Home Improvement Projects at a Country Home in Verona, WI
This summer, I’m planning on running water lines from the main house to the guest house, and connecting drain lines from the guest house to the septic system on our land. This will enable me to have a water heater installed (I’ll have a professional do this, since it involves working hooking up liquid propane … Continue reading Summer Project: Guest House Running Water
I’m working on improving my woodworking and trim skills through several minor projects in the house this winter. I’m planning on replacing the railing on both stairwells with nicer wood and better hardware. Also, I’d like for the railing wood to be continuous, with smooth corners and no cutoffs in the corners. Here is what … Continue reading Woodworking and Trim Work
Last winter, I remodeled the bathroom off of our kitchen. It originally had a lot of fairly tacky 1990’s style gold fixtures in it, like this: The end result turned out pretty well, and definitely as a different look from the original: However, I didn’t get around to installing a door on the shower, and … Continue reading Shower Door
Whenever I go to New Orleans, one of my favorite things to do is to shop for antiques on Royal Street (after grabbing a $1.50 lunch martini and New Orleans style barbecued shrimp at Mr. B’s). Royal Street is known for antiques, specifically for chandeliers. On my most recent trip, I wanted to look for … Continue reading Library Chandelier
One of the primary goals of my initial home automation installation was to install smart light switches that would allow me to turn lights on and off with my voice. While it is cool to be able to walk into a room and say “Alexa, turn on the living room,” the real power comes when … Continue reading Choosing the Right Smart Switch
Our bedroom furniture has been delivered and installed, along with a Casper mattress and an electric fireplace under the windows to complete the look. The result is a massive improvement: Continue reading Bedroom Furniture and Fireplace
I’m excited to have purchased a new bedroom set from Restoration Hardware, along with a mattress from Casper, for our master bedroom. For a long time we’ve had mix and match furniture in that room, but now it will have a beautiful complete set from RH’s Montpellier collection. Continue reading New Master Bedroom Set
A year ago, I did a full remodel of the bathroom off of our kitchen, on the middle floor of our house. It went from looking like this: To this: This year, I wanted to improve and modernize the look of our four other bathrooms, without doing a full remodel. These bathrooms had been repainted … Continue reading Upgrading Tacky 90’s Bathroom Fixtures
While writing custom Alexa skills has been necessary for some of the hyper-specific home automation tasks I’ve wanted to do, there are often much more straightforward ways to integrate different smart home platforms. The best of these is IFTTT, which stands for if this, then that. It allows you utilize pre-built (or create new) applets, … Continue reading Integrating Arlo, Wemo, and Echo via IFTTT
Over the last several weeks, I have been adding various home automation technologies to the house: Arlo for home security, Wemo and Lutron Caseta for automated lighting, and Amazon Echo/Alexa for voice control. Out of the box, Alexa’s integration with other smart home technologies is pretty good. It doesn’t take any custom work to be … Continue reading Custom Alexa Skill for Tracking Car Use
