Nathan Veldhoen

Last month I spent quite a few hours working with Vacuum Design on a contest for  autotrader.ca.  Contest is called Cliff your Ride, if you have a shitty car and want to get a new one, enter yourself into this contest for 30, 000 towards a new one while watching the old one sail off a cliff.

Site and video put together by Vacuum Design, I built the car and did the animation for the logo at the start of the video.  See below.  Pretty fun little project.

Finally got the front  inside entrance finished up, it started its life as a closet and now houses some plants and a bit of art work.  I had gone over a lot of different options in my head, from tile, to a bamboo tree and then came up with this design.  Pretty happy about it, and even happier about the over all price of the product. Ended up spending about 50 bucks in materials, with about 6 steps to get the final product.

After laying a concrete base I can start building the little garden

Started adding the cedar box, threw some landscaping cloth on the bottom for the rock that I will be throwing in the center

Cedar Box finshed up now I can add the goodies

Box with the goodies, now the back wall looks too plane.

Starting to dress up the walls with cedar strips

Used thin cedar siding with some really interesting designs on it. Did a random design just to make it a bi more interesting.

Final Product, finished of with a piece of are in the center

Gearing up for the big show tonight at 8 in Calgary, arrived in Calgary last night at around 7 after some craziest from the night before.  Wednesday night we had a lot of work to do, from getting everything packed up, to me trying to get my three pieces looking right.  I had some issues in the beginning but got everything ironed out by the time the midnight bell sounded.

I tried to show most of the process of how I got to my final product.  The last step was probably my favorite, after nearly lighting my house on fire.  Wasn’t the best idea to play with fire on a dry treated wood deck.

The Glaze test

Extending the piece on the plywood

Glazing the photo to the plywood

After it has dryed

Framed and Flamed

Finally my patience of waiting for a free or super cheap hot tub paid off.  The best part of this is how it got moved and placed on to my deck.  Six dollars sayz my neighbors think I am crazy…read on..?

After digging out  80 loads of a dirt hillside and making more room for a few trailers at a trailer park we found a hot tub in one of the neighbors backyards hidden in the back.  After inquiring, the owner wished to get rid of the tub for a few hundred bucks.  So……… game on.

Here is a shitty video shot with my blackberry of lifting the tub onto the trailer….

Hot tub at my house on a dump trailer

Tools to get it off the trailer

This was the longest part after I figured a way to unload it by myself. Getting the spare tire off the trailer so the tub wouldn't catch on it...

Test Dump to check my angles. (tub still strapped)

The rig for the tilt and dump of the tub.

Off the trailer and just need to pull the truck ahead.

Bam. I placed all the 2x4's on the ground so I can push it into place on my own.

Boom, Still have to hook up and make sure I didn't crack the freakin thing.

Decided to tackle moving some of those granite rocks last night after work.  Turned out pretty good.  Looks quiet a bit better then what I had there before.  Still have a giant pile to get rid of, thinking the rest will find its way into the backyard somewhere….

This week has had many things going on from get art ready,  planning the show to more home improvement projects.  I’ll leave the art stuff for when we are closer to July so I’ll give some updates on whats been happening around the fort.

Shed is still getting a few hours here and there, but waiting on my door for it so I can’t get the siding on until that freakin door is in.  Roof is done at least..so I chucked my shit in there.  I’ll do a final post on that bitch once the siding is all done.

If you look to the right, the shed has a roof and trim...just needs siding and a door.

Second ongoing project was getting rid of  the retaining wall of old concrete after the winter shifted it around.  Retaining walls with old concrete can end up being a great way build a little retaining wall if your pieces are constant and are in roughly 10×4 inch pieces.  I tried using what I had from the back patio and worked for the most part but ended up getting to free load of granite which will end up looking much better.

Some tips if you plan on reusing your old broken up concrete,

If your knocking out an old patio, driveway, or sidewalk try and break the pieces in a rectangle.  This is tough to do with a sledge hammer but if your using an electric breaker or air hammer this is a do able task.

Second tip is to use your biggest pieces and work you way up, with the second layer staggered from the bottom.  Treat it like jagga.  (sp?)

Using old concrete is a great way to save cost.  Its a good way to use, used materials around your job site or home.  Save hauling away the broken pieces as well as  saving you the cost of building or buying more materials.

Used concrete retaining wall

If I didn’t  get the loads of granite rock I would have stuck it out with the concrete retaining wall .  I would have needed to level it out again after the crazy winter we had, which you might have to do every few years just to keep it up to snuff.

The piles of granite

What it looks like after the blocks are removed

Spent my hungover ass with my pops getting the shed closer to completion.  Spent about 10-15 hours total and can’t wait to get my tools out of the house and into the shed.  It will end up being a 8×12, so a pretty good size.  Adding a little loft in the A frame of the shed giving me a few for extra square feet.

We used all reused form lumber for the walls and trusses, and then had to get 4 sheets of half inch plywood for the roof.  I’ll be using a used front door from my folks place and then once the door is set in place it, i’ll add the tar paper and siding.   I am not sure what type of siding I’ll be adding but kinda thinking i’ll be doing the same cedar type thats already on the house.  It’ll be nice to have the extra storage once its all finished up.

So far project project tally is under a hundred dollars.

The last few weeks I have been battling with Magento, the latest e commerce platform.  As promised I would write again about this growing software.  As I continue to rack up the  hours  learning and setting up our new store for the art project I been finding an increase in frustration in how Varien has gone about making this software accessible and free .

In the last year Varien made it clear that they would aid in troubleshooting  “at the time” open source software.  Nearly after a year of eager programmers, designers, and e commerce folks, playing with the software, Varien all of a sudden halts any help on their forums leaving many frustrated users.  In the eyes of many, Varien got a good year of free beta testing.  I am not totally new with Magento and have spent my share of hours clicking through pages on the forums and have found  dead end posts, questions, and unsolved issues.

Since its 1.3 release of March 2009, Varien had been fairly quiet on the support side of things.  They claim they want to make support more accessible in 2009, after listening to CEO Roy in Feb 2009.  Well I think I have it figured out,  I need to save 10 thousand dollars a year so I can buy the Magento Enterprise Edition…

None the less I have some  knowledge to share and will share it with the community.  I still believe this is the strongest open source e commerce software out there.  I’m just bitchin…

I have been playing around with Magento for probably the last 3-4 weeks and love so many things about it.   So far the best part  you can add, edit pages with out using an external editor.  It makes for quick page creation and creates less confusion.

I am having some issues as well, so its not all glory. I’m still trying to figure out how to set it up locally because of problems with uploading via FTP.  I use Media Temple as my provider and use FileZilla for my  FTP.  With over 7700 plus files on to my server, I continually get failed transactions (usually the same files) going with regular FTP.  I am still new to a lot of this but hoping once I get the store front working and uploaded right I will have more great things to say.  I bought a template and hope to have a new store functioning in 2-3 months.

Reason for a Magento Rant?– Its it first year anniversary of Product Release.  They Have 750, 000 downloads, and close to 85, 000 users.  Not bad for your first year…I still have some bones to pick with them, but over all, I feel this store front will take over.  Almost on a weekly basis new templates are released.  Bye-Bye, zen-cart, and oscommerce?–Seems like a new kid is on the block.

They also just released version 1.3.0.

I haven’t added any updates on the house in a while, so I figure its time now.  As the sun tries to come out and the weather starts to warm up, its time to start getting the outside ready for BBQ season.  I’ve done quite a bit of changes in the front and backyard already and haven’t really blogged about it but here is a start of what happened today.

Trying to keep things on a budget is always a challenge.  Keeping things under budget is even tougher, especially if you don’t want it look cheap and most importantly want it to last.

I have some little secrets that a lot of people don’t normally think about.  So here we go.  I wanted to add a little shed to the side of my house, and if I had enough concrete, add a little retaining wall for the kitchen window for the tenant to clean up the side yard.  If you  are tight on money, one my secrets  get your lumber for free.  I just finished a job which had a lot of form material left over.  There are many job sites which have  left over lumber, scraps, bent pieces or they just don’t want to haul it away.  All you need to do is ask.  Sometimes they’ll even help you load it.

I will also use, used lumber to build my shed.  If you find a good pile or site, tell’em what your doing and they might have more for you.  Just looked for a site, complex or building that has a few guys working and ask’em if they have any used or left over wood.

Once I had all the wood loaded up, I formed up the areas that I wanted filled with concrete.  When I was done I wanted to place the concrete as soon as I could.

Here is the second secret.   If you figure you need anywhere from 2 or under meters of concrete you might be able to get it for free.  Call the  concrete companies to see if they have any left overs, or loads set back.  I got lucky on the day that I wanted pour and had some come in 45 minutes.   A slow day is sometimes the best day to call,  on a busy day they might have some extra a few blocks away.  Concrete doesn’t always get all used up!  This is a savings of anywhere 300-500 dollars.  You would be surprised at how much concrete goes to waste.

Lastly, if you know a guy that knows how to finish concrete, a case of beer usually works.  I didn’t have to do that since I can do it on my own.  So this part of project cost me nothing.  I will keep you posted on the rest of the project.

8x12 pad at 4 inchs, roughly one meter of concrete

Heres the small wall, for extras

Been getting my fingers wet with a new oscommence system.  A totally new system that came out in march 2008.   Its called Magento and is a fully open source  system.  Seems pretty powerful and a few fortune 500 companies have made the switch to it.  Not many templates for restructuring but I think in time it will catch on.

Some the the features that jump out are:

SEO included, Sitemaps included, multiple layers of themes, built in stats, full paypal integration, mobile platform, RSS.

Download here

Site here

We have fully integrated platerage.com with our friends over at carbonfund. Carbonfund.org is the country’s leading nonprofit carbon reduction and offset organization and we hope we can help to keep it this way.

We hope to turn roadrage from red to green, Platerage.com will be offsetting a small amount of CO2 per Rage submitted to the website on behalf of its users via a donation to Carbonfund.org.

I had some extra cedar left over from the house.  My dad had a tailgate from a 97-f-350 dually in almost mint condition.  I needed a coffee table, so I thought maybe I would merge the two together.  Turned out pretty good, pretty happy with it.  Free tailgate, about 20-30 bucks of cedar and a 80 dollar piece of glass.

Custom, one off coffee table for a hundred smackers.

Below are some shots of the steps  pops and I did to get it to the final stage.  Blackberry images are obvious…

Built the frame around the tailgate

Wanted the table wider then the tailgate so we added wider sides to the frame.

Chucking the legs on

Final Product with the glass and gate inserted

Boom

I have many pictures of the kitchen, process and final images.  I think we had the most fun trying to figure out how this kitchen would end up.  Well, the most fun was ripping the old one out but of course designing and figure out layout is good too.

old kitchen

We originally started with cabinets.  We found a good deal at the Home depot.  I believe it was under 3 for all the cabinets.  Another 50 bucks for handles.  I framed up the counter tops with about 30-40 bucks of lumber.  The material for the counter tops was a sacking mix  (concrete) for about 15 bucks a bag. (used about 5).  Another 40bucks for black colour and 30 for fiber that gets chucked in  the concrete when mixin.  Tile was about 500, and then add about 120 for the faucet, 150 for the sink, 100 for the hood, then boom.

Before we started drywall patching

Just finished the rough drywallin

Counter Tops framed

Counter tops freshly placed

Tile, with out the black grout

faucet

Final product, Different angle

Final Product

Update of the fireplace:

Had to do something about the old shitty brick fireplace.  I didn’t want to spend a lot of money and most of all,  time pissing around with it.  The general look of it wasn’t one that I hated but I  had issues with the color.  So basically for 18 bucks and an old newspaper, a piece of cardboard, and some painters tape.  The old shitty fireplace looks, well, better.