Life has gotten a strangle hold on me, and as such my updates have suffered, along with the server I setup to host this blog. Fear not though, as I have temporarily taken hold on the wordpress.com servers to maintain updates.
This weekend I will be rebuilding my server (and in the process generating great content for another post here) and hope to be live at http://www.sjschroeder.com again by Sunday evening. That’s the hope at least. Stay tuned.
As mentioned before, it is my intention to grow some vegetables this season. I’ve done a lot of “crash course” reading to make sure I’m not committing the “newbie” mistakes, though I likely still will. Except for the mint, I’ve had a rather successful germination of my first batch of seeds, however I know I started them too early, without enough light and the plants have grown weak and lanky so I may just consider them a loss.
But I’ve discovered soil blocking. I love it. I paid $7 for a cheapy flat which contains the black plastic containers and a little lid to turn it into a pseudo-green house. I don’t regret it, but the $7 only allows for 72 potential plants – a substantial number but when I wish to grow several vegetables, and even more flowers to fill out not only my garden but potentially several other gardens, the costs go up quickly beyond what I want to spend. So I investigated soil blocking where you create compressed blocks of soil that are used to start seeds without need for containers, which help the plants not become root bound and evidently they grow much stronger healthier because of it.
But I couldn’t justify springing for the $35 + shipping soil blocker without having an idea of what I was getting into, so I made my own (see future post on DIY soil blocker). It is not nearly as efficient as I’m making blocks one at a time, instead of 4 or 20 at a time, but it works. One pizza box lid can hold 100 soil blocks which I promptly planted with seeds of the columbine plant, snap dragons, chinese lanterns, and other various flowers. This was only a test, and the soil blocker I made was crude and inconsistent. I’ve since improved it and will be venturing on to make several hundred soil blocks to plant the remainder of the seeds and to start more vegetables for our own garden.
The day was January 19th, 2008. It was a dark and stormy night. Ok, the second part was a lie, but it was pretty frigid in the uninsulated attic with windows lacking panes of glass as the Michigan winter weather blew across the room. Most of the house had been updated from the antiquated knob-and-tube wiring (SCARY!) prior to our acquisition but not all of it.
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Service has been restored after my DNS failed to update.
Phase 1 of the Kitchen remodel is 90% complete.
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I owned my iguana for about two weeks before we realized that the 55 gallon aquarium was not going to be sufficient long term housing for her. I then set out to build her what I thought was an absolutely extravagant cage in my bedroom at my parent’s house. This is what I wound up with:
This cage, however, turned out to not be sufficient for my growing iguana’s needs. She had one interim cage between the one pictured above and the one I’m about to describe. I do have to take a moment to highlight the problems with this enclosure so that the features of the new enclosure have justification beyond the “cool” factor.
Firstly, the old enclosure had lights inside the cage which meant my girl could climb all over them if she pleased. This wound up in a burn that has since turned into a permanent scar on her tail, a problem that could have been avoided with lights external to the enclosure.
Secondly, the access to this cage was… limited at best. The small side was the only opening to the cage, and the floor wasn’t strong enough to stand on meaning she learned quickly that she could hide just out of my reach preventing me from grabbing her for baths and other activities. It also made cleaning the cage a complete and total pain in the rear and as such the cage wasn’t cleaned nearly enough.
Thirdly, the wire screen material I used for the top of the enclosure to allow air circulation actually worked against me for keeping moisutre in the enclosure and it also provided a dangerous way for her to snag her nails which on more than one occasion led to some bleeding. I felt terrible about it then and now feel negligent for even thinking it was a remotely good idea to begin with.
And finally, the biggest issue, is that the cage wasn’t very stimulating. It didn’t provide levels for her to sit at beyond the one, and it limited her turn around room meaning she was cramped at times. Remember, these reptiles grow upwards of 5′ in total length, and while they can contort themselves in relatively confined spaces, its not ideal.
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When we moved into this house, we knew we were getting into some trouble because it had a boiler. For the last year and a half, we’ve had to look at the following:
Note the grody-ness of all of the rust on the boiler. We’ve since fixed the issue that led to the rust, but it still shows. Also note the single bi-fold door covering up the mess. Well, this past week we decided that we’d had enough and opted to replace the doors. Being the thrifty frugal homeowners that we are, buying new wasn’t an option, so we opted to buy used doors from the Habitat for Humanity Restore. For a grand total of $16 and some change, 30 minutes of my time, and some help from my girlfriend, we now have this to look at:
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When the inebriated vagrant broke into our house, he used a portion of the frame from the living room window to smash in the side light next to the front door in order to unlock it. This proved problematic for a number of reasons, the largest being that the window was now missing meaning anyone could do the same as he did.
Our solution was simple at the time, a sheet of luan to cover the opening. Even painted white, this looked like a hack job at best though, and didn’t provide much more security than two 1/4″ pieces of glass. A better solution was needed…
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In August of 2007, we purchased a foreclosed 1916 Georgian Colonial just BEGGING to be rehabbed and updated. It came at the end of our search for a new house in Lansing while my brother and I attended college, and was a diamond in the rough that we believed was mispriced by about $100,000. Fortunately for us, it was cheap and we were motivated, very fortunate considering we had exactly one week to turn it into a habitable house before my brother, friend and I had to start classes.
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