Archive for February 5th, 2010
Creating a display with your everyday kitchen items is a great way to maximize storage and decoration all at once.
Creating a display with your everyday kitchen items is a great way to maximize storage and decoration all at once.
The other day, I tweeted about the awesome sale Ikea was having on some of its fabric. We’re talking 99 cents a yard here, people! That is really, really cheap. And while I love my Amy Butler fabric, it often runs around $14 a yard. Since I’ve been looking for fabric for curtains for my soon-to-arrive baby’s room, and since those five windows in the room require about 17 yards of fabric, it was hard for me to justify expensive fabric.
So, imagine my delight when I found this great graphic-patterned brown and white fabric. It’s part of the Petronella line of fabric at Ikea, and is usually $5.99 a yard (on sale now for 99 cents a yard). While this fabric is quite narrow (18 inches wide), it’s already hemmed on the sides with a contrasting brown border. This helped to make my curtain-making project a relative snap. In fact, the hardest part of the job was taking down the ugly white blinds that had been hanging prior to this project!
Tell me, do you buy fabric at Ikea? If so, what projects have you whipped up with it?
Ed. note: It can be pretty expensive (and a big pain) to install a wired, whole-house speaker system, but reader Tom O’Brien writes in with his low-tech solution: Route your speakers through the phone lines already installed in your house.
Here’s Tom’s set-up:
Using existing telephone wire and powered speakers, it’s fairly simple to connect speakers throughout the house via existing phone lines. This will work only if the lines have 3 extra wires, such as when no land line is in use, or if the house has 6 (very common) or 8 strand telephone wire. Cat 3 wire is 8 strand.
Each audio jack in the setup can connect to any source or supply output to speakers. All power is supplied by the input and output components. This is just a big complicated extension cable.
I live in an old 3 level house. This permits the same audio to be played throughout. Off/on and volume controls are on the remote speakers, as with any powered speaker. This will possibly violate the sensibilities of audiophiles, but the sound is fine for me.
Materials include:
- 3.5 mm headphone jacks from Radio Shack
- Repurposed Cat 5 or Cat 3 junction boxes drilled out for audio jacks. Home Depot’s are cheapest.
Tools:
- Soldering iron
All audio files, podcasts, etc are saved on netbook PC at “Home Base” (pictured above).
Note 2 cords plugged into panel. One is output from computer, other is to the speakers on shelf.
A CD player, portable mp3 player or any other source can be plugged in as well, hence so many jacks at home base.
The good speakers in living room.
3.5 mm headphone jacks from Radio Shack.
This is a cover panel for an in-wall junction box. The example has both speaker jacks and a phone jack and uses cat 3 (8 strand) wire. It would have been easier to just wire in a second box for the speaker jacks.
This is suitable for an in wall junction box.
The 3 screws at the top are for the audio jacks, the 4 screws at the bottom connect a 2 line phone via the cat 3 phone jack in the center.
External box wired in to existing phone system.
Double sided tape works well to secure wood to the box.
Thanks for the great suggestion, Tom! If you’re looking for a higher-tech solution that’ll still keep it cheap, check out our previous guide to using an AirPort Express to set up wireless, multi-room music playback.
Keeping your home electronics and computer equipment in tip-top working order usually takes minimal maintenance. But every so often you’ll need to do more than just a simple wipe down: new memory installation, cleaning out the whole keyboard inside out, or worst case scenario, something breaks within and you’ve got to open up and replace the non-working part. Below are 8 items we think every household should have right next to their regular home toolbox, all which will make you less reliant upon any Genius Bar or outside help for most moderately difficult projects.
Artist Yves Klein patented his own color International Klein Blue (IKB) blue in 1960. The next year, he designed a low, simple form table filled with the pigment.
Japanese architects Future Studio have completed a house in Hiroshima City, Japan, where the walls of the building extend to enclose a garden and first-floor terrace. (more…)
Just a few years ago you could count on getting the bulk of your money back for almost any home-improvement project you took on. Today merely replacing a toilet seat can feel like throwing caution, and cash, to the wind. According to a study from Remodeling magazine, the average return on value for an upgrade declined from 87% in 2005 to 64% in 2009. But these six new rules will help you maximize your return on your remodeling investment.
The average rate for a 30-year fixed home loan edged back up to 5.01% this week after spending two weeks slightly below 5%, Freddie Mac said in its survey for the week ending Thursday.
The Primary Mortgage Market Survey from the government-controlled mortgage company assumed that borrowers owned a 20% stake in the house, had good credit and paid 0.7% of the loan amount in upfront points and fees to the lender. Many people pay additional points to lower their rates.
The 15-year fixed mortgage, which is a popular option for homeowners refinancing to pay off their loans faster, averaged 4.40%, also with 0.7% in points and fees. That was up slightly from 4.39% for the week ending Jan. 28.
The five-year Treasury-indexed hybrid adjustable-rate mortgage averaged 4.27%, with an average 0.6 point. The one-year Treasury-indexed adjustable-rate mortgage averaged 4.22%, with 0.5 point, Freddie Mac said.
Tables showing results from the weekly survey are at this Freddie Mac website.
– E. Scott Reckard
Contracts for home purchases in December eked out a gain over the prior month, according to data out Tuesday, one sign that the U.S. housing market might muddle along in the coming months following a huge December sales plunge.
The pending home sales index, a forward-looking indicator put out by the National Assn. of Realtors based on contracts signed in December, increased 1% to 96.6 from 95.6 in November. It remains 10.9% above December 2008 when the index was at 87.1.
The index gives economists a look at demand for housing. Contracts signed in December will translate into sales in following months if the deals manage to successfully close escrow.
In November, the index fell 16.4% after surging for months as buyers rushed to take advantage of an $8,000 tax credit for first-time buyers before an original Nov. 30 deadline.
The November drop in the index was followed by a 16.7% December plunge in U.S. home resales — the biggest drop in the 42 years the Realtors group has been measuring home sales — as the extension of that tax credit by Congress failed to keep the buying momentum going into the holiday season.
Congress in early November pushed the deadline for the tax credit to April 30 and expanded the program to include up to $6,500 for some buyers who already own homes.
Some experts predict the national housing market will pick up again as the renewed credit approaches its
expiration and interest rates remain low. Others see weakness for months to come given the high rate
of joblessness.
Economists reacted positively to the news that contracts had inched up in December.
“The pending sales index stabilized at the end of 2009,” Michael D. Larson, an analyst with Weiss Research, wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. “That potentially sets the stage for a more positive spring selling season. Indeed, with mortgage rates low, house prices down, and the supply of homes for sale steadily falling, it's easy to see why the market should stabilize.”
“There are easily understood swings in contract activity as buyers respond to a tax credit that was expiring and was then extended and expanded,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the Realtors group. “These swings are masking the underlying trend, which is a broad improvement over year-ago levels. December activity was the fifth highest monthly tally in two years.”
The West was the only part of the country that saw a decline in pending home sales. The index in the West fell 3.8% to 119.9, but is 18.6% above a year earlier.
The index in the Northeast rose 2.3% to 76.1 in December and is 14.9% above December 2008.
In the Midwest, the index increased 5.2% to 86.9 and is 8.7% above a year earlier.
Pending home sales in the South rose 2.2% to an index of 98.4. That is 5.5% higher than in December 2008.
In other news, shares for home builder D.R. Horton were up more than 11% in trading on the New York Stock Exchange Tuesday morning after the company posted better-than-expected earnings and strong sales.
– Alejandro Lazo
Photo: A sold sign in front of a Long Beach home in December. Credit: Associated Press
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