Tiling

Tiling a room is one of those things that seems a little daunting to some...at least it did me. I thought it required a tremendous amount of precision and skill to ensure the finished article was acceptable!

Basically it's cake! Seriously, after watching those chicks on the DIY channel do it I gave it a go and slowly but surely became a dab hand at it! You can too...seriously, all you really need is the materials, a notched trowel (middle pic), a grout trowel (pic on the right) and a wet saw (which you can rent for around $40 from Lowe's or Home Depot).

First of all measure your area and figure out the square footage...if you're reading this and have no idea how to calculate that then go away and Google it. Done? Good, so now you know that it'll be easier to pick out the tiles, most tiles range from about 10" x 10" to 14" x 14" and all kinds of variations depending on pattern/price. So, pick out a nice tile...then pick the mortar (which will fix the tiles to the ground) and a grout color...it's that simple; you can also purchase a carton (looks like a carton of milk) of solution that you mix with the grout instead of water. Usually makes the perfect consistency of grout also...

Also get some of the little orange spacers...just need to make sure the larger the tile the thicker the spacer! They come in a pack of 100 or so and you can reuse them again and again...I also bought this sealer stuff that you apply on the grout lines after it's dried for 24/48 hours. -->

I think that's really all you need...of course you can buy knee pads (hehehe) some goggles (if you're a safety freak) or maybe even a couple beers which are essential for most DIY projects, although please note, the amount of beer consumed during a DIY project of any kind affects the quality of the final result!

Once you get everything home start by laying the tile on the floor beginning at the wall or the corner furthest from the door. Try deciding on the pattern that requires the least amount of cuts (it helps if you think about this at the store as well before buying the tile!) Where cuts are needed measure and mark the tile face with a sharpie...once you've got the first row measured and ready, cut away...tile is easy to cut but tough to make curves...Go here for pics showing you how to make cuts.

Mix up the mortar with water to about the consistency of smooth peanut butter and apply it to the ground with the notched trowel, get plenty on the ground and then run the notched side at a 90 degree angle to get a good even finish. Then just place the tile on the mixed mortar...nice and easy. Try and put enough mortar down for about 2 or 3 tiles at a time and when placing the next tile gently lay it right next to the previous one and separate them with the spacers and leave the spacers there. This makes sure that a) you're not moving the mortar too much and 3) the mortar doesn't get pushed up between the tiles (making cleanup a pain!)

Working your way back to the exit/entrance or the area try and make sure that the tiles are level...don't put too much weight on them or they'll all shift!! Once your done it might look like this <--

Leave this to dry for 24 hours and obviously don't walk on it. Then mix up the grout and solution (or water if you're too cheap to support the US economy) and work it generously into the gaps with the grout trowel. Don't worry about getting the grout all over the tiles, it doesn't take too much to wash off.

Once you've grouted all the gaps then leave it to dry overnight but no more than 24 hours as it makes for tougher clean-up. Then with a wet sponge clean the floor. It might take three or four fresh buckets of water. Once everything is dry you can apply the sealer which you just run down the grout lines.

That's it...it took me longer to type this out than I think my bathroom took me to tile...maybe that's 'cause it's late but the point is it's pretty easy when you get going and the results are beautiful. So far I've done a bathroom and a bar and am planning on doing out master bathroom in the not too distant future. Hope this has been helpful...if not I'm not sorry for wasting your time! ;)

Just a quick one...

For all the fathers with girls out there or parents to be, here are some tips for dealing with little girls:

• Always teach the wipe front to back method
• Use conditioner as soon as their hair is long enough to cover their ears
• Get their ears pierced early
• Always try and keep you're voice as low as possible, they're fragile!
• There's never enough pink in the house
• There are never enough dolls/princesses in the house
• You can never have enough pink dolls/princesses in the house!
• Explain the importance of wearing clothes at an early age

That's enough for now...

Organizing photos using Picasa

When digital cameras replaced the good old 35mm, people began taking pictures like a certain race of tourists (I wont go into right now) making it free to take and view as many pictures as you wanted. The cost of printing and storing went down but organizing and backing up all these pictures became complex and timely. So if you're like me then you have about eight gagillion digital pictures on mutliple PC's, laptops and external drives that are all over the place or you've attempted to organize them with the conventional windows folder organized by date etc... and failed miserably!

I started looking into alternatives for organizing and arranging my photos so they're easily accessible and I can backup without duplication. After doing a lot of research into thrid party applications (five minutes of google and thirty minutes of listening to Jason waffle on about raw images and google apps) I decided to go with Picasa (picasa.google.com).

As soon as you download it it'll scan your hard drive(s) for all pictures, videos and other media and place it into a library initially organizing by date and time (you can sort by name also but I prefer the date). As soon as it's done that you can start organizing by excluding or including additional folders to monitor; scan once, ignore and scan constantly.

Here's where it got fun for me; I began to tag my family and friends in a couple of the pictures. As soon as you have done one or two it starts scanning through your pictures automatically and adding them to people albums. The facial recognition of Picasa is very cool although it doesn't do so well on kids as their faces change more frequently over time.

Another great feature of Picasa is the gold star attributes you can add to your favorite pictures so you can create a highlight of a specific batch of photos and only view these (e.g."Mexico highlights" ignoring the random pictures of drunk people and blurred shots).

So that's Picasa as an overview but there are loads more options to organize and edit your photos. If you haven't got a good method for sorting out your online photos download this now!!

P.S. Always backup your photos!! (you can even back them up to Google's storage service which gives you about 200GB for $50 a year. With Picasa you can then synch up all your photos automatically to this site. It's great if you were to have a hard drive go bad or a fire!) If Jason recommends it then it must be a good thing!!

https://www.google.com/accounts/PurchaseStorage

Simple start

So just to test this blogging and all that I've decided to pick a nice easy subject to get going. Today I'm going to talk about selecting projectors and what I did to get mine, take it or leave it. So first of all some background; I decided to finish my basement, a room of which would be dedicated to a home theater. After debating on whether or not to go for a TV or Projector, I went with a projector 'cause you just can't beat the screen size. Of course there's also the footprint in the room, quality of picture (which I'm blown away with my projector) and the location of the hookups (Picture, Power, Sound etc...)

I started looking into the AVS forum (avsforum.com) which is the greatest resource for anyone looking into this kind of stuff. After reading some posts on selecting projectors I found http://www.projectorcentral.com/ and narrowed it down to two models: The Mitsubishi HC5000BL and the Panasonic PT-AE2000U. These two were pretty comparable and at the time the cheapest 1080p projectors out (don't go with anything less than 1080p on a projector, you won't be disappointed).

Next thing was finding the right price; never pay retail for anything (I'll go to the store and buy something as long as it's cheaper than any price online) and eBay had the best prices at the time (a couple years ago that is...now it's pretty overpriced, you can usually find the same items for less on amazon.com or craigslist). Now I didn't buy the lowest price projector straight away, I had time, the basement wasn't anywhere near completion. After watching the items list and sell for a few months, a private seller listed a Mitsubishi HC5000BL at no reserve. I used http://www.ezsniper.com/ to get it at the last minute (you get three free "snipes" when you open an account) and managed to get it for $1600 which was considerably less than the next lowest price at $2499.

Fixed screen or drop down? I went with the fixed screen for a couple reasons.

1. I liked the fact it was fixed to the wall and not just flailing in the wind.


2. I had plenty of room and didn't need the wall for anything other than a screen/speakers


3. The cost of the fixed screens are considerably cheaper which means you can get a much better quality screen material for the money


4. Drop down screens have moving parts which like anything deteriorate over time


5. The fixed mount screen is classic and acts as a piece of furniture for the room


6. A buddy of mine was selling fixed projector screens and gave me a great deal!

So that's about it; to summarize, research is key to buying anything, do it!

Introduction

This is a blog to help folks like you do all kinds of things by sharing what I've learnt about doing stuff over the years. Ranging from eBay selling to home plumbing projects, project management to english literature...hopefully it'll be interesting enough for you to keep on reading!