Construction and Industrial Articles
posted on 5 April 2012
Not all DIY plans are grandiose - I have no desire to lay down green roofing or install solar power to my home - I have humble DIY plans, but plans which would make my life a lot easier. I have been living in a very small 2 bedroom apartment for a year now. When I say 2 bedroom, I am being generous, as one of the bedrooms has to be used as a living room. If I had all the time, and money in the world, or DIY dreams came true, I would change a few things. My washer and dryer are from what looks like the 1970’s they are so old, they don’t even have a hot water inlet connection! Washing all my clothes in frosty water isn’t so bad with new modern “cold water” detergents, but the real pain comes at winter. Whenever the temperature gets down below freezing, my poor helpless little cold water inlet pipe freezes, as does the washer! This makes cleaning clothes in the cold, almost impossible. If I could I would buy a new washer and dryer, and tear down the laundry room in my house and build a new one. Now, all I need is the time, money, or a nice friendly DIY fairy to help me out! |
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posted on 6 January 2012
A facility services job is a maintenance job, and as such you encounter many safety hazards, and need to ensure you're wearing proper ppe workwear. My job focused on the grounds, so everyday I worked with lawn mowers, weed eaters, water trucks and a variety of other power tools. There are the obvious dangers, such as blades moving at high speeds, heavy equipment possibly falling on you, and then there are the dangers that are not so obvious. The most pervasive danger when it comes to any labor type work is dehydration. It is very important to keep yourself hydrated, and to accomplish that we had to take a water break every half hour, which was nothing more than getting some water to prevent dehydration. It was also regulation to wear a pair of safety goggles. This helped protect from flying debris. Along with the goggles, we were all assigned an orange shirt to provide maximum visibility to vehicles. |
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posted on 14 December 2011
Several years ago, we experienced a massive storm system here in the Hawaiian islands. The storm brought winds that were unrelenting in their strength and gust-size. After raging for two days, the storm subsided and we ventured outside to see what damage had been done and to start the clean-up operation. Tree limbs littered our lawn, debris from our neighbor's trash was scattered all over, and my collection of 50 potted orchids was strewn across the front entry and driveway. We also discovered that rain had leaked through a skylight and had soaked our interior living-room carpet. We immediately set to work on cleaning up, which was a day-long task.
Having worked in diesel tank security, I was used to hard work though, so was ready to tackle this.
My husband tackled the tree limbs he retrieved and chopped up the tree branches. And I tried to salvage my collection of orchids. Each orchid had been in a ceramic pot, so I had to pick through the broken pieces carefully and decide if any were worth repairing. In addition, I had to sweep up all of the orchid soil and mulch so that I could re-pot the orchid plants. Our daughter ran around collecting all of the neighbor's trash and placing it in large, black, plastic bags. Finally, my husband and I had to lift the interior carpet and prop rocks beneath it so that it could dry out. The skylight needed re-caulking. For that job, we called in an expert! We have had windstorms since then, but none have caused the mess that we encountered that day. Hopefully, we will never have to undertake such a huge clean-up operation again. |
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posted on 6 November 2011
There are a few things I would like to do to my house. Tile saws, drills, paint brushes etc will be put to good use! The first thing is I want to seal the basement and finish it. My basement is going to be my man cave. I want to add a liquor cabinet and a bar to it. I then want to make a dedicated spot for a keg. I would then start to work on the electrical work. All the electric work needs done on the house. It is an old house that has old wiring and not many outlets. I would leave my living room the same. I would just insulate it along with the whole house and paint it. I would then want to make the master bedroom bigger by extending it into the dining room. This would make the master bathroom bigger as well. My kitchen is a rectangle skinny kitchen. I would want to redo the whole kitchen and extend it about 7 feet wider. I would want to redo all the trim in the whole house keeping the old trim just stain it. Last I would repaint the whole house and redo the roof. |
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posted on 2 November 2011
One of the greatest – and most unrecognized – artists of all time is Norman Rockwell, and I love putting these on the walls of my home, inbetween my velcro attached wall art mozaics. Many people know Rockwell’s paintings, which graced the covers of magazines like the Saturday Evening Post for decades. However, because he chose commercially viable work, his work is often overlooked in artsy circles. It’s no less spectacular for that. Rockwell’s paintings depict a jolly, busy and confident America, emerging from the Great Depression into the modern era. They radiate with the simple joys and challenges of life, almost always with an uplifting and humorous perspective, even if the situation depicted isn’t a happy one. He colorfully caricatures of every walk of American life, from first kisses to doctor visits to Santa Clause. From travelling salesmen skinny dipping in country streams to a crew of umpires grimly judging the weather to Rosie the Riveter, Rockwell’s America is an American’s America. So powerful are his paintings that they are America’s image of itself in the early twentieth century. |
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