Recycled Kitchen Cabinets

Here is a post that I meant to post months ago... ....

After the flooding incident, the entire house was remodeled, including the kitchen. We later realized the cabinets were done with almost 100% recycled materials! This is mainly because we (and our landlord) are cheap, but if you prefer to think of it as being green, that's cool too.

Materials and their sources:

Cabinets and Sink       ->     Craigslist

Countertop Laminate  ->      Thrift Store

Drawer Handles         ->      The Re-Store

  

Our landlord had found the replacement cabinets on Craigslist and I swear they looked like were taken from a meth lab that was being renovated. I can only imagine the deal he got on this heap (likely free). But after a good cleaning, some paint, and a lot of TLC, the cabinets themselves actually turned out better than the previous ones.

Cabinets that we fixed up from total crap to pretty nice.
The counter-top needed some work.

The counter-tops however, were a different story. In the rush to get the house livable, the particleboard surface of the counter-top was not nailed down by our landlord's chosen handyman. It was actually placed on upside-down and completely backwards! The laminate counter-top was total crap: thin, cracked, chipped, not glued down, and gross. So it was a bit sub-par to prepare food upon.

Lucky for us, a good friend of ours, Matt Behring, is currently pulling a 4.0 in the Cabinetmaking and Fine Woodworking Program at The Wood Technology Center at Seattle Central Community College. It is prestigious woodworking school and he will without a doubt go on do great things. In fact he already has, with our counter-tops! 

Tess made an awesome find when she found this brand-new roll of nice counter-top laminate at the Ballard Goodwill for $12.  One man’s trash is another man’s kitchen.

Counter-top laminate from the Ballard Goodwill for $12 !

It was easy to convince Matt to help us fix and laminate the counter-tops as it is the perfect opportunity to test out his new-found skills in a real-world setting, and we couldn't be happier with the results! I was very impressed with his work, from the second he showed up looking all professional with his toolbox and shop apron, to when he put the finishing touches on the laminate and we went out for a celebratory beer.

He has the necessary tools of the trade, knows the tricks of trade, and has honed his skillset to a point where this could have easily have been his 100^th  real-world install (instead of his 1^st)! I enjoyed helping him help us with this project, and I learned quite a lot of useful skills in the process.

Matt fixing the particle board.

J-rolling the laminate to help the cement bond.

Rough cutting the hole for the sink.

Routing away the excess laminate. 
Note how good the final routed hole for the sink looks after being routed!

He briefly used a really awesome Japanese saw called a Dōzuki, which is a type of backsaw. 
It has a very thin kerf, only cuts on the back-stroke, and therefore is used for fine cuts. 
It is awesome and I really want one!

To finish up the kitchen cabinets, we got new drawer handles from the Re-Store. The Re-Store is a concept that I absolutely love. It is what you would have if you combined a thrift-store and a Home Depot. It’s a store that sells recycled and re-purposed hardware, fixtures, and building materials! Brilliant.

Cabinet and Drawer handles from the Re-Store.

I wish I had a good before picture to really drive home how much of an improvement this laminate counter-top is. But you'll just have to take my word for it; it is night and day! 

If anyone in the Seattle area needs any carpentry and/or laminate work done, I know a guy! He is professionally trained, top of his class, and is highly recommended! Thank you Matt!

The final counter-top. We love our professionally installed thrift-store find! 

Tidepooling

Supermoon Yields Super Low Tides

One year ago, I was at Golden Gardens beach, and was a little worried that the extreme low tide possibly meant that a tsunami was imminent. Nope, it was just the day following SUPERMOON.

Saturday night was this year's return of Supermoon, which means that there were super low tides on Sunday morning. This is the prime time of the year to go tidepooling, which is simply the activity of walking around in the tide pools that result from low tide and viewing the creatures that are too ill-informed about Supermoon to understand the consequences of staying in the shallow water.

There were quite a few other humans that got the supermoon memo, and were out to scope out the aquatic wildlife which normally hides in the seaweed.

Here is what my friend Arielle and I encountered.

Seastar

Sea snail (or sumthin).

Jellyfish-like gelatinous blob and a shell.
Either a symbiotic relationship, or maybe I just set them beside each other.
Maybe they hate each other. I really don't know.

Old rotten pilings. 

These things were living in the rotted-out pilings.

Arielle helps point out the wildlife. 

Scale: about 10 inches.
Still, this is some Planet Earth shit right here!

Sea floor

anemone. an enemy. 

Opportunist. All the birds were having a good day.

mad crab.

Micro-ecosystem

I don't think you're ready for this jelly.

Tidepool Mediators 

There were about 10 naturalist volunteers associated with the Seattle Aquarium out on the beach answering questions, explaining things, and reminding everyone about the fragile ecosystem we were all tromping through. 

It was really cool to have them out there, educating people about the creatures and how to properly observe them. I learned a lot from this nice volunteer.

Thanks Seattle Aquarium volunteer naturalists! 

Here she was answering my question about which creatures are most  fragile.
Nudibranchs: sea slugs. We didn't see any.

Anthropogenic Impacts

She told us that this particular sea floor habitat used to be in bad shape, but has made a significant comeback in the last nine years after being designated a preserve area, which basically means no harvesting or any intrusive recreational activities. That made me feel better about walking around in the sea grass, worried that I was contributing to the demise of the very creatures I was there to see.

She said that the volunteers themselves debate whether the benefits of their presence outweigh the habitat impacts. Overall an individual’s impact is negligible, but when you consider the collective impacts of hundreds of people, you can see their point. But given that this ecosystem is making a healthy comeback, I feel OK about carefully traipsing about.

The day was overcast, which greatly reduced the stress on the ecosystem, so that also helps mitigate things. I would imagine a hot sunny day following Supermoon basically turns the tide pools into gumbo.

Basic guidelines for tidepooling are all pretty much common sense.

• Be gentle. Don’t stress the creatures. 
• Don’t pick up anything that's attached.
• Return them to where you found them.
• Don’t be cruel.
• Don’t be an idiot.
• Etc. 

Garbage or Aquatic Structure?

I kept seeing these weird things, which I thought were some kind of gasket (potentially for boat septic tanks. Haha). I found out (from the volunteer), that these are actually called sand collars and are made by sea snails! They take sand, combine it with mucus, and place their tiny eggs between layers. They work the sand between their ‘foot’ and their shell  to extrude this crazy structure (like one of those play-dough toys).  The eggs are protected by it, and it disintegrates in about a week. 

So tidepooling was pretty interesting and sea creatures are cool. See you next supermoon!

The 25th Annual Solstice Parade

Its summer and it’s the Solstice, so it’s time for the Solstice Parade! I’ll let you refer to my post about the festivities from last year’s Solstice Parade if you are interested in my description of the bizarre goings-on of this cherished event.

It was a beautiful sunny day. Perfect for any parade, but especially fitting for the Solstice! It was a wacky, colorful, beautiful, and joyous day. It is almost an absurdly happy occasion, where the masses gather to marvel at how fun humanity can be when you take peculiarity to the extreme. I really love this parade. I love how silly it is and I love its low-budget visual appeal.

 As a supplement to last year’s coverage, I’ll share a few pictures of the highlights of this year’s parade!

Monsanto?

Monty Python and the Holy Grail tribute

Donations to the Green Hat.
The ultimate donation gathering rig.

Love this turtle!

Sol Train

This lovely lady made it to the parade this year! Yay!

The Hug Patrol.

These things are freakin  me out.

This whale was impressive.

This was awesome.

These balloons were a brilliant touch!

Can't wait for next year!