This time around I saw an aquarium stand that I really liked. It inspired me to build one of my own. The idea is to create support columns from 2×4 and connect them on two levels with 2×2. I used carpenter’s glue for each joint and only 1 screw (5 cm long). Note, that some carpenter’s glue can weaken from moisture such as a spill from aquarium. Finish on the outside with a set of very thin tongue and groove wood. You can find cedar or pine for these. I chose to go with pine, because I’ve decided to also stain it. The finish is nailed down with nails that have a really small head (called finishing nails).

The trick here is to make the finishing wood go on a bit higher than the frame, so the aquarium can fit tightly inside of it. I aimed for 2-3 mm all the way around. Next, I took a flat piece of wood that I had laying around and cut out 4 corners. This fit in perfectly as a shelf. The reason I wanted a shelf is because this stand is 75 cm (2.5 feet) and I want to make sure my external pump’s hoses are long enough and the pump does not need to do the extra work of lifting the water higher.

The front needed an extra addition to a frame in order to make a door. I used 2×2 for the support frame and 2×1 for the rectangle door frame. My design was to have the 2×2 support frame be partially covered by the fixed finish and partially by a lip from the door. This way the seam is not all the way through to the inside of the stand. I used two small hinges to attach the doors.

I do not plan to have a knob for the door, because I wanted the door to be hidden. This means that I have to use magnetic latch to keep it closed (push to close, push to open). The reason I chose to stain is because this pine came with parts that are blue. It also has darker imperfections. The walnut stain is fairly dark so it hides the imperfections and makes everything cosmetically fit together. My routine was: 1 coat of wood treatment, 15 min. break, 1 coat stain applied with a sponge, 8 hour break, 3 coats of clear applied with sponge brush with 8 hour breaks and sanding with 220 coarse sand paper in between.

Cost breakdown:
$5 wood for framing (2×4, 2×2, 2×1)
$15 tongue and groove pine finish (2 packages)
$3 door hinges
$1 sandpaper
$1 sponge
$5 wood treatment, stain and clear (polyurethane)

In reality, you will have to buy a lot of wood treatment, stain and clear, because they don’t sell very small quantities. In my case, I re-used it from an old project. You end up using a really small amount. Overall, a total of $30, a day of construction and two days for staining due to long breaks in between.

We finally decided to get rid of the old carpets in our basement and replace them with laminate floor. The carpets had a subfloor, which was a sponge that basically fell apart as we tore it out. This, and the carpet, was a major source of dust at our place.

For the new floor we decided to go with a simple subfloor, which comes in 2 by 2 foot pieces and can be locked together. The bottom part of the subfloor is plastic with a pattern that creates an air cushion between the concrete and the wood. It’s also made in Canada.

The slowest part of this project is to do the final edges. In my case I had to cut the wood to a pattern of our wall, which is made out of stone. There also needs to be about a 1 cm gap between the walls and the wood. Similarly, we laid inter-locking pieces of laminate on top of the subfloor and finished with a baseboard all the way around the room.

The breakdown:
$6 per 2′ x 2′ subfloor
$0.8 per 1′ x 1′ laminate
$5 per 8′ baseboard

For a 10′ x 11′ room it cost us $350 and about a day of work.

Not too long ago I purchased a used LCD tv from eBay. The price was good at $100 for a 27″, but the backlight died within a week of use! After some research I found out that practically no one carried a replacement inverter for this model. The only alternative that I found was done on a 17″ LCD monitor using LED lights. This is where I started.

My tv is a 27″ widescreen, so I figure I need a lot of LEDs. I started with 24 and quickly tripled that. I had to drill a little hole for each LED to put in place. I protected all the contacts with heat shrink wrap and hot glue, which I also used for fixing the LEDs to the tv. Each light takes about 3.5V DC, so I strung six in serial to power it with 24V DC. These batches were put in parallel. The first attempt produced bright lines on the screen, because the LEDs are spot lights (very narrow light beam).

Next logical step was to put little pieces of reflective tape on each LED. At this point you really have to learn to be patient! Unfortunately, I did not like the result. Considering how the tv is constructed, it has 3 films that the light has to go through before hitting the actual screen (pixel matrix glass plate). This clearly wasn’t enough for the LEDs to become diffused. Here is a picture:

My second idea involved a flashlight type of approach. I wanted to use a regular light bulb and to create a cone shape in order to spread the light onto the screen. Initially I wanted to use wood for the prototype, but then I decided to make it even easier by using styrofoam. Styrofoam did not offer the rigidity, but it definitely left the tv very light! The idea is simple: make the cone shape out of styrofoam and then cover the inside with tinfoal to make it reflective.

I had to go through a number of bulbs to get the right tint too. Finally, I found a good energy saving (13 watt) light bulb that produced a good tone of white. Regular bulbs at 60 watts+ get way too hot for this model. To finish things up I used a 5VDC relay, so the bulb would work only when the tv works. Here are few shots:

For more pictures visit my Picasa Page.

I recently launched a new web service for landlords worldwide. It goes something like this…

What if you had to make 8 receipts for your tenant right now? We automatically generate and pre-fill all the receipts for you. For free. All you have to do is print and sign!

While the idea is pretty simple it looks like it’s one of its kind on the net. The service has been getting a good amount of use, so I am looking to invest more time in building it up.

–> Rent Receipt

I currently have 2 turtles. As an owner I constantly look for ways to improve their aquarium life. This time around I decided to make a house for the turtles, which allows them to go out of the water or hide in the shadows from the bright light bulb.

Previous experience told me not to use wood to build the house. The problem with wood is that it changes properties while being underwater and there is no good way to keep everything together. For example, glue might be poisonous and nails can rust. These problems set me on a path of making a house as one solid piece and there is no better material for this than the good old concrete!

You can see the design of the house from the picture. Basically, I dug up some large pieces of styrofoam I had laying around and cut them into shapes. The shapes I glued together with hot glue. The trick is to make the outside of the house with styrofoam such that you can fill it in with concrete. I also had to add extra reinforcements, because styrofoam alone cannot hold the weight of the concrete.

Finally, I filled in the concrete in two parts. I filled in everything before the roof of the house, then I glued the styrofoam shape for the roof to the pillars and filled in the rest.

Total cost:
$5 concrete
$10 glue gun and glue
$1 for styrofoam

Total time:
2 hours to make styrofoam shape
30 minutes to pour cement
3 days to set cement