DIY Life

To kick off the updates for my circa 1969 family room, I started with a new, built in espresso bar. I started with a new cabinet, added some plumbing, wiring and topped it off with a concrete counter top. The counter cost about $100 in materials and took about two weeks from start to finish. Rather than re-create the book in blog form, I'll walk you through the process and try to share my experience with this entertaining project.

If you've got an idea that needs some advanced manufacturing techniques, Ponoko might be just what you've been looking for. This wine rack is a nice sample of what they can do. Each piece is cut by a powerful laser, and shipped flat. On arrival, you assemble it - just like one of those wooden dinosaur models.

For now, they're offering custom laser cutting for your product. If you want to get started, grab their download their making guide. To create your design, you'll need some vector graphics software like Adobe Illustrator. You'll need to create a login, but then you'll have to wait a while - the site is getting so much traffic that the login page reports that it's too busy to me in... yet.

Now that we've been in our new house for a month or so, my home theater room is starting to take shape. I'll be writing more on it as I slowly transform our finished basement into a fully functioning battle station, er, home theater. because I'm using a front projection system, normal ceiling lights can't be used at all during shows. Recessed lighting offers the perfect combination of room filling lighting that's directed everywhere but the movie screen. Here's an easy way to to install lighting in a pre-finished room.

I've been eyeballing this aptly named tool for a while. My new house has a few extra walls, so I finally had an excuse to buy one. There are actually two versions of the 'Functional Utility Bar' made by Stanley. The normal FUBAR is a bit lighter, smaller and the prying end isn't divided. For an extra $10, I opted for the FUBAR Xtreme. It's a bit heavier than a medium size sledge hammer.

At the demand of my wife, I've been removing crusty old popcorn ceiling texture from our new house. It's a messy process, but a few tricks can make it (and cleanup) an easy task. If things go well, you'll end up with a fresh, clean ceiling.

Chris Anderson put together his own Predator style R/C airplane drone that can actually go on autonomous picture taking missions. After strapping a 7 mega-pixel Pentax camera to it, he installed a nice small GPS guidance system.

Once the landing gear is disengaged, the GPS system takes over and directs the planes through up to 20 predetermined waypoints. Chris points out all the details, but you'll need some R/C experience before attempting this project on your own.

NOTE: don't depend on R/C airplane insurance to cover it, autonomous airplanes were specifically excluded from last membership form I checked out. [Via]

While I wait to move into my new house, I've been trying to visualize some re-modeling for the new digs. I created floor plans with Microsoft Visio, but it'll cost you and it's only good for 2 dimensions. A while back, Google released a free 3D drawing software called Sketchup. The pro version will cost you some green, but Sketchup is free - and it's really, really easy to learn. Even though I was missing a few critical dimensions, I managed to create this model in about 15 minutes of messing around.

You can download Sketchup here. Trust me, it's definitely worth the time to do the short tutorial that comes with the software.