Here are two free bird house plans I found when looking ideas for our bird house project. These plans had the best directions and diagrams of the ones I found online. In the end I decided on a book from Amazon because I was looking for more options for different species of birds. I’m very [...]
This week The Unplugged Project is Wood and it was the perfect time for John to build some bird houses with the boys (I tried to convince him to build me a chicken coop for the chicks I’m ordering tomorrow but I have a feeling he’ll get moving on that once the birds are living [...]
Our basement has a really nice workbench in it, but for the last few years it has been buried under a pile of miscellaneous tools, nails, screws, project leftovers, and projects that never started. This winter I decided it was time to tackle that area of basement and get it cleaned. The actual cleaning turned [...]
Ethan and Ben have become big Sidney Crosby fans so I decided to look on the computer with them for some pictures to print out. What I discovered was a great way to print your own hockey cards or any other sports card. Here’s what I did. Go to a team website and find their [...]
A few months ago Heather and I had finally had enough of our old, lumpy bed. I was waking up with back pain so bad I had trouble getting into my car and we both were getting lousy sleep. I got out the measuring tape and found my side of the bed dipped 2 inches [...]
Our 2 upstairs bedrooms each have a large window box that my father built. Over the last few weeks Ethan has taken to sleeping in them. Heather came up with the idea of building these into a larger bed and this weekend we put the plan into action. The end results was a very quick [...]
During my Christmas vacation I finally got around to a project I had been meaning to do for a long time. I replaced all our old smoke alarms with new wireless interconnected alarms by Kidde. The alarms were easy to install, but what impressed me the most was how well they worked. The benefit of [...]
A couple years ago I noticed a few tiles loose around our toilet. A month later the entire bathroom was gutted and I had a gaping hole in the floor. A bit extreme? Maybe, but the reason for doing a complete gut of the bathroom is very common in older houses. Here’s what happens: Over [...]
I’ve written a number of posts about how easy it is to build a backyard ice rink. Well, it is only fair that I post the story of my FIRST rink. A lot of work during that first winter has made it much easier the following years. It all started when we bought Ethan hockey [...]
My plans for building a simple, cheap handheld ice resurfacer have move here: How to build a backyard Zamboni
