Remodel Kitchen

When designing or redesigning a kitchen, you will be confronted with a variety of design options. I love slide-out shelves, which offer a combination of convenience and accessibility. For storing pots and pans, slide-out shelves let you use the entire shelf–front and back–and you can access any pot or pan regardless of its location. Some cabinet manufacturers also offer built-in waste basket and recycling bin options. The upside of a built-in waste basket or recycling bin is that such a cabinet can hide the mess that open trash cans present. However, the downside is that you can only replace a trash can or recycling bin with one of similar size.

After a few years of use, the rim of our waste basket started to break off. I thought that finding a replacement waste basket would be easy. But, after visiting Home Depot, Target, Wal-Mart, OSH and Bed Bath and Beyond and not finding a similar waste basket, I discovered that I was in trouble. How do you find a replacement for an unlabeled rectangular white plastic waste basket? Fortunately, I found a label on the white waste basket in the other built-in cabinet and easily ordered a replacement online. Actually, I ordered quite a few because shipping large plastic trash cans apparently is not cheap. When the trash cans finally arrived, I discovered that the white trash can I was using as a recycling bin was not the same size as the white trash can I was using as a waste basket. Doh! This time, I carefully measured the trash can and bought something similar in dimension. Hopefully it will work out.

After lunch at The Old Siam, I discovered a light bulb store while walking to my car. Batteries N Bulbs is located at 1111 W El Camino Real, #135, Sunnyvale, California. Although the interior of the store is quite spartan, the store carries an amazing variety of light bulbs. Since I needed a few specialty bulbs, I headed in to take a look.

First, the other 4 Pin Trip Tube Fluorescent Bulb in the bathroom went out. At least, I got 7 more months of use from this one, but no where near the claim 10,000 hour life. For this go around, I picked up an Eiko 26 watt 3500° K Triple Tube FLuorescent Lamp Base GX24q-3 for $15.95.

Compared to a 100 watt incandescent bulb, I should be saving 74 watts per hour. If the light is on for 3 hours a day for the 3 year life of the bulb, that’s 3,285 hours. So, the compact fluorescent saved me 249,600 KWH during its functional life. So, how much does 249 KWH cost? At 9.54 cents per KWH, one bulb saves me $23.76, if I would have installed a 100 watt bulb instead. So, despite the diminished life of the fluorescent bulb, I think I’m still ahead.

Now, for the more difficult task. I was also looking for a 40 watt type t4 e11 base mini candlelabra. I’ve searched in all the major hardware stores but never found a replacement bulb until I found Batteries N Bulbs. I mean this bulb was out for at least a year or more. The replacement bulb, a Bulbrite Industries, Inc. KX40CL/MC cost me $16.75.

I recently found the Hansgrohe Raindance E 120 AIR 3-Jet selling for $59.97 at Costco and decided to give it a try. I also have a Grohe Relaxa Plus and a Hansgrohe Interaktiv 2-Jet Handshower installed. When I purchased the Raindance, I thought I could just switch the handshower units. However, the the Raindance operates a bit different from the Relaxa Plus and the Interaktiv handshowers. Unlike the Relaxa Plus and the Interaktiv handshower units, the Raindance handshower has the flow restrictor built into the showerarm mount (where you hang the handshower) instead of into the handshower unit itself. So, if I just swapped the handshower units, the Raindance would output more than the reported 2.5 GPM maximum flow rate.

Out of curiousity, I had a 2.5 gallon plastic bucket in the laundry room. First, I filled the bucket using the Raindance handshower. The bucket started to overflow at around the 50-55 second mark, which is close to a 3 GPM mark. Next, I filled the bucket with the Grohe Relaxa Plus handshower. Despite the same reported maximum flow rate, the Relaxa Plus needed 1:40 minutes to fill the same bucket, or about 1.50 GPM. I always assumed that my showerheads were outputting at the maximum flow rate. Get a bucket and test your showerheads and see if they are delivery more or less water than the reported maximum flow rate.

I’ll be the first to admit that when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone at MWSF in 2007, I couldn’t see the genius of the product. It wasn’t until I actually got to see the iPhone in person that I realized that it was different from every cell phone that I had every owned. The iPhone was a game changer.

TOTO toilets may just be the iPhone of toilets. Sure, you can obsess over all the features in a TOTO Washlet, but the feature that really floored me was the SoftClose seat. Before I installed a TOTO Toilet, I had never seen a toilet with a SoftClose seat. Instead of slamming shut, the toilet seat will gently lower itself down. Absolutely amazing. After I saw this, I realized that every other toilet seat was designed incorrectly.

The only good thing about the current recession is that gas (and energy) prices have remained depressed. However, I am fairly confident that we are just benefitting from a temporary lull. Once the economy turns around, we will soon witness gas and electric prices resume their inexorable march upwards. If you are seeking some predictability in future energy prices, going solar is one option. I have long considered installing photovoltaic panels or a solar water heater, but the economics of the situation never seemed attractive. So, instead of going solar to hedge future energy prices, I’ve opted for the Vanguard Energy Fund. If you can’t meet the $25,000 minimum, you can opt for the Vanguard Energy ETF option like I did.

You might think that such an investment offers no environmental benefits, but that is not true. The carbon footprint for investing in the Vanguard Energy Fund ETF is much less than for manufacturing and installing photovoltaic panels. And, while you may lose your investment in the Vanguard Energy Fund, don’t think for a second that the photovoltaic panels sitting on your roof aren’t depreciating like crazy as the performance of the solar panels degrade over time and solar panel manufacturers are able to drive down the costs of producing newer panels.

If all goes well, in 5-10 years, my investment in the Vanguard Energy Fund ETF will exceed the cost of installing a PV system, such that I can sell part of my investment to pay for going solar and still have money left in the bank.

Winter means rain, not snow, out here in the San Francisco Bay Area. Two years ago, I had installed The Silencer on all the gutter downspouts. The bad news is that these magnetic sponge pads wear out. The magnet portion is still good. It’s the sponge portion that fails over time. I think the glue that binds the sponge to the magnet finally broke down so all I was left with the magnet. Little use that does in silencing the continuous dripping sound. Fortunately, I had a few leftover Silencers since the only time that the dripping noise proves bothersome is late at night when I’m finally headed for bed and all the shops are already closed.

The next project is to save the leftover magnet from 2 years ago and glue a thicker sponge to it. I wonder if a thicker sponge might be able to completely dampen the drip, drip, dripping sound.

Consumer Reports reports that certain Kenmore/LG washing machines have a “software problem.” Too bad the washing machine doesn’t have a USB port. Would make the software upgrade a lot easier.

The Ryobi Non-contact Infrared Thermometer is one of those tools that you never realized you needed until you actually have one in hand. It offers both practical and fun applications around the home. If one room in the house feels colder than the others when the heat is on, you can easily take the temperature of the air exiting the vents.

I’ve also used the Ryobi Infrared Thermometer to measure the temperature of

1. dimmers;
2. frying pans;
3. incandescent, fluorescent and halogen light bulbs
4. laptops;
5. bath water

The Ryobi Infrared Thermometer displays the temperature of anything that you are curious about. A great stocking stuffer for Christmas.

Paul Kedrosky complains that Google fails at appliance reviews. I use Google a lot. A LOT. And I would have never thought of using Google to look for appliance reviews, at least in the sense one a reliable list of 5 or so options to select from. Instead, I have always turned to Consumer Reports. That’s not to say that Consumer Reports has never steered me wrong. But, I think the review standards will be more consistent when you have one organization reviewing multiple dishwashers instead of the crowd-sourcing model where each person reviews their own individual dishwasher. However, there is a place for crowd-sourced reviews. Once your shopping list has been narrowed to a few choices, I would use Google at this point to vet the options by looking at user reviews for particular makes and models. I would also run the obligatory “sucks” search to look for disgruntled user reviews.

Despite its name, permanent markers stains are not necessarily permanent. How you approach a permanent marker stain may depend on the affected surface. Fortunately, the permanent marker stain that I faced was on the hard plastic countertop of a toy kitchen. Of course, I first tested with a paper towel and plain water. While the paper towel removed some of the ink, I could quickly tell that this process would be too slow. Next, I progressed to using Simple Green, which was not particularly effective against this type of stain.

In the end, what worked the best was rubbing alcohol. Actually, this is quite obvious in hindsight when considering the alcohol-based white board cleaners that populate many offices. So, I proceeded to scrub away with a paper towel dipped in rubbing alcohol. I managed to remove about 80% of the permanent market stain, but was not making any progress with the remaining 20%. The problem I encountered was that the hard plastic surface was not entirely smooth. My paper towel was no match for the tiny grooves that populated the surface. For my final attempt, I brought out an old toothbrush. Pour a little rubbing alcohol on the stained surface and brushed away. This completely removed the remaining stain from the surface. The toothbrush was able to reach the grooves that was inaccessible to the paper towel.