home improvement

The home improvement blog community website, HomeOwnersLike.Us, which I've been working on as a public alpha test for a client, has been updated. Actually, for all practical matters, it's been completely rebuilt.



You know how when you have a table with one short leg and you cut a little off the long leg, then the other side gets wobbly? That's what it was like trying to pull the old RSS aggregation engine out of the software so I could insert the new one. So much for modular coding. Feh.

But it had to be done because the old one was flaky with Blogspot Atom feeds. Besides, the new aggregator will become the standard RSS feed engine for the next version of Drupal, due to be released in a few months.

Now that I've lost 95% of you with technical squirrel chatter, lemme 'splain what this site is about. It lets you set up a "home page" which you can style with optional banners and a photograph, sorta like I did with Brooklyrowhouse's feed: http://www.homeownerslike.us/node/141.

Under your homepage is a list of your ten most recent blog articles. Under that are comments and questions from other users. The homepage isn't all that exciting now but I'm mulling over some interesting ideas for it. Some are more applicable to health care nonprofits than DIY types but a couple involve keyword social networking between blogs which could be fun.

Even though HomeOwnersLike.Us was set up to test software eventually intended for a health care audience, it's been getting a lot of hits. A startup commercial home improvement site contacted me this weekend with a partnering offer.

If you host a home improvement blog, please give it a try and send me feedback.

If you own home in progress, whether you're a DIYer or someone who calls a contractor to change the lightbulbs, you know the syndrome.

"As long as I'm updating the kitchen, I might as well make it larger."

"As long as I'm pouring a new basement floor, I might as well replace all the old plumbing underneath. And then I might as well rough out for another full bath. Then I might as well build it."

"As long as I'm opening up the wall, I might as well add a central vacuum system, split-unit air conditioning and a new 50a riser to the second floor. And a whole house beer tap!"

You think I'm making this stuff up? That's me, folks! Well, except for the beer tap but, believe me, I came very close to doing it. And compressor outlets on every floor too.

Anyway, the mightaswells struck this weekend when I decided I needed to sand and add a coat of Danish oil to the ipe table I made for the living room deck a couple of years ago.

Karen found the wrought iron base in one of her dumpster dives and gave it to me. I picked up some ipe at Dykes and made the top. Unfortunately, I found that ipe and marine urethane don't play well together. Maybe it's the oils in the wood, maybe it's because I sanded it down to too fine a grit, but it was all flaking off.