The Money Boot

Money is officially the dirtiest, nastiest stuff around.  And now I have just one more reason to think this.  I thought these were just a pair of rubber boots.  Perfect for splashing in puddles (not that we've had any of those in months).  But apparently I'm dead wrong.  What you see before you is what my (now 6 year old) calls his "money boot".

Some people put money in their wallet, some in their purse, some in a piggie bank.  He puts his money in his boot.  I wasn't sure what he meant until I heard him walking around in them yesterday and you could her what sounded like the jingling of a little change purse.

Me - "Hey buddy, why don't you put your money in your bank?"

Him - "Nope, I put it in my money boot!"

And he removed his boot (like I couldn't hear it) to show me that not only was he not wearing any socks - so gross in unbreathing, black rubber boots - but also was carrying around the sweatiest looking dollar bill I've ever seen; and that's saying a lot as I've been to a few strip clubs.

Later last night they pleaded to be taken to the Convergence Zone (CZ) on the navy base so they could play a few video games.  I agreed, but only because I was super tired from working and didn't have the energy to entertain them.  Still in his boots, and a pair of shorts, looking like a hobo, they picked out a game that would entertain them for 30 seconds or so.  He sat down in the video game chair tipping onto his back with his feet in the air.  A shower of loose change was falling out all over him.  I giggled a little and went back to the book I was reading.  After about an hour it was time to head out.  I helped them pick up their Xbox controllers and spied a nickel he had missed.  Wouldn't want him to be missing that so I slipped it into his money boot.  But how dare me!  I had foolishly put the money in the wrong boot!!  I was educated, by my 6 year old, that the money boot was on the "yeft [left] foot".  Jeez, I'm so dumb.

We returned the game and I could not stop giggling the whole way out of the CZ and all the way home.  So while I'm glad that no matter how tired I am they can still make me snicker, I'm also glad they reminded me how much you want to sanitize your hands after you touch money.  Seriously, you never know whose boot it's been in.

Making "Crystals"

After constructing the bike rack, I started thinking about some of the boys' projects that had been occupying the floor of the garage.  They have had this fascination with crystals lately that doesn't seem to be going away.  Every time we are near the ocean, they dig through the rocks looking for some that might be "crystals".  They paw through the pebbles near the house looking as well.

I had picked up some Borax as I was going to attempt to make my own laundry detergent.  But before I whipping up some of that, I thought perhaps the boys would like to make some crystals which is a project I hadn't done since I was there age.

The materials I used were boiling water, a box of Borax (but you'll only need a few tablespoons of it), craft sticks, thin wire (easy to manipulate), a few jars and 24 hours.

  

We took out a few popsicle sticks from the box of what seems like a million of them.  I cut a few notches in them using my utility knife.  The notches aren't necessary for making the crystals, but I thought it might be fun for the boys to wrap some wire around the craft sticks just to give them a little more dimension.

They wrapped their sticks while we waited for the water to boil.  Once the water boiled, I poured it into the glass jars.  

Then we added the Borax, one Tablespoon at a time stirring well after each addition.  The goal is to create a super-saturated solution with the Borax.  This is the reason you heat the water, because it makes it easier to suspend more of the solute (the Borax) in the solution.  

You will add Borax by the Tablespoon until the water looks cloudy and not all of it is able to dissolve.

At this point you can add your craft sticks or whatever you want to grow your crystals on and leave them to sit overnight.

The next morning you will find giant sparkling crystals have appeared.  I think next time I might try growing some on something more ornate than a craft stick as I have no intention of putting these pups on display.

Big Bike Headache

I really should rename this something else that involves the headache of all the various ride-on toys that are overtaking my garage, but I guess this fits since the bikes were the problem I tackled with this project.

We have a really big garage, but little by little the available floor space is starting to be occupied by toys and projects.  In fact the moment I clean it up, and my boys see an open space on the floor, they can hardly wait to cover it with something.  As of yesterday I had found random rocks that they are bashing with hammers to discover crystals hidden inside, scraps of wood that they claim to be using to make into a car, puddles of paint that they were using to paint their scraps of wood (for their cars), and a pair of socks.  I don't even want to know why one of them felt the need to take off their socks out there, but they did.  Have to pick my battles I suppose.

Now we only have 2 boys, but I had randomly come across 2 free bikes one day on our way home from school and I thought it would be nice to have a few spares for when their friends come to play.  So this leaves us with 4 bikes to store... none of which have kickstands - because child size bikes just don't seem to come equipped with those these days.  Welcome to a nightmare of bikes strewn everywhere and a tough hurdle to get into the garage over them.

If you look closely in the picture, you'll see what a jumbled mess it is, and you're only observing 2 of the bikes!  There's another one tossed near the back of the garage behind that blue Rubbermaid tote and then off to the left, just out of the picture is yet another one that would keep the garage door from closing.  You can also tell this disorganization is really bothering the boys too (NOT AT ALL!) as they sit there eating an Otter Pop watching me prepare to create greatness.

So I looked around a bit on pinterest and other places and found some ideas for my bike rack.  I measured the width of the largest bike tire and then looked to see how much floor space I was willing to donate to this thing.  In total I believe it worked out to about 60 wide and extended 24 inches into the garage.  I made it using nothing but scrap 2x4's that I had stuck out back that were ripped out of the wall when we were extending our laundry room into a mudroom.  I knew they'd come in handy at some point.

I placed the 2x4's that would be the support for the bike on top of the bottom frame pieces just to make sure they would allow enough room for the bike tire to slide in easily.  I'm notorious for saying "measure twice cut once", but not following my own advice.  ;)  I found that 2.25 inches was about perfect.  The tires themselves were just under 2 inches wide, so anything less than this would have made it too tight a fit, and anything wider would have allowed the bike to lean too much - which would put too much stress on the 2x4's and they wouldn't hold their position well with young boys testing their strength repeatedly.

I flipped the whole operation over, spaced the 4 sets of 2 2x4's evenly (each with that 2.25 inches in between them), and then nailed them each in place.  I used 3 nails in each side of each 2x4.  This might be a bit excessive - but I've been around the block a few times and watched many things I've created get destroyed because it wasn't built to handle rugged boys.  Lesson learned.  Nails are cheap.  

Flipped it back over and I used a few of the left over pieces to create some support blocks that I nailed in between  the 2x4's.  I may at some point add a support piece to the outside edge as well, but for now this seems to be working well.

The final step was to add the bikes!  And it works great!  The bikes now have a place to be stored, but there also is room between the bikes where things like basketballs, baseballs, baseball gloves, sidewalk chalk, and the bike tire air pump can sit too.  Ahhhhhh, one more eye sore and organization headache is crossed off my personal honey-do list.  :)

Making Laundry Easier

Laundry is never really difficult, but it's definitely one of my more tedious tasks.  Wash it, dry it, fold it, put it away and it starts again before I can even blink.  In the summer I take it one step further and hang clothes out on the line to dry.  It really only take a few minutes of my day and it save a little on the natural gas bill.  I think I once calculated it to be about $1 saved per load which is somewhere around $20-$30 per month.  It would be more if we were running an electric dryer, but probably less if our dryer was more efficient.

Anyway, I hung a clothesline last year and wanted it to run high enough so the boys wouldn't get hung up on it.  Once I had it up, though, I discovered I had to be on tippie toes to reach it myself.  So I have been standing on an upside down crate on of the steps below it for quite some time.   The steps were in need of repair, so I thought I might try to make a special step stool that could be hidden under the steps and pulled out when I need to hang clothes up, since I was going to be ripping up the old boards anyway.

The first step was pulling the boards off.  These particular ones had been screwed on, but you'll find some are nailed in place.  And when they're as coated with paint as these were it can be hard to tell without scraping the coating off with your utility knife.  Best tool I've found for getting out buried nails is definitely a cat's paw, sometimes called a claw bar, or nail puller.

  

The stair risers looked to be in good enough condition so I didn't have to replace that.  So it was on to the construction of the step stool.  Notice that their is a center rise, which is exactly in the place where I needed the step stool to stand as that's where I stand when I hang the laundry.  Not really a big deal, but it is something I had to work around in my design plans.

As a little tangent, I nailed the 3 frame pieces together.  At one point my neighbor was over checking out the project and I naturally managed to misfire when I was nailing in one of the nails.  It was going in a bit crooked, so I decided to pull it out and try again.  A 9 year old girl from down the street was also up playing with my boys while I worked.  She saw what had happened and commented that "it's okay, girls can't really build things anyway".  Naturally I looked at her in disbelief.  While I should have held my tongue, I preferred to give her a good talking to.  "Are you kidding me?" I said.  "Who do you think did all the building projects in that house in front of you?  Who do you think all these tools belong to?  And who on earth told you that girls can't build anything?!!?".  Having no sense, she responded to my rhetorical question, "My Dad said it, because my mom can't cut things with a saw."  Ugh.  "Well, (I sighed) sounds like a problem for you mom, not every other female."   Grrrrrrr.  Back to the project at hand.  I sure hope I can manage to put it together since I am equipped with that construction-limiting vagina   ;)

The next step was to cut the frame pieces for the base that I will stand on.  For this I picked up some of these pieces that sort of look like framing studs (2x4's) but in fact are more like studs cut in half, about 2x2.  They were cheaper, and I also wasn't going to need all the strength of a 2x4.  The finished base is 20"x24" for each of them.  So I cut 4 pieces that were 20 inches long and 2 pieces that were 17 inches.  After that I needed to cut the legs.  For the pieces that would sit on the deck itself, those were about 6.5 inches (cut 4 of those) and the 2 longer ones that stand on the step below the deck were about 12 inches long (cut 2 of those.  I then drilled a large hole through each of the legs near the end and centered.  For the platform pieces, I drilled matching holes that were closer to the bottom of the wood and far enough from the 17 inch top piece so that they could rotate from a parallel to a perpendicular position depending on whether the platform was being stored or used.

 You can also see that on the bottom corner of the side that rotates next to the top piece of the platform, I cut a 45-degree notch so that the piece could rotate easily and still be close enough to stop against the platform for stability.  The pieces were then attached using large bolts, washers and nuts.  You'll want each of the leg pieces to be nice and tight.  Not so tight that you cannot move them from one position to another, but not so loose that they fall into positions easily, as this makes it more difficult to get it out of it's hiding space under the step.  The front (longer) legs get attached in a similar fashion, though you will notice there isn't presently a front piece to run them into, so position so that when they are in a perpendicular position, they are flush with the end of the 20-inch piece of the frame.

Before finishing up the step, I added some blocking supports on the inside of the stair risers.  This was just scrap wood I had from cutting the decking pieces for the stairs and for the step stool.  This is what the step stool will slide into it's hiding spot on and will rest on.

The next step was to add the pieces of decking to the top of the frame.  For me this took 6 pieces of standard cedar decking, cut to 20 inch lengths and then screwed to the platform frame.  I then slid each of the platform pieces into their hiding spots so that I could secure this piece of decking to the front of the frame.  While you probably could add this piece without them in place, this was a lot easier as it kept the platforms stable and it also took any guess work out of figuring out where the front piece should go.  With the front secured I could now put the cedar on the step and test it out.

The first test didn't go so well.  One of the shorter legs (that rests on the deck) didn't stay in the stored position, and when it shifted down it kept the whole piece from being extracted from the hidden spot.  This is why I went back and changed the instructions to be sure you tighten them a little more than you think necessary just to be sure this doesn't happen to you.  It's a serious pain the button to get your body under there to get it free.  Once that kink was worked out, though it worked beautifully.

Used it to hang out a load of laundry.  It felt nice and stable even with my 5 year old standing on it next to me.  And it stored away super quick and easy.  It's a bit on the heavy side, but this will change over the next few days as the cedar dries out.