Basement Sliding Door Project

So, I’ve been doing a fair number of projects, but writing about them isn’t one of those projects. Some of it has been improving the basement a bit. Part of the slowness of the basement work is because it occasionally floods a bit. Not really “standing in water” flooding, but “there is a puddle that keeps coming” flooding.

It’s annoying, but I’ve been working to fix it. The house originally didn’t have any downspouts on the gutters, I added those. I’ve added extensions to the gutters to direct water away. I added a new downspout near the area where the water seems to come from to help direct it away more. I cut out some drywall in the underside storage area and pulled the bottom step off of the stairs to fill in some ugly crack-ish spots in the area where the water comes from. At this point, I am waiting for more heavy rain to see if some of this has made any real difference. So far the cement fill seems to have done the best. It’s tricky to describe but basically, the water still came in, but it came in waaaay less and in a slightly different place. So I’m getting there.

I’m not really here to discuss the flooding though. It has affected some decisions on how to make the basement nicer, like I am not going to add Drywall walls like I wanted to. And no carpet, though that was out anyway, because the cats are assholes (We also replaced all of the upstairs carpet with vinyl plank flooring).

One fairly simple project was adding a door. In this case, I put in a sliding barn door style door. My wife wanted to put in a real door but I wasn’t keen on that since there isn’t really a good place for it to open to. The door itself had a couple of motivations behind it.

One, the basement is divided into two halves. One half is semi finished and “nicer” and it’s where I keep my computer and collection of stuff and there is a TV and couch with game consoles and my son has a corner that is his bedroom area when he is around. The other half is under the “original house”, it’s rough, the ceilings are a little low, and there is more duct work and such hanging from the ceiling. We use it for storing all sorts of stuff. It’s really great for that.

The “underside” half is ugly though. I wanted the door to be able to block it out, mostly for aesthetic reasons.

The other purpose of the door is to be able to lock the cats in the basement when we have guests over. My parents and my wife’s parents are all allergic to the cats. We lock some of them in bedrooms, we also lock some of them in the small sunroom/office area upstairs. Sometimes we would lock them in the basement by blocking the stairs with a giant cork board we have that doesn’t really have a home.

Now, we can use the door. It slides between the two openings, stairs and underside storage to block off either one.

One concern was air flow from the storage area, so the door can also be positioned in the middle, which is where it usually sits, so air can flow in and out both sides. It also lifts off easily if I needed to remove it.

The door itself isn’t anything complicated. I could have built a door but I opted to just buy one, though the door was pretty pricey since it needed to be extra wide. The roller kit is a low profile barn door kit, easy enough to install and it nestles up into the floor joist ceiling. The tricky part was that the floor joist didn’t reach the edge of the opening, so I had to screw a couple of 2×4 stand offs to the floor joist to get the door to sit int he proper place. This also meant adding some 2×4 lifts under the stand off to support the immense weight of the door.

I also ended up with an issue of the door rolling slightly. I am not sure if it’s the house or if the rail is a little off (probably a little of both) but the door slides towards the stairs on it’s own. Not very quickly, but it does move.

I solved this with magnets, at the suggestion of my uncle. I didn’t really want an ugly latch that would also potentially end up in the way of the door sliding or people walking. I bought some block magnets and some double sided Gorilla tape (I originally used Command Strips but they were too weak). I stuck a larger magnet to the wall, then two smaller magnets on one end and the center of the door. This allows the door to hold it’s position when blocking the stairs or when positioned halfway.

This project isn’t quite done. I may also add an L bracket of some kind in the center of the door, to hold the door from being leaned outwards, and I want to add a roller on the backside to the whole action is smoother. the way things are, if the cats get determined, they can push the door enough to get it to release from the magnet and escape from the basement.

I also need to adjust that network cable because it’s kind of just there and ugly.

Reading for April 2020

So, yeah, I missed a few months. I also didn’t actually finish any books in those two months, so it’s kind of a non issues. I didn’t really finish a ton fo books this month wither, but hey, progress is progress.

Transformers The Manga Volume 1

So, technically this one was a March read. This is the first of (I believe 2) collections of the old Transformers G1 Manga from Japan. It’s honestly, really weird, and kind of awful, but it’s also charming for both of these reasons. The stories are all more or less self contained. They all have this weird Japanese feel to them (because Manga duh), but more the whole, “we can’t decide if this is made for 3 year olds or 12 year olds” thing that seems like it pops up a lot in some Manga, especially older manga. Also, spoilers, but man, the Autobots seemed to get the most motivated when they they were dealing with a poor dog that the Decepticons had abused.

Also, most of the characters on the cover don’t appear int he stories at all.

Kill la Kill Vol 1

Speaking of Manga. I also read the first volume of Kill la Kill. I’ve seen this series come up in a few discussions online and it sounded kind of interesting. It also is part of Comixology Unlimited, which I keep forgetting I have a trial for.

Anyway, it’s a sort of “slice of life” high school manga, where everyone also has battles, based on themes of school, things. At least so far. Like the main chick has this school uniform that gives her extra power, and she fights this dude on the Boxing Team who has special Boxing gloves. It’s alright, for the most part.

Stumptown Vol 1

After enjoying the show Stumptown, I wanted to see how the original comic it was based off of compared. The comic, at least volume 1, had a lot less emphasis on the supporting cast than the show, but it was still decent. It was a bit predictable in it’s plot, but the writing and dialogue is alright. The art style was interesting for what I could see, though it’s all so dark it doesn’t show up super well on my Kindle. The whole thing kind of vaguely reminded me of Gunsmith Cats, which is one of my favorite series. I mean, Dex kind of is a more realistic, western version of Rally I suppose, they both are kind of PI/Bounty Hunters, they both are kind of snarky, they both drive old Mustangs.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

I have been meaning to re-reread the Harry Potter Series for a bit now, and so I started with the first book. Which is as far as I got LAST time I meant to re-read the series. I really enjoy all the extra detail and bits not in the movies (which I’ve seen a dozen or two times), but I have not read the books in a while, so things are getting a bit hazy, and I could use a refresh. The first book is probably the most boring in this endeavor, since, for the most part, the book and movie are identical. There is an extra Potions based test to retrieve the Sorcerer’s Stone, Neville gets detention and goes to the Forbidden Forrest instead of Ron, Draco challenges Harry to a duel trying to get Harry and crew in trouble, and there is an extra Quidditch Match that is super short. Not much of importance that’s different.

What’s New

I’ve bought too much new to list. I think there was a video game themed StoryBundle, I bought several James Bond books, I’ve picked up quite a few free comics that I have not read yet. Too much to list honestly.

I also started The second Expanse Book. Which I hope to finish by next month.

My Music Listening Habits for April 2020

Well, it finally happened.

After a very long, very strong, 9 month reign as Queen, Sigrid has been dethroned from my top artist for the month. And by a rather huge margin. Funny enough, she has been dethroned by someone she knows, who is also a Norwegian singer, AURORA. It was a one-two punch though, because Sigrid has dropped to number three, not number two, with Tessa Violet sliding in at number two.

I can’t honestly blame the VierLive show entirely for Aurora’s rise here, she has been on sort of a slow bubble for a while now in my listening patterns. It certainly likely helped things along however. I would point to Tessa Violet and say she wasn’t helped by any live shows, but well, that wouldn’t be true. I have not watched all of them but she has been doing two weekly Youtube shows on Youtube. Though those are quite a bit … less structured.

Moving on a bit, Dua Lipa had a new album drop, Future Nostalgia, which is has a pretty nice sort of old school syth-pop feel going on with it. BT has been getting a bit of a resurgence lately, though it’s mostly just listening to These Humble/Hopeful/Whatever Machines again a bit. I can never remember which is which on those albums.

The rest of the top ten isn’t anything particularly exciting or new. The 5×5 is kind of all over the place as well, since I’ve been listening to a lot of random techno music lately so there’s a lot of kooky random stuff on there. The weird thing is, I don’t thing BT is on it either at all, despite being number 4 for the month.

Here is the 5×5 though, for the sake of consistency.