Living Room Shades

Living Room Shades

New shades for the living room. Oak flooring was cut, glued and clamped into blocks to mounts these on.

Time: 2 hours

Witch-gear: Table saw, drill, countersink

Level of Difficulty: (What's with the saws?)

What We Learned: Cheap oak flooring is awesome. It has lots of uses and doesn't look bad.

Ukulele

Uke

A Ukulele kit for Kate's arrival home. Now we can all play. A kit from grizzly.com.

Time: 10 hours

Cost: $25

Level of Difficulty: (What's with the saws?)

What I Learned: Rubber bands can make good clamps.

Room Bebuild #2

Room Rebuild 2

Here is another room that we "rebuilt." It's my brother's old room and has now been converted into a guest room. While we didn't take the room down to the studs like the first Room Rebuild, replacing the ceiling, the lights, the floor and painting made this room look a lot better.

Time: 3 weekends

Cost: $500

Level of Difficulty: (What's with the saws?)

What I Learned: 4 - T-8 bulb light fixtures are bright!, drop ceilings make a room feel like an office.

On the Roof

The Witchger's do The Drifters 1963 classic Up On The Roof for Mother's Belated Mother's Day present.


On the Roof from Katian Witchger on Vimeo.

This project, despite kevins best efforts, was entered into with less planning than enthusiasm. (most of the little technical direction there was centered around how to get the double bass on the roof; which took about 3 minutes) needless to say it was an editors dream! because the metronome couldnt really be heard up on the roof a lot of our timing was off on top of not finishing the editing before recording the song. so there were some timing problems. luckily my father has taught me a golden rule which can be applied seamlessly to all endeavors. Split the difference! So I spliced and doubled a few frames on either side when the recording and video didnt match.

seamless.

special thanks to mom for catching my uke and resetting the metronome and bonnie for helping run the camera.

What we learned:
1. there is atleast one plausible reason to have a double bass on the roof
2. protools hasnt changed much
3. the old iMovie is better than the new iMovie
4. old technology still does the job.
5. 500 temporary tattoos for 1.99 is not a challenge

Witchgear:

TECHNICAL This project was all done on some ancient technical witchgear
*old Canon ZR500 MiniDV Camcorder (My new camera is in the shop for 6 WEEKS!!!)
*eMac G4 & iMovie4 (I've never really tried iMovie before but someone seems to have deleted the copy of FCP4 we had on the old eMac so I put it onto dads new macbook pro and gave the new iMovie a try... It is pretty HORRIBLE, I got a rough cut and exported to the eMac/old iMovie to fine cut it. It worked ok it is a little frustrating b/c it does things for you you dont necessarily want done but you have a little more control than you do with the new version. Id say if youre going to use iMovie use the old one.)
*kevs old G4 (w/ set-up) and protools 5(it only crashed once! a solid machine.)
*MXL 990 microphone/xlr cable (I can only assume kevin got on craigs list)
*cheap aluminum tripod (prob came free with something)

*our new witchgear could not go unused one of the 3 macbook pros in our house was used in the production of this music video...as a metronome. (it got hotter than fire)


MUSICAL
bob: lanakai concert uke (27th birthday present from steph)
kate: hula ukes tenor uke (25th birthday present to self)
kevin: 'uke's by kevin' soprano uke (kevin made this from a grizzly ukulele kit mom bought for him to make for her... I'm not sure she'll be getting it back)
dad: double bass


SET
roof
werner electro-master 6 foot fiberglass/aluminium ladder


2.5 sawzalls (this project wasnt too difficult just lots of steps all of which went pretty smoothly)

Free Mulch Day

Mulch Day

Free mulch day does not happen often, but when it does we stop everything. The bathroom is not finished, Bobby's old room has been torn apart, I am in the middle of building some shelves and most of the cars have something wrong with them, but it's free mulch. We must get free mulch.

Time: 8 hours

Cost: $10 for an excavator to load the mulch. $8.50 in gas.

Witch-gear: s-10, trailer, shovels, lawn mower

Level of Difficulty: (What's with the saws?)

What I Learned: The lawn mower needed to be fixed and as usual, I thought the carburetor needed to be clean out. After cleaning it thoroughly, and filling up with new gas, nothing. It turns out the spark wire was being clamped in the sheet metal and not in it's correct routing hole. It fired up first pull after the wire was feed correctly.

Magical Marxist Fire Uke for Yuk

My friend Yuk has recently had surgery and his left hand is still recovering. As an avid guitarist, this rehabilitation process is especially frustrating for him. (Though I'm fairly certain that sentence is not constructed correctly, I will leave it like that for you mother :):))

I have convinced him to take up the uke as a stepping stone while he regains strength/control in his arm and dexterity in his fingers. (And, of course, because the ukulele is the greatest instrument of all time)

I figure he needs a special uke in this circumstance so ive tricked one out for him. This is no ordinary uke mind you. This is arguably the greatest singular object i have ever encountered in my entire life. It is downright magical. While walking with him to the park, on my birthday I found this ukulele...in the trash! (not just on the top of bin either, this was on the bottom of a pile of black bags. I caught the faintest glimpse of the outline of the bottom curve in my peripheral vision and, granted im always -at minimum, subconsciously- scavenging, amazingly spotted this buried treasure. before i knew what i was doing, the bag was ripped open and a beautiful new uke had emerged into my hands! it was magic.

seriously though i think that is the best birthday event of all time for anyone ever. a magpie like me magically discovering a buried ukulele on a beautiful casual walk ON THE DAY OF YOUR BIRTH down a random side street when you actually not only know how to play but are marginally obsessed with said novelty instrument!?!??! #1 birthday of all time (oh and also b/c my mom loves me and sent a load of candy to me)

at the time of discovery yuk would not touch it (and fair enough it didn't smell as lovely as it's existence was in theory) but a good disinfectant and a paint job later and he'll have no choice but to become proficient!

i decided to paint it like fire for no particular reason other than i like fire, it looks pretty cool to have a fiery instrument, stylistic fire is easy to paint and i had a lot of red paint.

also, i happened to have a screen cut to print karl marx, not so coincidentally, his favorite philosopher (thats a whole other project; will post later), so i printed that on the back too for good measure.

i present to you witchger project # 27:
the magical marxist fire uke

witch-gear:
*acrylic paint, brushes
*black permanent marker (wish a had a sharpie i bought some pound shop knock-offs; sharpies are worth the cost!)
*mod-podge!! for sealing and extra shine
*speedball screen, black permaset fabric paint (lauries old school id as a squeegy; dont waste the money on a squeegy!! old plastic credit-type cards work better anyway!)

2 sawzalls

what i learned:
*(and what i forgot but knew) SAND IT DOWN FIRST! i imagine the paint will peel off pretty easily, i should have sanded it down especially with acrylic craft paint, if i decide to go in to business novelty uke painting i will probably sand them down before painting)
*a clamp would have helped to avoid smudging
*again, sharpies...they are worth it
*buying things will never make you this happy!

Bike Gear Shifter

bike gear shifter

Steph currently commutes to work on Kate's old Specialized hybrid bike. Since she started riding it, she's been complaining that it does not shift gears. (Apparently Kate always stayed in the same gear when she was riding it.) After months of telling her she just wasn't shifting properly, I tried riding the bike this weekend and found that, even though the shifter knob on the handlebar could be moved around, the rear derailleur was not responding at all! (Sorry, dear.) I assumed the cable was broken, but Steph and I eventually traced the problem all the way up to the shifter — a grip-style shifter that's ability to pull the cable was inhibited by a broken internal component.

Time: 2 hours

Cost: $40 for a new shifter

Witch-gear: Bike Repair Stand, Allen Wrenches, Screwdrivers, Wrenches

Level of Difficulty: (What's with the saws?)

What I Learned: The cable inside a grip-style shifter is routed inside of it in a very complicated manner, thus the cable comes pre-installed in a grip-style shifter. Also, I learned how to adjust the derailleurs from "Bike Tutor" videos about the front and rear systems.