Tagged with THDprospective

Ashley Nightstand – Free Plans

The Ashley Nightstand with tool review is sponsored by The Home Depot. I have been compensated for my time and provided with product. All ideas and opinions are my own. This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy. 

For my family Christmas party, all of the cousins (my kids, nieces and nephews) draw names for whom they give a gift to that year. My daughter, drew her tween cousin Ashley. Ashley really needed a simple nightstand to put her alarm clock on and store a book or two. One issue is that the nightstand needs to go over the only air vent in the room, so we wanted to do our best not to block the air flow. The best part of the Ashley nightstand is that I raided the scrap wood bin and the whole nightstand is scrap wood, yay for me! I had a few ends of 1×12’s that I used for the top and shelf, but I wrote up the plans using purchased 1×6’s and 2×2’s. The lumber for this cute nightstand is only about $15 (although wood prices around the country vary.)

The Ashley nightstand is a simple nightstand with an enclosed shelf. Build this nightstand for about $15 in lumber...or it's perfect to use up scrap wood. Free plans on hertoolbelt.com

 

 

The Ashley nightstand is a simple nightstand with an enclosed shelf. Build this nightstand for about $15 in lumber...or it's perfect to use up scrap wood. Free plans on hertoolbelt.comFront view              //                Isometric view               //              Side view

How to Build the Ashley Nightstand

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Winterizing Sprinklers – How to blow out sprinklers

Winterizing Sprinklers and Ridgid Compressor tool review is sponsored by The Home Depot. I have been compensated for my time and provided with product. All ideas and opinions are my own. This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy. 

If you have sprinklers in your yard for your lawn and live where it freezes, then one job that needs to be done each year before winter is winterizing sprinklers. If the water is left in the sprinkler lines, you could risk the water freezing and cracking your pipes in the lawn. No bueno. Winterizing your sprinklers, or blowing them out, is a simple task but you’ll need a few tools.

Tools Needed

Compressor

We have used a variety of compressor sizes to winterize our sprinklers over the years. You need a compressor that has either enough volume or large enough motor to fill your system with pressurized air. A compressor size of 4-6 gallons should be enough.  I’ve been reviewing this Ridgid 4.5 gallon quiet compressor, and it did the job in a breeze. Even though the tank size is only 4.5 gallons, the motor is strong and it fills the tank very quickly compared to other home/job site compressors I’ve used. It is also quite a bit quieter than any other compressor I’ve used, it doesn’t scare the kids when kicking on :-).  It is a bit on the heavier side though, for a portable compressor.  Overall great option.

Hose Adapter

We originally bought this water spigot adapter at the sprinkler store, or you can get one with a quick disconnect here, or make your own.

Our adapter uses our tire air chuck attachment, so we have to hold the hose onto the adapter while filling the lines with air. A quick disconnect would be so much easier.

How to Winterize Sprinklers

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Bosch GLM 50 C Laser Distance Measure Tool Review

Planning and Laying out a Play set, Bosch laser distance measure and Husky tie down tool review is sponsored by The Home Depot. I have been compensated for my time and provided with product. All ideas and opinions are my own. This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy. 

Bosch GLM 50C Tool Review

I have been reviewing the Bosch GLM 50c laser distance measure tool, and it has a lot of very useful features. Sure for the most part you can accomplish the same task with tape measures, paper and pencils, but with this little tool you can do it so much faster and very accurately (+/- 1/16″). And no bending tape measures over long distances. 🙂

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Moving a Door in the Basement

Moving a door, Dewalt cordless framing nailer and Dremel oscillating tool accessories tool review is sponsored by The Home Depot. I have been compensated for my time and provided with product. All ideas and opinions are my own. This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy. 

When we first moved into our house, the entrance to the basement looked so nice and finished. The basement door wasn’t a straight shot down the hall, but required a 90 degree turn after the stairs. We took a couch down into the basement. This had us reenacting a certain Friends episode… “pivot, Pivot… PIVOT”. No matter how many times we pivoted the couch we either ran into the ceiling, door frame, back wall or stairs. Ok well that stinks. Later we tried to take a queen box springs down there, same problem, we couldn’t make the turn with large items. So I did the logical thing and cut the adjacent wall out. 🙂 Problem solved, sort of.

Fast forward 8 years-ish and we still have the large hole at the entrance of the basement. I’ve been meaning to move the door for the basement into the nice big hole I cut… but… time and probably motivation.

Found some motivation, I want to build a basement playhouse for the girls this Christmas. The playhouse will be on the other side of where the door is currently. The plan is to move the basement door to the opening that I cut in the wall. I want to use the same door and molding and just rotate it 90 degrees.

I would like to have the molding/casing around the door, like it is now, but the hallway width is 3″ shy of the current door and molding width. So what I’ve decided to do is make a pop out, like the current door does now and that should give me the perfect doorway width and keep the molding.

During this remodel project, I’ll be reviewing the Dewalt cordless framing nailer and Dremel oscillating tool accessories and I’ll let you know my thoughts on these tools.

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Let There Be Light – Husky LED Lights Review

Husky LED lights and headlamp tool review is sponsored by The Home Depot. I have been compensated for my time and provided with product. All ideas and opinions are my own. This post contains some affiliate links for your convenience. Click here to read my full disclosure policy. 

Nothing makes a job/project harder than not having the right tool and not being able to see what you’re doing. Of course limited space is high up on that list too. Today I’m reviewing some of Husky’s super bright LED personal work lights.

Husky LED lights:

To test these lights out, I head to the deepest darkest scariest room in the house…the cold storage.  As you can see, it’s really dark in there, dark enough to keep scared-y cats out of there.

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