A blog of a variety of projects
Projects that involve reusing materials to repair or repurpose something.
Last year we had our bathroom professionally remodeled. One part of the bathroom that I wanted to do myself was to build the new vanity from a cute dresser. We had seen DIY sites with how-to tutorials for converting a wood dresser into a water-resistant vanity, so we went to…
Last summer we started a long process to resurface our kitchen cabinets and counters to make them both more functional and more modern-looking. We started with a plan that we wanted to do something about our ugly cabinets. My best guess is that the previous owner had tried to stain…
This is a hack for the old model Fiat 500e GPS stand to convert it to a powered phone holder and charger.
This is one of Smith’s “Corona” portable typewriters, manufactured in 1926. At some point, it entered my grandparents’ typewriter store in San Francisco and, after they retired, it entered my grandfather’s basement collection of over 150 typewriters. After he passed away, my dad dug it out of the basement and…
Last year I helped some friends move out of their apartment. They were going to throw out this dining table because it was badly damaged, with some burn marks and a broken leg. It’s a typical Ikea-or-something dining table. I needed a coffee table for our game room, and I…
A while ago, I helped some friends move to their new house. They had one of those Target-brand shelves that every college student is familiar with. They cost about $20, and you can find lots of them for free near dorm dumpsters after the school year ends. The shelf was…
I wish I had taken some more pictures of this process, since it turned out pretty well in the end. Someone who lived in our house before us had an anger-management problem. Doors all over the house have signs of being slammed open or closed, like the dents from knobs…
We have been working on big projects recently, like landscaping our yards, but in the meantime I did a little bit of repair work for a friend. I am trying to post more frequently, so here is a little article about repairing a broken USB drive. A friend of mine…
I played a lot of piano over the holidays, and by January I noticed that a couple of keys were beginning to make a fairly annoying clicking sound when the hammer struck. Opening the piano up, I found that the heads of the offending hammers were loose. Hiring someone to…
