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Master Bedroom and Bathroom Flooring Nightmare

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We had painted our subfloor in the master bedroom and treated it as a art studio/office for a year or two, but then we could finally afford flooring (as long as we did the work ourselves).  We had already done one bathroom which had been easy and were working on the downstairs open floor plan which had its own challenges but was also relatively easy, We had no idea what laid in store for us on this one though.

The bathroom had linoleum laid on top of luan.  On our other bathroom this was great. We just laid COREtec Floor tiles on top and everything worked out beautifully.  Since I hate thresholds in houses, I was determined not to have a step up from the bedroom to the bathroom. That luan had to go.

The destruction was only somewhat fun, I have to admit. but the cleanup was a nightmare.

First remove the shoe moulding. Then rip up the floor starting with the end at the doorway. The luan was stapled down every 6 inches or so. It took quite a while working with the hammer and pry bar to get it. Some staples just wouldn’t come out, so I dug the luan out from under them and hammered them flat. Make sure not to get distracted and forget one of the staples because your shoe or toe will shue as hell find it when you’re walking around and it’ll trip you. Once the destruction phase was over, we had to clean up. 50 gallon trash bags worked OK, but the sharp edges of the wood sliced right through a couple of them so I suggest double-bagging it.

Now that this was finished we could lay the floor. Which direction you lay the floor planks depends on your taste. some people say to lay the planks based on the position of the sun through the windows, some say you want to be perpendicular to the room entryway, etc.  I just laid out a bunch of planks and figured which ones I liked better. Because it would be easier to not have any issues with the bathroom threshold are, I started laying the floor long-ways so that it ran straight into the bathroom as several pieces. In other words, perpendicular to the bathroom door.

Again a band saw and junior hacksaw are infinitely helpful on the intricate not-so-straight walls, cabinet, and under the toilet areas. The toilet was another challenge. In or other bathroom, we used a foam ring seal for the toilet. This worked fine because we laid our CORETec on top of the 1/8″ luan and linoleum floor. This time, I had ripped all of that up, so I had a big gap when  I tried to screw the toilet to the floor. The gasket was just too fluffy. It sealed well, however sitting on the toilet felt like you were trying to balance on an exercise ball.  To fix this, I tried two approaches. I got some commercial “toilet shims” from the hardware store, but these honestly sucked at this task. I ended up using them as wall spaces in my downstairs while installing the COREtec floor there.

The solution that worked best to fix the toilet was to take the toilet up and cut some COREtec in the shape of the toilet base, then sit the toilet on top of this. This gave stable support the the entire bottom of the toilet, and I was still able to get a good seal on the foam gasket. The foam gasket allows repositioning, unlike wax rings so it was good to go when I tightened the bolts. Cut the bolts to length with a dremel and put the caps on and the toilet is affixed.

While this fixed the wobble on the toilet issue, it looked bad. I decided to caulk the connection between the toilet and the floor, covering and hiding the spacer I had cut with white caulk. Now, there’s different perspectives on whether this is a good idea or not. Some people say it looks great, other people complain that if there is a leak, it’ll just go into the subfloor instead of leak from the toilet and you won’t know it until it’s really expensive to fix (like entire tens of thousands of dollars since it’s an upstairs bathroom). I waited a couple of months of use to make sure there weren’t any leaks before I caulked it. To get the cleanest lines, I masked around the edges with painters tape.

Once the floor was fully down, I went back and installed the shoe moulding. You can see in the pic above of the toilet, I messed up the moulding on the sink unit and had to flip it around, leaving a weird gap. I filled this in with brown caulk which matched perfectly.

Gifts for Beekeepers

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My dad is a beekeeper and I’m always on the lookout for bee themed gifts for him (and quite honestly, sometimes for myself). Here is a round-up of beekeeping and bee lovin’ related gifts.

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. As a teacher myself, any supplement to my income helps. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

 

Although my dad doesn’t need any help selling his honey (he says it sells itself!), a little extra advertising never hurts with this cute beekeeper “Ask Me About My Honey” tee.

Straight from bee yard etiquette, this shirt says don’t swat!

Okay, this one is totally for me. The floral bee popsocket is bee-autiful.

And while I’m at it, okay, okay, another one for me. This bee babe shirt is lovely (except I’d get it in gray instead of red).

This protector of the bees t-shirt is great for my dad who is very passionate about protecting our native bees!

I love this play on words. This be kind to beekind shirt is all the right kinds of kitschy!

Last, if you are looking for something a little more matchy matchy, this set on Etsy is perfection. I’ve bought several things from Blackbird Supply and love them all!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cheers,
Jess

Personalized Gifts for Kids Named Ada

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I love to get personalized gifts for the loved ones in my life. I know this pretty awesome little kid named Ada and when I was looking for gift ideas, I figured I’d share what I found. So, here is my round-up of some fun gift ideas for children with the name Ada.

*Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. As a teacher, any income supplement is very appreciated. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. All opinions remain my own.

A really cute shirt for children name Ada (it comes in other colors too!), this shirt has the word “Adorable” with the letters spelling “Ada” in white.

With the name Ada of course I have to mention Ada Lovelace, one of the first computer programmers. There are numerous children’s books about Ada Lovelace. There are three notable children’s books that are biographies about Ada Lovelace:

Ada Lovelace, Poet of Science: The First Computer Programmer by Diane Stanley (for ages 4 – 8)

Ada Lovelace (Little People, Big Dreams) by Isabel Sanchez Vegara (for ages 4 – 8)

Ada Byron Lovelace and the Thinking Machine by Laurie Wallmark (for ages 6 – 10)

 

An anthology of women in science, Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World by Rachel Ignotofsky is recommended for children age 10 – 17. It includes Ada Lovelace as well as 49 other important women in science history.

If you are looking for more STEM books, then you’ll appreciate the author Andrea Beaty who wrote Iggy Peck, Architect and Rosie Revere, Engineer. The third book in this collection is Ada Twist, Scientist.


If you have any gift recommendations personalized a child name Ada please share!

Painted Subfloor is Acceptable

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In both of our houses, the Master Bedrooms had pet stains that were  left by previous owners. This caused our pets to mark those same spots. To stop this behavior, we found a couple solutions. Once we removed the offending carpet and sealed the subfloors upstairs with Binz to seal the pet odors forever. We couldn’t afford to recarpet yet. So we did the next best thing. We just picked a color of paint we had a lot extra of and threw it on the floor.

 

 

 

 

FIrst we levelled the floor a bit and sealed cracks with wood putty, then just painted. We kept the room like this for some time as it was a creative space, almost a art studio feel. When we could afford it, we of course did finish the floor (more on that later). But it worked great in the meantime. The sub floor wood chip pattern worked to break up the color of the paint and gave a carpet-type look. It does soak up a lot of paint, so you might want to hit it with a primer first.

Gratuitous texture closeup:

PCB Milling Software Survey

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FacAcademy had used a great tool designed in-house for PCB milling making it stupid easy.  I should be able to mill some PCBs at home right? Ha!

Method 1 Carbide Copper (web-based): Carbide Copper (Formally Rapid PCB)is by far the simplest solution for PCBs. A simple step by step process takes your Gerber and Excellon files and generates great g-code for your machine to run. Check it out below:

Method 2 Easel (web-based): Easel is the online CAM tool from Inventables, the makers of Xcarve. It has a lot of good settings in it and the interface is great. I just hate storing all my files online. Honestly I’m kinds sick of all these online “apps” that change settings and user interfaces elements all the time. Makes it impossible to follow a video tutorial after 6 months since nothing looks or works the same (looking at you AutoDesk!)

Method 3 FlatCAM: Once  you create your PCB, you need to run a CAM process inside your PCB tool (such as EagleCAD or KiCAD, etc) to export the gerber and excellon files of your design. Gerber files basically throw all bottom traces into one file, all top traces into another, all drill files into another, etc. Then to view these, you need a Gerber viewer.  Once you do that, you can use a CAM software to generate the tooling for making the board. This is where FlatCAm comes in. You import your gerber files and FlatCAM will help you create the path the PCBmill will need to move to create your circuit.  I must say, I found FlatCAm’s user interface frustrating. YOu bring in your gerber of the bottom traces for instance, then click another tab to set up the tooling, then that creates another file in your project in which you must then select and select another tab (again) to finally generate the g code for your machine.  You have to do the same with the top traces file, the drills file, and the dimension file. This seems convoluted and frustrated me.

Method 4 MakerCam: This method works well for Fritzing. You can export an SVG from Fritzing, then import that into inkscape for touch-ups, then on to MakerCAM to generate the final product.

Method 5 FabModules: The older linux-based Fabmodules won’t work for me, I’m not installing a bunch of junk on my PC just to run fab modules. Luckily, there’s a new web-based version at http://fabmodules.org  The new version doesn’t seem to be as good as the old version in creating the output files. Here’s a basic intro to making PCBs with it:

Method 6 Fusion 360: While the newest version of Eagle has a plugin to send the PCB design to Fusion360, you can’t do anything useful with it (such as extrude the traces easily). It seems you have to redraw or trace the traces onto a Fusion360 sketch. While using “Smart snapping” can simplify this, it’s still something that should be automated. (Correct me in the comments if I am mistaken about this method). However, a friend of mine worked out a method that seems to have worked well for him. You export the EagleCAD as an PNG, then import the PNG to fabmodules to create an SVG of the outline of the traces, then import this SVG into fusion and extrude and generate toolpaths.

The workflow is similar to the video above for the fabmodules. Once you bring your SVG into Fusion360, extrude all the traces up about 0.2mm (could be time consuming) and extrude the remainder of the PCB downward -1.5mm and select a teeny-tiny endmill. If you have to, simply create this as  a new tool. 1/64″ (0.39-0.4mm) is what FabAcademy uses typically. Then create a 2D contour around all the traces.