cheap

Yes, I’m back from hiding with another empty promise to blog more often. :)

This one is a pretty simple and “obvious” hack. Last week Cool Tools posted a link to a simple and very ingenous device for holding those extra cords behind your desk, the Keep-a-Cable cord organizer.

While I could have just bought a pack for $5 and be done with it (and I encourage you to do so if you’re so inclined rather than rather blatantly ripping off their idea like I did), I’m just not that kind of guy. I can’t look at a flat 5-cent piece of stamped plastic and not want to make my own.

So I did. Details below the fold.

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If you’re between the ages of 18 and 30, and you live in a place like Seattle, there’s a good chance you live in an old apartment building like I do, and there’s a good chance your windows are drafty as hell in the winter.

If so, pick up a can of this stuff. “Wind Jammer” removable caulk. Its made by the same company as Loctite, and I found it at Home Depot. Comes in a convenient can so you don’t even need a caulking gun (because you live in an apartment and unlike me you probably don’t have one). Caulk up your windows in the winter so they’re not drafty, and peel it off in the spring. Your building manager will never be the wiser, and you’ll be much happier.

I’ve had it on my windows for the past month or so and my apartment is toasty warm now. I definitely recommend it. And I’m not being paid to say this (yet).

Woot Wine ships their wine packages with these frozen “ketchup packets” full of water in them to keep the wines cool during shipment. They always suggest reusing them, but I never figured out why.

Tonight I figured out that they make an excellent reusable “ice cube” for whiskeys and scotches. Unlike normal cubes, they don’t water down your drink when they melt.

A friend of mine spent a good amount of money for a similar (but more elegant) solution for her father, involving cubes of granite that one would freeze and then put in their glasses of expensive scotch.

I’m mostly posting this for the benefit of the folks on the IKEA Hacker blog because they’ll probably get a good kick out of it. I’ve long since moved out of that apartment, but I think the concept is still solid and that somebody else will probably benefit from it.

About a two years ago, I moved into my first post-college apartment with my friend Eli. One of our first steps was to hit up IKEA to pick up furniture, given the fact that we were, A.) Cheap and B.) Cheap.

We took a bunch of measurements and headed off to the store with our tape measures and our credit cards in hand. Little did we know that we’d be struck with the spirit of Martha Stewart herself and end up devising the perfect interior decorating plan.

Eli and I, being of a similarly cheap nature, both owned identical IKEA couches, the Lillberg, if I remember correctly. We also figured out that the Norrebo bookshelf unit was approximately as wide as the windows on the two windows on either side of the corner of our apartment. And “two shelves high” was as high as the higher of the windows. We also discovered a corner TV unit (I believe it was from the “Lack” line but I can’t find it now) was just about the right height and of a matching color to both the Norrebo and the Lillberg units we already had. So we formulated a plan.

1. Build up a two shelve high bookcase unit against the wall with the taller window.
2. Put the corner TV unit (obviously) in the corner
3. Use the remaining third shelve of our Norrebo package to build a window seat against the other window.

But the true genius was realized when we discovered that the remaining cushions for our second (my) Lillberg couch were exactly the proper width and height to put on top of our new window seat.

The results were impressive. Even Eli’s (now-ex) interior designer girlfriend was very satisfied with the results.

Not bad, eh? All it took was a few extra random nuts and bolts scavenged from my toolbox and a little bit of extra time.

Update: There seems to be as much interest in the view from my old apartment as in the actual “hack”. The location is on Alki Ave SW in West Seattle, right at the east end of Alki Beach.

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The body of water you see is southern Puget Sound, and the mountains in the distance are the Olympic Range.

I have more pictures from my time on Alki up in my Flickr photostream.

Update^3: Somewhere between Wordpress, TextMate, and the Markdown plugin, my post got corrupted and ended up in mixed HTML/Markdown. It should be fixed now.

Updated Update: FYI… As the weather gets hotter and more humid here in Seattle, my board has started to noticeably warp and it doesn’t lean nicely on my wall anymore. This obviously won’t be a problem if you mount the board directly to the wall, but if you want a freestanding board like me, you may want to look into using a stiffer backing board such as real plywood or OSB, or build a stiffer frame. I’m going to look at building a frame out of 1″x1″ on the back of the board to stiffen it up.

Update: Welcome, Makers! Hopefully this time I can keep my site from crashing too much.

Disclaimer: I can’t claim to have come up with this myself. I was actually inspired by a post in Cool Tools, an excellent blog full of excellent ideas like this. But I think its a cool project anyway, so I thought I’d write it up.

I’ll admit it, I’m a geek, and a very visually-oriented geek at that. I like to draw big pictures and lists and doodle. At work, I’m fortunate enough to be constantly surrounded by whiteboards. At home, I’m not so lucky.

Unfortunately, big whiteboards are expensive. A quick Google Products search finds plenty of 3′x4′ whiteboards selling for hundreds of dollars. Even a smaller whiteboard at Office Max will run you at least $30.

Fortunately, the same material that they make most commercial whiteboards out of is available at most big-box lumber stores like Home Depot for less than $15. “Showerboard”, which is basically cheap plywood with a waterproof white plastic coating on one side. Its the same stuff that they make cheap showers out of - four walls of showerboard plus a cheap plastic base makes a decent stall. It also makes a great whiteboard.

More details after the jump.

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