A little over a month ago we started building built-in bookshelves for our living room.  We have a fairly large library of books and DVD’s and needed a place to store them all that was convenient and attractive.

We decided we would cover our empty living room wall with wall-to-wall shelving that we would build ourselves.  It certainly was no small task, but we’ve basically completed it.  It took us right at a month to build.  We also had to move the fan control switch to the other side of the wall so we didn’t cover it up, which required running new electrical wires.  We also added a second outlet along the shelf wall so we could plug stuff in.  There are just a few little details left to make it 100% complete, but it’s done as far as the functionality is concerned.

We’re planning on putting up crown molding along the top, and we’ll connect the two units across the doorway so they appear as one.  The carpet needs to be re-tacked and the baseboards need to be put back on, but that’s about it.  We also might run another outlet above so we can add some indirect lighting to the top of the bookshelves for a nice ambient effect.

It was a crap-load of work, but it was definitely worth it.  We got much needed shelves all while increasing the value of our house.

Below are some pictures of the process along with the complete product with all our books alphabetized on them.

Amy and I bought a house a few weeks ago, and we wanted to make some changes before we moved in.  The entire house had popcorn ceilings and we hate those, so we decided to remove them and then paint the ceilings and the rest of the house.  Since we had a couple of weeks before we had to be fully moved, it was good timing.  It took us about four days to scrape and sand the ceilings of the entire house, and then about a week to get all the walls and ceilings primed and painted.  Here are some of the pictures from the before, during, and after process.

We’ve updated Movie-Recipes.com to have an internal linking feature.  So you can click on the little measuring cup beside any ingredient and you’ll be taken to a page that lets you see all the other recipes that contain that ingredient.  It’s a great way to find new movies you might enjoy.  Give it a look!

I’ve released version 3.1 of the AJAX spell checker.  This releases fixes the bug where it didn’t work in IE and also adds a config option to place the spell checker controls below or above the text area.

Download it here!!

I rewrote this a couple months ago and never got around to releasing it, but I just finished putting the spell checker site back up, so I figured now would be as good a time as any.  It’s the new version 3.0!!  I’ve completely rewritten the Javascript with Mootools 1. and a good portion of the PHP backend.  But it’s faster and more awesome now than ever before.

Go grab it here!