange since I was in the middle of a story and a project, but I hit a wall for both of them.

With the story, I realized that while I had wanted to make a book for nieces/nephews etc., I had just introduced the main character who had just graduated college and was going to get a job.  It makes for a bad kid’s story when they can’t identify with the main character.  Rewriting it so that the main character is more around the right age won’t be too hard, but it will take some time to make sure the story still goes when I want to.  I actually know how the story will end and the climatic…er.. well climax of the story.  Being patient long enough to get there, however, is the hard part for me.

With the Shogi board I hit a major problem.  The method of getting the images onto the pieces themselves have proven… not good.  No matter which method I tried, the images wouldn’t really stick to the wood, and what little image did remain, would make the area around it impossible to stain.  And seeing as how this is supposed to be a log budget project, I’ve been having problems deciding where to go.

Then it hit me: Card stock paper!  I’m going to print the images onto a piece of cardstock then I’ll use an exacto-knife to cut out the shapes I need.  It’s much sturdier than regular paper and won’t rip on me.  Then I can use the cut outs like stencil paper and paint the images I want onto the shogi pieces.  It will apply paint only for the images and allow me to apply a nice stain once it dries.  Perfect!

As for the fish tank, it seems that everyone forgot to mention that you’re only supposed to start off with a couple fish to get the bacteria in the tank going.  Putting so many fish in at once caused my tank to go into shock. So far the following fish have died:

1 blue guppy x 2 (I replaced him and his replacement died, then I learned that I should hold off on buying replacements until the tank settles)

2 Neons

1 yellow guppy

2 Mollies

Making for a total of 7 dead fish (since the blue guppy’s replacement died).  The fancy tail guppy has survived and seems to love to show off for me (though he looks a little aged from the survival).  A single neon, both algae eaters, and the catfish have also survived.  My last trip to PetSmart revealed that my water had FINALLY balanced out from the initial damage so many fish had caused and I have to go ahead to start getting my fish back, SLOWLY.  I think I’ll start off with 2 guppies then work on the mollies and neons in another couple weeks (or month)

Also for those who didn’t hear, I passed my Network+ Certification a month ago and am now working on my CCNA.

Shogi Boards, Stories, Fish Tanks, and Certifications.

Shogi Board Part 2

First of all, I made a slight edit to the materials needed. I realized that I needed 3 - 1/2" x 2" x 3' Pine boards, not 2. The reason being that since the boards are ultimately going to fold in half, I need the 1/2” board on all four sides and not three, as this photo depicts.

The missing side is right where the hinges need to go. If I don’t add the fourth side then the hinges would attach to the top of the board itself and wouldn’t close properly.

The next part of the project was to make the print outs that I’m going to iron to the pieces. I decided that I want people to easily pick up and play this game. For that reason I chose to not use the traditional Japanese characters for the individual pieces. Instead, I have a single letter (or a picture of a crown for the king) to indicate what the piece is and what moves are legal for the piece to make directly under it.

The lines with no arrows indicate that it can only move one space in that direction, while the lines with arrows mean it can move any number of spaces in that direction. I did manage to find a website that gave the proper angles to make a shogi piece (but I can’t find it again) such that I could make the above pieces. Once the shape was made, I optimized the size for something I thought would fit nicely in a 1.5”x1.5” square. You know, something large enough to grab on to, but not so large that it’s impossible to grip it without messing up the pieces in adjacent squares. From that base size, it was just some simple math to find the right size ratio for the smaller pieces (as in chess, the different pieces are different sizes).

Additionally, I think I’m going to label the board itself with the starting location of the pieces (haven’t decided yet).

Again, the idea isn’t so much for authenticity, as much as it is for ease of a first time player. Ideally, I’ll be playing this game with people who have never seen or perhaps even heard of shogi before. The game will be much more fun if you can set it up easily and not have to worry about remembering how each piece can move and which word in a non-Latin alphabet foreign language means what.

Here are the two excel files I made. The file for the shogi pieces includes a second sheet for their promoted side. We’ll how well I do in affixing the promoted side after I affix the non-promoted side. The Shogi Board file has some garbage at the bottom of the page. I’m using that garbage to iron it own to some scrap wood to get the technique down before using it on the real deal. It’s there for you to do the same. If you do use these, remember that you need to print them as mirror images to affix it to the wood.

Here’s the file I used for the shogi pieces

Here’s the file I used for the shogi board

These are both saved in a Excel 2007 format. You might need this patch from Microsoft to open 2007 documents in older versions of Office (assuming you don’t already have it, of course)

The next step is ironing the pieces on. We’ll see when I can do it.

Shogi Board Part 2

Shogi is Japanese Chess

First of all, my Network+ certification training at Techskills is going extremely well. We’re hoping that I’ll be able to take the exam on Monday, but we’re not sure if they’ll let me schedule it that soon.

Now, on with the post!

For a VERY long time, I have desired a shogi board. Shogi, as the title says, is Japanese chess. It’s played on a 9x9 board with 20 pieces per side with similar(ish) rules. But, any time I’ve found a shogi board, it’s cost has been at least 30 dollars and usually was going to cost me another 10 dollars in shipping as well.

So, I decided, quite suddenly, that I should just build my own. I tried to look online to find some form of instructions for building your own shogi board. Much to my surprise, there’s none. Even finding information on what size to make your pieces is non-existent. So here are my instructions that I will be updating as I go (I’ll just add a new post, instead of adding on to this post specifically).

It should be noted that my skill in wood workings is novice (beginner if you’re feeling generous with me). I know how to cut and measure, but I’ve never tried anything like this.

First of all, here’s my list of needed materials.

1 - 1"x8"x4' Pine board

3 - 1/2" x 2" x 3' Pine boards

2 - 3/8" x 2" x 2' Pine boards

1 - Pack of small hinges

1 – 3 pack (at least) of transferable wax paper (the kind you use to make custom t-shirts)

1 - latch

1 - foam pad

1 – fine grit sand paper

Black paint

varnish (color of your choosing)

Here’s the 4-foot pine board. I chose pine because I like the color of it. It’s a nice light color that stains to many colors well (in my opinion).

I wanted to make a 1’x 1’ shogi board, but I realized that 1’ wide planks are very expensive. So, I chose to change the size of my board to 16”x16”. To accomplish this, I selected a 1”x8”x4’ plank and made my cuts at 16”, leaving me with three 1”x8”x16” lengths.

Of course, no plank is ever really the width it claims to the actual dimensions were closer to .75”x7”x16” planks. Even though I knew this from the start, I left it a little extra wide for the next step.

If you look closely, you’ll see that my cuts weren’t exactly 16” their width is slightly different. Since I plan on putting hinges on this so they fold on top of each other when not in use, I want them to be perfectly (or at least very close to it) flushed. The extra width let me shave off the length until I got them to the correct size.

The next step is setting up the 9x9 boxes. I' decided that 1.5”x1.5” squares would be a nice size (making the playing area 13.5”x13.5”)

The best way I found to measure this distance was to come in 1.25 inches from the sides (while your board is 16” of course) and 6.75 inches DOWN from where the two side will join together. The reason for coming from the “middle” of the board is simple. Since the board is 9x9 squares, that means each side will be 9x4.5. Or to put it another way, the middle row will be divided on either side. To make sure the boxes stay the same size and to avoid having a middle row that is either a lot wider or thinner than the rest of the boxes, it’s imperative to measure from the middle to the bottom on each board. I messed up a lot on getting the measurements right and had to do a lot of erasing and remeasuring to get it right. Don’t worry about leaving behind pencil marks, we’ll get them out when we sand.

If you look closely you can see all the lines I tried to erase on the top board (the one I did first). To make sure the lines met up right on both sides, I marked where each line would go on the border and then placed each board flush against the other. I lined up both hash marks with a straight edge and made one continuous line from top to bottom. The 4 dots you see (located on the third intersection as you move in from each corner diagonally) indicate the promotion zones in shogi.

Now that the lines are made, it’s time to make some grooves! Rather than just paint the lines I just made with pencil, I thought it would look really nice if I took my brother’s dremel (thanks for letting me borrow it Andrew!) and use the dremel attachment #192 to make some nice clean rows. In the photo above I had already made the top to bottom grooves (the one that spans both pieces of the board) by placing the two sides together and making one continuous cut.

However, I made two grave miscalculations. The first was that I didn’t make sure that the attachment was completely tight and the depth changed on me in the middle of the cut. I was able to fix it, but it shows at one spot. The second is in the middle of cutting, I discovered that the surface I was using was not level. The table in the picture can come together but the side on the left is higher than the right. It made for some… shallow grooves in the middle.

To make sure the cuts went straight I used a long piece of wood as a guide to push the dremel against (a tip I got from my brother).

Here’s the end result after making the grooves. If you look at the first row down from the top on the left side you’ll notice it looks different than the rest of the cuts. I took a break in the middle of making the grooves. I set the dremel tool down without taking out the attachment or changing any setting. But, when I came back, I was horrified to discover it cutting MUCH deeper into the wood. I ran it over a scrap piece of wood, and after a second it was back at the right depth. I have no idea why it did this. I could go back and use the third 16” segment, but I think it’s good for some of your mistakes to stick around. It keeps you humble and reminds you not to make them again the next time around.

Here’s the same piece after I sanded it. It looks a lot nicer and prepared it for affixing the wax paper to it as well as the varnish. (If you want to see what I’m talking about with the wax paper, check this out.

Here’s both sides sanded and put together for your viewing pleasure, they aren’t lined up right so the lines looked eschewed.

Here’s a little peek into what I’m planning for this project.

Once I varnish the wood, I’m going to attach the 1/2” wood to the bottom of the board to make a storage area for the shogi pieces. I’ve bought some foam that will be glued into the shown area with. The foam will have cut out spots for the shogi pieces to fit into. Well… at least that’s the idea. We’ll see how it goes.

Shogi is Japanese Chess