RedneckModern

ApartmentTherapy Feature

Thanks very much to Aaron and the crew at ApartmentTherapy.com for featuring the house in one of thier House Tours. Thanks, too, for the kind comments. As you can see from this blog, it was/is definitely a labor of love.

Marty Pix

Marty has been getting requests for head-shots as of late... ironic since his head is quite small compared to the rest of his body. You can also find him here.

New Items at ModApple.net

Casie just uploaded a bunch of new things at ModApple.net just in time for holiday shopping. Avoid the Black Friday madness and pick up a unique vintage gift instead! (or something for yourself...).

Shooting Space

Casie has done a great job keeping her Esty shop -- ModApple.net -- up to date and in order, but the changing light was making photography tough. Plus, we were using the dining room, which meant that -- on shooting days -- our house looked like an antique shop.

I had wanted to use the garage as a storage and "processing" space for her and it dawned on me that it'd make a nice shooting space, too. Even without flash, the light in there is pretty good and we just needed a space to do it. Enter Ikea.

With two inexpensive Ikea tabletops and a pair of odd Sweedish hinges we found in the shelving section, we were able to fashion a folding table. And, as luck would have it, the spacing between the standards in the garage door where the perfect size to house the "background" tabletop.

The shopping list:

• 2 Ikea Vika Amon table tops matching in size (we used a white one and a walnut one)
• 2 Ikea Ekby Riset adjustable shelving beackets (hinges)
• 2 fender washers, 2 machine bolts, 2 wingnuts (to replace the Ikea hex-head nut)
• 2 Ikea Ekby Lerberg brackets (to support the weight of the table when down -- the keyhole design of these make them easily removable when the table is not in use)

Because of the left/right nature of the hinges, I needed to replace the Ikea bolt with a flat-head phillips M5 screw (27cents at Ace) so that they would fit snuggly against the tabletop. Presently, I have wingnuts on the bolts to loosen/tighten, but I've discovered that -- while the hinges and their "teeth" are strong -- they aren't strong enough to support the weight, so I'll add a fender washer between them to keep them from biting (which is how the hinges were made to work) and add a simple swing-out brace to brace the table when it's down or add some strapping (think: top bunk on a sailboat). I'll add more pictures when I do.

So, now -- for maybe $45 -- we have a collapsable shooting table... and a clean dining room.