Ah, the New Year is solidly upon us. All that remains of the now seemingly distant holidays are some stray needles from the tree, stuck to your sock, and an impressive stack of credit card bills. Plus, it’s tax season. Suddenly, that home improvement project that you’d been planning (you know, the two-story addition with exotic hardwood floors, custom windows, Stickley furniture, and a zebra skin rug) seems a tad out of reach. Rather than an extreme makeover, your accountant now gently urges “scale back a bit. How about some new switch plates?” [Read more...]
Our Insider’s Guide to Flipping Off – And On! With Style
Installing Under Cabinet Lighting – A Flash of Brilliance For Your Kitchen
Hearing scary scrabbling noises coming from your kitchen at night? Need some task lighting while slicing and dicing your empty beer cans and rusty nails with your Ginsu knives? Often, the light from overhead kitchen fixtures leaves a lot to be desired. It may be coming from flickering fluorescent fixtures, or recessed lights that don’t quite hit the G-spot (that’s G for Ginsu…). You may even have a sad, underpowered little unit like the one at left, begging to be replaced. Fortunately, if you have upper cabinets, it’s pretty easy to get lit up; the recessed area under most upper cabinets provides the perfect platform from which to light up your world. [Read more...]
And You Thought Halloween Was Over – New Laws on Vampire Electricity
Photo – Verizon Wireless
How to Bend PVC Pipe the Easy Way – PVC Bendit
I don’t have a lot of memories of my dad, but one I do have involves the time we temporarily liberated a stash of orange pvc pipe from a construction site. Don’t ask me why they were orange, or what the statute of limitations on petty theft is. Anyway, my dad made the pipes into a very cool spaceship. Add one racing helment and the next thing you know, I was a total space cowboy. At the time, we were limited to the natural bend of the plastic pipes, but just imagine what we could have done if we were able to bend the pvc just about any way we wanted. It turns out, aside from building hot spaceships, bending PVC is a very handy skill to have for all sorts of tasks, both professionally and creatively. And, we think we may have found the ideal tool to do it with. [Read more...]
Asimo Beware – RoboReel Automated Cord Reel Review
If you’re like me, you live in a constant state of disappointment that more of our world has not been automated. I mean, c’mon! It’s 2012, where the hell are my robots? Oh sure, I carry around more computing power in my smart phone than all the building-sized super-computers of the 70′s, but I still haven’t seen Asimo fetch my lunch or clean my house. All he does is creepily walk around and occasionally fall down stairs. A few months ago, my bleak outlook on automation was brightened by our discovery of the RoboReel, marketed as “the world’s first durable, portable, automatic extension-cord-manager for professional and home workshops.” RoboReel sent us a ceiling and portable model to test out here at HomeFixated, and they have also generously offered to provide a RoboReel of the winner’s choosing to one lucky HomeFixated reader in our August Free Stuff Givewaway! [Read more...]
6 Essential Electrical Tools to Tackle Common DIY Projects
Tired of that pink-painted outlet in the bathroom? Had it with the $4 K-Mart overhead light the previous owners stuck you with? Craving some soft mood lighting in your dining space to replace the buzzing, flickering fluorescent lights? Scared of the dark shadows in the basement, cast by the lone 40-watt bulb? Sounds like it’s time for some electrical expertise! [Read more...]
It’s Not My (Ground) Fault! How to Replace a Sketchy Outlet With a GFCI Receptacle
Living in an area with a lot of older homes, and being widely renowned for my vintage home repair expertise (if only in my own mind), I have ample opportunities to hone my character-rectification skills. Recently, I got a call from homeowners seeking advice on whether to repair or replace one of the three columns supporting their porch roof; the column had quite a bit of rot, and several floor-to-ceiling splits (that would be REPLACE). While there, my eagle eye, keenly attuned to potential safety and/or style discrepancies, noted two corroded, ungrounded, uncovered outlets, which had probably been installed in honor of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s inauguration. [Read more...]
Ideal Circuit Breaker Finder – The Multitool of Electrical Work
Bad wiring. It’s something just about every homeowner discovers somewhere at some point. In our case, I found a multitude of wiring issues. Please tell me who thinks it’s a good idea to fill a ceiling box with live wires and newspaper before plastering over it? Or create a junction of wires without a junction box, inside a wall cavity? It’s like they were trying to burn the house down! To make a long story short, the combination of dubious wiring jobs and a vintage home has meant a lot of electrical projects around the casa. After several dozen too many trips to the circuit breaker box, I contacted Ideal to see if they had a solution for locating circuits. They sent out their Automatic Circuit Identifier, model #61-534, which we promptly put to work to ease the chore of locating specific circuits. [Read more...]
Happy Holidays With An Insane Light Show
Here’s a holiday riddle for you. What do you get when you combine wind power, over 100,000 light bulbs, 21 dedicated electrical circuits, four volunteer traffic controllers and Christian zeal, all in a formerly quiet neighborhood in Utah? One seriously kick-ass light show! This thing makes our local Christmas tree lane look like a Lite Brite toy. [Read more...]
We’re Plugged into the U-Socket USB Electrical Outlet
I don’t know about you, but my husband and I have a lot of gadgets. Off the top of my head, between us we have an iPod Touch, an iPod Mini, an iPhone, a Blackberry, a Flip camera, two laptops, a digital camera, a Nintendo DS, and a couple of Koboos (Canadian eReaders). Consumer, thy name is Jen. [Read more...]
