Reinvigorated

I got back on the horse Wednesday with the bike racks. Monday was pretty frustrating, but I couldn't let such a simple project alone. It turns out, the instructions were not clear enough (for me) as to exactly which holes in the pulley brackets the screws were supposed to go. There were circular holes in each corner and that's what made sense to me. But that made the bracket too wide to be mounted properly. What needed to happen was that the screws needed to go in a straight line down the middle placed into the square holes. That, to me, is counterintuitive. Round things go in round holes, etc. Needless to say, both of our bikes are now hanging from the ceiling in the garage.

In other DIY news, my new found inspiration to do all these small projects was that I bought a new drill. I'm certainly not going to drop a couple hundred bucks on a new tool and let it sit in the garage. No way. Since I can already drill holes in things like a champ, I chose to construct rather than destruct. In that spirit here's a short list of other projects I've undertaken these past two weeks:

1. new and improved shower head in the master bathroom
   
2. magnetic child locks on the kitchen and bathroom cabinets
   
3. ran a new electrical box and outlet in the basement
   
4. reinstalled the baby gate more securely
   
5. those bike lifts
   
6. a wall-mounted TV bracket
   

Well, I kinda fudged that last one. I'm still in the middle of installing the TV wall mount because I've hit a few snags, but I suspect it will be finished by the end of the weekend. I thought our basement walls were constructed with normal studs 16" apart but it turns out they're merely furred away from the foundation with what looks like 2x4s on their wide side spaced 24" apart. That doesn't leave enough space for the lag bolts that hold the bracket to the wall nor does it make it easy to find a good spot for the bracket where it can be mounted into wood and still look relatively even on the wall. It also means that the hard foam insulation back there is going to make running cables a real bear when it comes time to work on the AV cable routes.

In the end, it's going to be a lot more work than I had anticipated to get this home theater up and running the way I want, but I'm really looking forward to the day when I can come home, sit down on the couch, fire up Return of the King in Blu-Ray, and listen to Oliphaunts stomping people into the ground while Nazgul fly around my head.

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Now playing: Herbie Hancock - Watermelon Man
via FoxyTunes