Author: Mr. Homegrown

The Root Simple Workshop

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Design
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In honor of the national Week of Making, and Adam Savage’s call to share our maker-spaces, I’m giving you a virtual tour of the Root Simple workshop. Take note new homeowners: if I could go back in time I’d have set up the workshop and organized my tools before we began the extensive remodeling we had to do when we moved in back in 1998.

Our house is on a small hill and the garage/workshop is at street level. The garage is a partially buried concrete bunker built in 1920 and sized for two Model-Ts. We had to install a steel girder to stabilize the structure and a pitched roof and siding to waterproof our bunker. You can see the garage at the very beginning of the drone flyover that Steve Rowell shot for us. Our chariot, a Honda Fit, lives in one half of the garage. It’s hard to believe that this tiny subcompact car is 30 inches longer than a Model-T.

In the other half of the garage is my workshop. Being somewhat of an extrovert, the main thing I like about the workshop is that it sits right on the sidewalk so I get to interact with the neighbors while I work.

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For my workbench, I picked up a set of really cheap used cabinets at my local Habitat for Humanity ReStore and painted them with a homemade chalkboard paint. I topped the cabinets with some cheap pine butcher board from the Home Despot. The recipe I used for the chalkboard paint is:

1 cup latex paint
1 tablespoon cool water
2 tablespoons unsanded grout

You can use any color of latex paint that you like. The chalkboard paint allows me to label all the drawers and cabinets in the garage. Naturally, there is pegboard on every spare wall to hang all the random tools I need regular access to. Kelly came up with the striking bright orange/white/black color scheme.

Our friend Lee Conger noticed the labeling on these cabinets that point to our overly eclectic interests:

IMG_1187It’s like our heads need to be KonMaried! And fencing purists will note that the label should be “epee parts” not “swords.”

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Our three bikes and cycling accoutrements are kept locked to a pole. Always lock your bikes, kids, even when they are in the garage!

The one last touch I want to add to the workshop is a small and comfortable “thoughtstyling” chair along with a rolling whiskey cart. Half of “making” is philosophizing, after all.

The Most Attractive Cargo Bike in the World

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Bikes, Transportation
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While doing an image search about home coffee roasting (I’ll post on that later this week), I stumbled across what I think is the most handsome cargo bike I’ve ever seen. It’s one of the delivery bikes for the Portland based (of course) Trailhead Coffee Roasters. They also seem to have an equally attractive mobile brew bike that you can rent out for events.

Though not as pretty, I’m still very happy with my Xtracycle cargo bike and use it for hardware store runs and to avoid the fistfights that break out over parking at our local Trader Joes.

Do you have a cargo bike? If so, what kind?

Coffee Roasting Demo at Summer Nights in the Garden July 8

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Events
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The Los Angeles County Natural History Museum puts on a fun and free series every summer called Summer Nights in the Garden. It’s a fun mix of hands-on science demos, crafts, food trucks, music and cocktails in the museum’s beautiful garden. We’ve been a part of it each year and we’re returning on July 8th from 5-9 p.m. to do a home coffee roasting demo.

Of all the crazy home ec things we do around the Root Simple compound, coffee roasting is one of the simplest and most rewarding. I can’t believe that more people don’t do it. We’re going to show you how to roast your own coffee with a Whirley-Pop stove-top popcorn maker. Sweet Maria’s Home Coffee Roasting has generously donated the green beans we’ll be using. We’ll be repeating the workshop 6 times throughout the evening. There is a separate, free reservation system for the workshops that you can sign up for once you are on site. But show up early as the workshops fill up quickly.

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Black Rock Observatory.

If the coffee roasting demo is not enough to get you off the couch, there will also be a macrame workshop with Elsie Goodwin of Reform Fibers (this really takes me back to my 1970s childhood) and stargazing with the Desert Wizards of Mars who run an astronomy camp at burning man and who have created some amazing portable observatory buildings.

Music will be provided by DJ Aaron Byrd and Boom Boom Boom.

The event is free but you need to RSVP and show up early.

Video Sundays: Design Line Phones

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Design, Picture Sundays
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Am I the only person who has a problem with post WWII consumer objects? When it comes to phones I think they should be black, all the same and weigh 10 pounds. I think the cringe-worthy phones in this film from the fascinating AT&T history channel, prove my point. Some background:

For much of the company’s history, AT&T rented phones to users. But in the 1970s, the company tried a novelty line of phones that customers could actually buy, in stores. For these “Design Line” phones, the users were essentially buying just the housing — the working guts of the phones were still under the Bell System maintenance and ownership contracts.

These phones were not cheap — prices in 1976 for these phones ranged from $39.95 for the basic Exeter to a whopping $109.95 for the rococo Antique Gold model. That’s about $150 to over $400 today. Not that much more than a smartphone, but, of course, no touchscreen. No ringtones.

My mini-rant on the tyranny of choice aside, that “Telstar” model is pretty cool. Add a cat, a swiveling modernist chair and you’re a James Bond villain.

Saturday Tweets: Coffee, Bees and Bog Butter

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Saturday Linkages