The Life of Kevin Hauge

It’s been a while since I wrote anything and I took some progress photos a while back and thought I’d post an update for the house. This time, the living room and entry way.

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I didn’t have a great photo of the entry but I did determine that the wall was perfect for a gallery-style displaying of my artwork. As with the entire upper level, the walls were re-painted so they were not so “pink”.

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After:

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The major changes here were primarily just paint and furniture / decor. My leather furniture fit pretty well in the space and the entertainment unit with the 53″ TV also worked out pretty well. If you look close at the shelves, you can see the style of decor I like … I have an old style typewriter in behind the glass, an old sewing machine, a clay saki set, some pottery, etc. Not much else needed to be worked on here for a while.

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Here you can get a preview of the Dining Room changes as well, but that’s another post.

I thought I would finally post some updates to the house since we’ve been working on them periodically since we moved in. The first is the master bathroom.

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The first obvious change was the wall color. We chose a blue color that was actually in my old bathroom … we liked it that much. There was quite a bit that was removed and updated, with still plenty to go. The major upgrades we made were:

• Painted all the walls

• Put up a shower curtain (they actually took the curtain!)
• Replaced the shower head (was an old hand-held that hit the back of the shower)
• Took out the ceramic toilet paper holder and towel rack, patched the wall and installed a new polished silver set
• Took down the mirror and replaced it with a Menards special
• Added some new towels, decorations and under-cabinet storage bins
• Changed out the light switches and outlet

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After:

In time, there will be some even bigger projects:

• Replace the pink tub

• Replace the shower knob
• Tile the floor
• Change out the vanity and sink
• Replace the faucet
• New lighting
• Replace the toilet
• Add another outlet by the sink
• … basically everything

The joys of home ownership … always something to work on!

As I was making an online payment for my auto insurance, I noticed an all-to-frequent issue with online forms: button placement.

Logic would tell you that to go forward or to the next step, you would click on the button to the right, and to go back you would click the button on the left. Apparently the person setting up this form decided to take logic out of the equation. It makes me wonder how many people have clicked on the “previous” button by accident when intending to click “next”.

I have actually seen this many times over when it comes to online forms. The worst scenario is a long form with 2 buttons on the bottom: submit and clear. First of all, I don’t see the need for a “clear” button on many forms. Who fills out a form and then decides they need to completely start over? But for some reason, they still show up at the bottom of many online forms. So in these cases, the logic of where to put the submit button is even more critical. If you place the “clear” button to the right of “submit”, you will have the occasional user clicking on it by accident.

If you have an online form (survey, order form, etc) that seems to be light on submissions, you may want to double check your form logic as well. You may have numerous people filling out your form once … but after clearing it accidentally, decide not to fill it out a second time.

My own cornhole set that is!

After getting addicted to the game at a friend’s bonfire, I’ve wanted to build my own for quite a while. Depending on others to bring a set or trying to borrow them for an event gets to be quite a pain. This past weekend I decided to give it a go and build my own set (featuring my alma mater, the MSU dragon).

There are variations of the boards and regulations to go by, but given that I’m used to the “tailgate” sizes (24″x36″) instead of “regulation” (24″x48″) I went with the smaller. Plus they fit in a trunk easier! For the rest of the specs though, I went with what the official sizes were (hole size, pitch, height, etc). To make it a little more sturdy, I also opted for the 3/4″ thick OSB board on top and 2×3″ lumber for the frame … gives it a little less bounce.

After picking up supplies it took me probably a couple hours of actual work to construct the boxes. I decided to go a little nicer and miter the corners instead of the butt-joints … also had to add some flare with the painting … can’t just paint them one solid color! Given my girlfriend liked the dragon logo as well, we went with the alternating color scheme … one black, one white. I drew the logo in Illustrator and printed it out, used a charcoal pencil to trace around it and then onto the board. From there it was just paint and poly!

As for the bags … if you don’t know how to sew (which I don’t) definitely rely on someone who does. My only knowledge is to use duck cloth and heavy-duty thread to make sure it holds. They will get beaten and you don’t want one breaking open! As for filler, they say to use feed corn, but even going to Fleet Farm I couldn’t find any bags of it so we opted for some of the crushed corn. It seems to work pretty well so far.

There are already a couple other board ideas in the works (gotta have enough in case of a tournament). My ultimate goal is to create a nice oak set, multi-stained wood for that natural feel … but I have to work out a few kinks first.

Anyone else build a set for themselves? Or anyone want me to build them one … for a price?