Stain Archives - The Silicon Underground

Cheap baseboard alternatives

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 01 May 2017 11:00:30 +0000

Over the course of renovating rental property, there have been several times I had to explore cheap baseboard alternatives. I needed something that would be functional and look decent while staying within the confines of a sometimes-strained budget. My solution

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A farmhouse-style laptop desk

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 12:00:57 +0000

I needed a small laptop desk but wanted something that wouldn’t clash with my other furniture. So I built a farmhouse-style laptop desk and stained it oak. I used scrap wood, but if I’d had to buy the lumber, it

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How to cut corners on baseboards by not cutting corners

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 18 Nov 2015 11:00:18 +0000

Cutting baseboards can be tricky. Rooms are rarely perfectly square, so just cutting baseboards at 45-degree angles on the ends doesn’t usually yield a perfect corner. So instead you usually have to fit the pieces into the corner, trace the

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Plywood floors for a hardwood look at around $1 per sqft

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 01 Jul 2015 11:00:57 +0000

A comment over at Lifehacker got me thinking about plywood as flooring, which led me to a blog post at Quarry Orchard. The author is one of many people who have had success making floors out of strips cut from ordinary

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Not quite a new floor in a bottle, but…

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 05 Feb 2015 11:00:58 +0000

There are several acrylic floor finishes–sometimes mistakenly called wax–that promise they’re like a new floor in a bottle. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, but if you have reasonable expectations, they definitely can make a floor look better and easier

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Remove black marks from wood floors

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 09 Jan 2015 11:00:58 +0000

I tried to remove black marks from wood floors with Bar Keeper’s Friend recently, and I’m happy to report it worked pretty well. Here’s the story: I had some mysterious black ring-shaped marks on my hardwood floors. I traced them

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Painting model figures in five easy steps

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 07 Dec 2014 11:00:39 +0000

Painting model figures for train layouts is a task that few toy train hobbyists relish, but we can borrow techniques from other hobbies to solve that problem. The model railroading and toy train hobbies have solved a lot of problems

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Nobody respects craftsmanship anymore

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 12:09:52 +0000

The New York Times laments the decline of craftsmanship and its side effects in the United States. A generation ago, it wasn’t terribly uncommon for men to make their own kitchen cabinets. And those cabinets, if built correctly, would last

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Cheap, effective terrain scenery

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 01:12:00 +0000

Most traditional toy train layouts feature painted scenery: After plopping the 4x8 sheets down on some 2x4s to make a table, the hobbyist grabs a brush and some dark gray and green paint and paints roads and grass on the board.

If you want something that looks a little better than that but doesn't take a lot of time, here's my method, which takes 2-3 hours to complete.

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Making a curtain rod on the cheap

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 17:36:18 +0000

The boss, er, fiancee, is redecorating. Among the casualties: the curtains that came with the house when I bought it. Along with them, the curtain rods are going, since the new curtains don't fit on the old rods.

New curtain rods cost $25 or more. Here's how I made one for her for around $10.

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