Roseyland

I bought my car 7 years ago. It’s a 2003 Honda Accord. I know, pretty exciting huh? The Honda Accord fits me perfectly. It’s a quality reliable car, and it’s not overly flashy. There is nothing about my Honda Accord that suggest I want to impress you or that I have anything to compensate for, and that’s how I like it. One of my favorite features of my car is the steering wheel stereo controls. Here is a picture of them.

The controls are a little dirty. That’s what happens when you touch something for 7 years. These controls let me adjust the volume, change the station/CD, and switch between FM/AM/CD all without taking my hands off the steering wheel or my eyes off the road. Awesome. In my old car, I didn’t have steering wheel stereo controls. Those were dark days.

A couple years after I bought my car, I got my first iPod. I didn’t think I would like an iPod that much, but like most new technologies, you don’t know you need it until you have it. It wasn’t long before I wanted my iPod to work with my car stereo. I did some research, but it seamed like the only option was an FM transmitter. I tried this on a few road trips, and FM transmitters work okay in the middle of nowhere, but not in cities. I also wanted a more permanent and clean solution that would let me store my iPod out of sight.

Eventually I found the Denison Ice Link. This was an adapter that connected to my iPod to the CD changer connection of my car stereo. Basically, it made my iPod act like a CD changer. When I hit the +/- Disc buttons on my stereo, the iPod would switch playlist, and the steering wheel controls would let me move up and down tracks and adjust the volume. It was wonderful. I now had an almost endless supply of music in my car at my fingertips. Not only that, this opened up the world of podcast to me. I love podcast. They are like talk radio, only not stupid. Currently my favorite podcast are The K&K podcast, The 404, and This American Life.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. After 5 years of faithful service, my iPod died. It had been acting a little weird for a few months, and then I think the extreme cold weather in St. Louis this January finished it off. I did some research, and the Denison Ice Link adapter in my car did not work with the newer iPods. Denison had newer adapters, but they no longer sold their products in the USA. Interesting. I tried to listen to the radio, but after a few days I couldn’t take it anymore. There is hardly any music on the music stations, and those 97.1 people, nuts, completely nuts (except the Dave Glover show, I like the Dave Glover show).

I did some more digging, and I found the USA SPEC PA15-HON2. This adapter makes iPods appear as a CD changer to my stereo like the Denison Ice Link, but it works with all of the new iPods and even the iPhone. It got good reviews on Amazon, so I bought the PA15-HON2 along with a new iPod nano (purple, I like purple). This cost me over $300 total, but I was desperate for my old life back.

Getting to the back of my car stereo is a little tricky. The first time I did this, I was fortunate to find a great post with pictures of a very similar install that somebody did. I couldn’t find the post again though, so this time I had to go from memory. I figured I’d post pictures of the process, in case somebody else out there wants to try something similar. The standard disclaimer applies: follow my instructions/advice at your own risk. I don’t know what the “right” way to do any of this is.

First, here is the inside of my car. The stereo is in the center, and below the stereo is a storage compartment with a silver door that slides back. This is where I’d like to put my iPod.

Here is the storage compartment with the door open. The cable is the old cable that attached my old iPod to the old adapter.

The first step is to remove the rubber liner from the ashtray shaped compartment that is labeled “Not An Ashtray”. It is held in by sticky glue, and you can pull it out fairly easily.

He is the rubber liner removed.

Under the rubber liner there is a plastic liner that is held in by clips. I removed it by prying a couple small screw drivers under it, and popping it up. You don’t really have to worry about scratching it, because it is covered by the rubber liner.

Here is the plastic liner removed.

Next, you have to remove the trim around that stick that let’s you switch between Park-Neutral-Drive-Reverse. What is that thing called anyways. You have to be more careful here, because you probably don’t want to scratch this part. The trim is held in by six clips (three evenly spaced along each side). I slid a screwdriver under each side and popped the trim up near each clip. You can kind of tell where they are when you do this.

Here is the trim piece removed.

In the ashtray like compartment, you can see two screws. Remove these and try not to lose the screws. Once you remove the screws, you can pull out the piece containing the ashtray like compartment and cigarette lighter. I just let it hang over to the side and out of the way.

Now there are two more screws at the bottom of the storage compartment. Remove these, and now the compartment is only held in by two clips on each side near the top of the compartment. Removing the compartment is a little tricky. You don’t want to force it, but you do have to apply a little force and pull at just the right angle. Just keep playing with it, and it will come out. Don’t get frustrated at this point, or you’ll do something stupid and break something, and that would suck, because Honda probably charges an arm and a leg for these parts.

With the storage compartment removed, we can get to the CD changer connection on the bottom of the stereo. This is also where the XM radio would attach if I had XM. The CD changer connection is the white female connector in the picture below.

Here is another view of the underside of the stereo and the CD changer connection from farther back.

I’d like the PA15-HON2 and my iPod to go inside the storage compartment, so I need a way run cables from the stereo into the storage compartment. It’s just a plastic box, so I drilled a hole into the top of it. The hole in the picture below was for the old adapter cable, and it was a little too small for the new cable.

I took the storage compartment up to my condo and drilled a bigger hole. I didn’t have a drill bit big enough for a nice round hole, so I just drilled a few small holes and then pulled it apart with some pliers. The result wasn’t pretty, but it’s out of sight, so I didn’t care. The cat loves to help.

Back in the car, I attached the new adapter cable to the CD changer connection of my car stereo. Like so.

Then I ran the cable into the storage compartment, connected it to the PA15-HON2 adapter, and then connected the adapter to my new iPod nano. I also tested it at this point, because it would suck to put everything back together and find out that it doesn’t work.

Once I knew everything was working, I put it all back together. Basically you just reverse everything you did to take it all apart. The only tricky part is getting the storage compartment back in place. You have to slide it in at just the right angle. I lined up the screw holes at the bottom of the compartment, and then pushed on the upper part until the clips slid into place. It took a few minutes to get the storage compartment back in it’s proper place. Also, the door of the compartment probably won’t open and close right until you reattach the screws, but once you reattach the screws, make sure you test the door. If you put everything back into place and the door isn’t right, you’ll have to remove it all again to get the door right. The picture below shows everything back together with the adapter and iPod neatly tucked inside the storage compartment.

Here it is after the install with the storage compartment closed. See, you can’t even tell I have an iPod in there. I love it this way, nice, clean, and simple.

I love the new adapter. I set up 6 playlist named HONDA1-6 on my iPod, and I can switch between them using the Disc +/- buttons on my stereo. “Disc 7″ lets me flip though all of the music on my iPod, and “Disc 8″ is a direct mode where I can use the iPod controls to select music. The adapter also charges my iPod. The only problem I have had is that once direct mode locked up my iPod and I had to reset it. This only happened once though, and I don’t plan on using direct mode very often.

As a bonus, the adapter even works with my iPhone. When you connect the iPhone, the iPhone says that the accessory is not compatible with the iPhone, but if you just click OK, it works. You can access playlist on the iPhone just like the iPod, and you can even listen to internet radio using the WunderRadio iPhone app. I tested it, and I listened to BBC Radio 1 and Le Mouv’ Radio (France) in my car. That’s so cool.

I’m going to finish this off with a video of my current favorite song. It’s Fireflies by Owl City. If you don’t love this song, something is wrong with you. Enjoy.

I bought my condo in lovely Brentwood, Missouri four and a half years ago. About a year later, I started to look around and freak out about everything that wasn’t perfect. I became convinced that no one in their right mind would ever buy my condo with it’s outdated bathroom and kitchen. So I decided to do a cosmetic remodel of my bathroom. I had absolutely no remodeling experience. I once painted a wall, but that’s it. This would have been a great experience to blog about, but I didn’t have a blog back then. But I do now, so let’s just pretend that it’s the 4th of July weekend 2006.

Here is a picture of my original bathroom. You have to love the movie star lights. You can’t see it in the picture, but the room had been painted with regular flat paint, and I had the worst time keeping mildew off the walls. Also notice that I have an astringent and facial lotion. Queer Eye for the Straight guy was popular back then, and the queers said that all guys should be using an astringent and facial lotion daily. I listen to them for awhile, but it quickly became too much of a hassle.

Here is a picture of my old medicine cabinet.

This is half of the junk that filled up my spare bedroom while I was working on the bathroom.

First I tore everything out that I wasn’t going to keep. I would have liked to replace the vanity, but that would have required replacing the floor, which was beyond my skill set and the floor looked to be fairly new. So I opted to just replace the top of the vanity, and hope that it would look new. Here is the bathroom with the mirror, light fixture, and old vanity top removed.

This was the scariest part of the remodel. I found a medicine cabinet at Lowe’s that was the same width as my old medicine cabinet, but one and a half inches longer. This meant I had to cut out 1.5 inches of drywall, which was scary, because if I screwed up, I had no idea how to fix it. It took me about half a day to remove the 1.5 inch strip of drywall, but I got it done.

Here is a picture of the bathroom after painting. Painting might have been the worst part of the job. We (I had an assistant) put on one coat of primer (because of the mildew issues), and then two coats of paint. Painting the ceiling was the worst part. It’s a small room, but it’s hard to reach everywhere you need to reach. While painting, Earl was locked in my bedroom, and he meowed as if he was being brutally murdered. Painting a cramped room for hours with a cat howling in the background, awesome.

Speaking of Earl, here he is checking out the new vanity top and paint job.

Here is Earl playing plumber.

Oh what the hell, this is the internet, you can never have too many cat pictures.

Drum roll please. No seriously, I need you to actually do a drumroll… The finished bathroom.

Another picture of the new bathroom. That mirror was the most expensive single item, but I love it. It’s from Pottery Barn, in case you wanted to know. I was a little frightened to hang it, because in order for it to be centered over the sink, I couldn’t attach it to a stud. It came with some pretty heavy duty drywall anchors though, and it has held firm for the past 3 and a half years. Yes, those are pictures of kittens in my bathroom. They are in black and white though, so that makes it cool.

One more picture, with the new medicine cabinet. Also, notice the new brushed nickel towel racks, and the new vent cover, and you can’t see it, but I also put a new cover on the ceiling fan so that it would look new. Go me!

That’s it, my bathroom remodel is complete. I also had my kitchen remodeled a little over a year ago. You can read about that here, here, and here. I think my next home improvement project is going to be new flooring. I want to get laminate wood flooring throughout my condo, including the steps. I don’t want to know how much that is going to cost though, or how it can be done with all my furniture and a cat in the way. Hmm…   

Let me warn you ahead of time, this is going to be controversial. You may be offended. Last October I did something dramatic. I switched to Mac. This was a big deal for me, because I have always been a PC guy. My first computer was an Apple IIc way back in the day, but in high school I got a Packard Bell with Windows 3.1. It had a 100 MHz Intel 486 CPU and a 200 MB hard drive. Ever since then I have had Windows PCs. I built my last computer myself, which I absolutely loved. I researched and hand picked every component, ordered them from Newegg, and put it all together. It was so much fun that I talked my Dad into letting me build his next computer. So why switch to Mac? A lot of it had to do with my iPhone. I love my iPhone, which led me to love going to the Apple store, which led me to consider getting a Mac. Beyond that, I just like trying new things, especially computery gadgetty things. (continue reading…)

Praise Jesus! (or Buddha, or Mohammad, or Mother Earth, or whatever…) My kitchen is finished. Actually, it has been finished for a couple weeks now, but I finally got all my crap kitchen stuff out of the spare bedroom and into the cabinets. My condo is back to normal, only better, you know, because the kitchen is new. There isn’t much to say here, since I covered most of it in this post. So, here are the final pictures and even a video. Try not to notice the smudges on the appliances. I’ve heard that stainless steel is hard to keep clean, so I haven’t tried. Enjoy!

Hello blog, I’ve missed you. I’d give you a long list of excuses as to why I haven’t visited in a while, but I know you wouldn’t understand. You are after all, just a blog. I will give you one excuse though. I’ve been remodeling my kitchen. Well, more accurately, I’ve been watching other people remodel my kitchen. If you remember this post, I’ve been trying to decide what to do with my kitchen for some time now. I finally got around to getting an estimate and getting it (mostly) done. Here is how it went. The first step was getting my kitchen completely cleaned out. This took a good four hours. I don’t know who put all that crap in my kitchen, but when I find you, it’s on. Here is a picture of my sad empty kitchen.

Here is the contents of my kitchen relocated to my second bedroom. I also threw away 4 large trash bags of stuff. No I should not have donated it to goodwill, because trust me, nobody wanted it.

Here are my brand new appliances waiting to be installed in my kitchen. The cat thought there might have been a problem with the top of the refrigerator, but it turns out it’s fine.

This is my kitchen with everything stripped out of it and most of the new floor in place. They did all this in less than 8 hours. Impressive. It is amazing how small the room felt with nothing in it. It felt like my kitchen was about the size of a walk in closet.

This is a picture about half way through the remodel. I was worried that the ceiling height cabinets would make the room feel closed in, but I love them now. I didn’t realize how cheap my old cabinets were until I saw the new ones. They are so pretty, sometimes I go into the kitchen just to touch them. Wait… forget I just said that.

Here is a picture with more of the cabinets in place.

Here is a picture with everything except the counter tops in place. Unfortunately, the people I went with do not do any painting. I didn’t think this would be a big deal, because there is hardly any wall exposed, but it took me a long weekend to get it all painted. Partly this is because I had to do a lot of wall repairs, since removing the old cabinets left many dings and tears in the walls. Then I had to tape everything up and do a lot of edging. I was insanely paranoid that I was going to accidentally paint my new cabinets. Also, I picked out those cabinet handles myself. I was worried I would pick out handles that ruined everything, but I think they look good. They do right??? right???

There has been a bit of a mishap with my counter tops. They made them the wrong color, so they gave me this temporary counter top while I wait for the new ones. This is my new sink though, the facet pulls out into one of those sprayer things on a hose. You know, in case somebody visiting me ever wants to wash a dish by hand or something. Or maybe I’ll develop a death wish and decide to give the cat a bath. I wish I didn’t have to have a corner sink, but there just isn’t room for anything else.

So there you have it, most of my new kitchen. You can see more pictures in my flickr set here. When I finally get my counter tops installed, I’ll post some final pictures and my final thoughts. Overall, I think I’m very happy, but I waiting to see the counter tops before I express my final opinion

I need my kitchen remodeled. I’ve been putting this off for over three years. It all started with the kitchen floors, they are wood floors that are in bad shape and need to be replaced. I was going to just replace the floors, but then I started looking at the cabinets and realized that they were outdated and ugly. Then I thought if I replace the cabinets, I’ll have to replace the counter tops, and after doing all that, I might as well replace the appliances too. At this point, it became overwhelming and I decided to give up. I’m not planning on living here forever though, and I’d hate to try and sell the place with the kitchen I have, so I need to do something. Here are some pictures of my kitchen:

This is what I would like to do:

• New Floors - Probably something like Pergo, but tile might be good too. I also like the idea of extending the floors out into the dinning room, but I’m not sure if that is practical.
• New looking cabinets - I’m hoping that I can avoid the expense of new cabinets by somehow resurfacing the existing cabinets. I’m not sure if that is possible though, so new cabinets is also an option.
• New counter tops - I’m okay with the existing counter tops, so keeping them is an option. However, I have a feeling that it will make more sense to replace them.
• New appliances - I need a new refrigerator, dishwasher, oven/range, and microwave. They can be black, stainless steel, or that stainless look stuff. The refrigerator needs an ice maker, it would be nice if it had a door ice/water dispenser, but that isn’t a necessity. The electric range should have a smooth glass cook top that is easy to clean. Also, I would like the microwave to be an over the range microwave.
• Miscellaneous - There will probably need to be some painting done, maybe a new sink, and probably a few things I’m not thinking of.

My budget is $10k to $15k, but hopefully closer to the $10k. The $15k is an absolute upper limit. Partly because that is all I can responsibly spend right now, and partly because my condo is probably worth about $140k, so if I spend too much, I’ll just be throwing money away. The goal here is to increase the value of my condo and make it easier to sell.

I’m considering 5 options:

1. RSI Kitchen’s and Bath - This isn’t really an option. I know RSI is too high end for me and is going to cost too much. I’m just including them in this list for completeness.
2. Lowe’s - This is probably the cheapest option, but I have a feeling that it is going to involve a lot of participation on my part. I’d rather have one person coordinate everything for me.
3. New Transitions Kitchen and Bath - This is small local company that gets great reviews, but they are so popular, they have a big backlog and are hard to get a hold of.
4. Ultimate Kitchen and Bath - I don’t know much about this company, but they are located close to my condo.
5. Callier and Thompson Kitchens and Baths - This is one of the more well known local companies. They advertise on the radio a lot. I get the feeling that they would be like RSI, but not as expensive.

So, there you have it. If anybody out there has any advice for me, I’d love to hear it.