When I first purchased my microphone for recording the YWAM News Podcast I had looked briefly at getting a table top microphone boom arm like the one on the left. I think that they are a great idea, a big space saver on the desktop and also help to put the microphone at exactly the right location for recording the podcast.

The problem that I had with them, and the reason why I didn’t get one, was the price, which seems to sit between about $75.00 and $150 for a mic boom arm.

Hack an Ikea Tertial Lamp into a Mic Stand

I decided to have a go at hacking an Ikea Tertial desk mounted lamp into a Mic Stand. The lamp only costs $9.99 and is mounted to the edge of a desk.

To change it onto a microphone boom I first tried to remove the light fixture so that I could use it later. Unfortunately though there was no way for me to remove the light fixture without cutting the cord, so I cut it right up near the actual fixture and then slowly pulled it out the base end of the arm.

After removing the cord I removed the lamp head just by unscrewing it from the boom arm, making sure to keep the bolt, wing-nut and the plastic spacer. That left a lamp free arm for me to attempt to attach to my Blue Snowball and Ringer Shockmount.

To do that I unscrewed the shockmount from the table top base that came with the microphone. I had to file the plastic spacer down significantly for it to fit around the base of the shock mount. After trying to file down the plastic space for quite a while I ended up having to take a drill to it and really jam it into the end of the arm.

The bolt and nut from the lamp head fit in with new microphone and shockmount, so I just used them to attach the shock mount and boom arm together. Although it isn’t in the photos I used cable ties to attach the USB cable to the boom arm.

I’ve found a few other people online who have done this Ikea hack. Unfortunately the combination of the Blue Snowball with Shock Mount, and the boom arm from the Ikea Tertial boom arm weren’t quite as good a fit as I had hoped. As you can see from the photo the base of the shock mount actually hits the frame on the boom arm, so I can not tilt the microphone back past 90 degrees. This is a bit of pain since the boom arm doesn’t extend so it’s parallel to the desk, so the best I can do is about 70 degrees, which isn’t ideal for recording.

My mic combo is also very heavy. I’m finding that each time I extend the arm I have to tighten the other nuts and bolts in the arm with a screw driver so that it doesn’t fall to the desk. My next step will be to buy some heavy duty hardware from Home Depot to replace the stock nuts and bolts in the arm.

I’m also hoping to purchase a pop filter for the microphone to help improve my YWAM Podcast recordings. This will increase the weight of my mic combo even more, which will definitely make the upgraded hardware even more important.

The original lamp only cost $10 and the upgraded hardware should be less than $10. I figure that for $20 it’s a pretty good deal for a microphone boom arm, even if it isn’t the perfect solution.

I was browsing around Ikea Hackers looking for ideas for a narrow desk for our kids and came across this great idea for a fold up workbench for the garage…

The design is built off of the Ikea BEKVÄM Kitchen Cart, which sells for $59.99 from Ikea in Canada. I figure that if I can find off-cuts like I did when I built my Garage Workbench then the rest of the needed parts would probably only cost around $20.

Although I’m not needing a fold up workbench at the moment, it’s something that I might make use out of in the future, if time ever allows me to work on all those projects that are still only ideas…

You can see the full article, including more photos, over at the Ikea Hacker article.

We’ve been struggling with getting our four-year old daughter to organise her bookshelf. It’s quite difficult for her to actually put her books on the shelf without knocking them over and getting very frustrated.

When we set-up our office we picked up six Ikea Inreda Book-ends. I ended up only using four of the six that we purchased, so we had two spare. We decided to try using those bookends to help our daughter with her books.

Usually I get frustrated with bookends. They’re normally too light and slide around whenever  books are leaned against them. If they don’t slide around they are normally too heavy to be practical in a kid’s room in their bookcase.

The beauty of the Ikea Indreda Book-ends is that they actually attach directly to the kids book self. This way they don’t slide around and the kids books don’t knock them over. By putting them fairly close together like in the top photo even if the books do tip they won’t actually fall over since there isn’t room for them to fall.

Since we put the new book ends on our daughters book shelves the bookcase has stayed neat. Our daughter is also able to put her books away all by herself without getting frustrated, which is good for her, and also good for us.

In Canada the bookends only cost $6.00 for a set of two, so it makes for a very cheap and easy solution for helping our daughter keep her book shelf tidy.

I reckon that every man’s garage needs a decent workbench. It’s the hub of a man’s world out there, whether it’s being used on the latest project, propping up the man during a good chin wag, or holding the man’s beer, a proper garage is simply not complete without a workbench.

Since I didn’t have a workbench yet I was considering buying one from the hardware store or picking up a second hand on-line.

Buying a New Workbench

The cheapest new workbench that I could find was about $70 for an all wood basic workbench kit. The workbench came ready to assemble with the plans, hardware and timber that I would need to assemble it. The kit would probably suit my needs pretty well.

Buying a Used Workbench

Looking at used ones was a real mixed bag. There were not nearly as many listed as I would have liked, and most of those that were listed weren’t cheap. A lot of them were tradesman grade benches coming out of workshops, so they were upwards of about $300. The best priced one that I could find that might suit my purpose was for about $50.

After searching for quite some time I finally gave up on finding a decent used workbench for my garage.

Building a New Workbench

After my fairly fruitless search on-line for a workbench I starting to think that maybe I could build one, so I started another search to find the best way to do that.

After a bit of searching I came across an article entitled “Building a Low-Cost Sturdy Work Bench from 2×4’s and OSB”. After reading that I figured that I could probably build it and end up with something pretty usable. I ended up with the workbench in the photo below, and all it took was about 2-hours of building and only $22.00 in materials!

The workbench top and shelf were both off-cuts that I picked up for only $2.00 each from the hardware store. They were 24” x 48”, so I based the rest the size of the workbench on that.

I then spent $10.00 on 5 x lengths of 2×4 and about $8.00 on a box of screws. Because I had the kids with me I reckon I spent nearly as long trying to buy the materials that I needed as I spent actually building it.

You can read the step by step instructions on how to build it here, but honestly, it’s super easy to build, and you end up a very sturdy and cheap workbench in the end.

I’ve written before about wanting to build a kid’s kitchen from an old entertainment system. I haven’t gotten around to doing that, but I did make a small kitchen out of some Cardboard Boxes that my daughter Jessica loved…

I can’t remember where I got the boxes from, but they were probably from the local hardware store. I got two that were the same size and in pretty good condition.

I primed the boxes with a 3 in 1 primer / sealer / undercoat that I had left over from when I undercoated the house. The boxes were taped together using normal clear packing tape, which the paint didn’t take to all that well. In retrospect I should have re-taped it using a cloth tape or even a masking tape.

After undercoating the boxes I put on two coats of flat white ceiling paint. You can use any paint that you have sitting around, but I had a lot of this left over, so it worked …

After the paint had dried I drew out the pattern that I wanted for the burners and over door on the first box, and the cupboard and sink that I wanted on the second cardboard box. I used a saucepan lid and a milk bottle cap to make the circles round.

Using the “donkey” colour of paint that we had left over from painting the living room, dining room, kitchen and office upstairs I painted in the patterns that I had drawn out before. I also cut a hole in the “cupboard box” for the sink and put in a plastic bowl.

For the doors to the oven and the cupboard I just cut it out with a knife and then used some old string that I had lying around for the handles. To accent the door to the oven a bit more I painted around it with the same donkey colour of paint.

All up this little kitchen, that Jessica loved to play with, cost nothing as the boxes were free and the paint was all left over. It did take me a few hours to paint, but it was well worth the effort.

With my daughters birthday coming up I have had big plans to build her a kid’s kitchen. Unfortunately time hasn’t permitted me to do that, but in looking around I found a fantastic way to build a children’s play kitchen out of an old / unused entertainment unit …

They took an old entertainment unit and re-used it as a DIY Children’s Play Kitchen, which turned out really good I reckon.

At the moment I am going to start looking around for an old entertainment unit and see if I can pick one up. I think that I will start on Freecycle and then maybe look at Craig’s List and see what I can find. Someone out there is probably replacing their old tube CRT TV with a new flat panel and don’t have a use for their old entertainment unit.

Of course, that could all change if they have a young girl who loves to pretend to cook and they read this article …

You can read about how to build the kid’s kitchen here.