L.A. Real Estate Agent On A DIY Master Closet

There are two things you can do to create a master closet. You can either do it yourself (DIY) or hire someone to do the job for you.         

A wall closet in a residential house in the United States. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Opting For DIY

If you do not have much of a budget for your master closet, you can always do the job yourself. There are a lot of DIY closet kits out in the market that are either made from coated wire or melamine. Its installation only requires that you mount the attachment bracket to your wall. Then you can attach the poles and shelves.  

The tricky part is the layout and planning. You have to do measurements of your space. Then you would have to either go online to sites like ContainerStore.com or EasyClosets.com or to a home center to look for modular components.

Hassle-free DIY design

Master closets are usually 8x10 sq. ft. and closet modules are either 1x7 or 3x7 sq. ft., so you have to sort things out in order to have the best possible unit combination that would fill your wall. You can check some sites online for tools that would suggest the best modular combination that would fit the layout and dimensions of your master closet.    

There are four components that you can choose from: drawer units, shelf units, two poles closet units - usually 42 inches away from each other - used for hanging pants and shirts, and a singe pole closet unit used for hanging long jackets and dresses.

You can then put some additional components that would accommodate your need for storage space. It could cost you around $800 to $2,000 to add all the components needed for a master closet that is 8x10 sq. ft.  

Customized Master Closet

To maximize the usage of the space for your master closet, hire a contractor, a closet company, or a bath and kitchen designer to customize your master closet. Instead of coated wire or fiberboard, your hired professional should be using components made from high-density melamine or solid wood.

They can give you a lot of storage options for you to choose from - such as belt and tie holders, jewelry drawers, hamper baskets, shoe racks - and accessories such as a make up station lit with bulbs similar to those that professional actresses use or a mirror sliding from the swivels and shelves ready for use.  

Plan your master closet in such a way that you can easily change its design; whether changing its compartment configuration or change its shelves, in can be done easily.

Custom Costs

Your 8x10 sq. ft. master walk in closet may look luxurious but it would could cost you a lot  ($5k to $10k and up). If you want it to look like the typical ones, it would cost you around $3,000 to $5,000. 

Realtor's Association Favors Other Business Over It's Own Members, Hypocritical Enforcement Of URL Rules

Image via Wikipedia

I used to think that it was desirable to be a Realtor.  Now that I have been harassed by their legal staff multiple times about "generic" URLs, I am starting to think otherwise.  I own multiple blogs, targeting different communities.  I used to use the word "Realtor" in the web address as a matter of search engine optimization (SEO), just like so many commercial web sites do.  See the following URLs for examples:

www.realtor.com  (surprise!  The association harassing me uses the term "Realtor" in a generic manner themselves AND they charge huge fees for marketing on the site intermixed with their expired listings that they still list as active)

www.losangelesrealtor.biz
www.estatehomesla.com/malibu-realtor/
malibu.patch.com/articles/malibu-realtor-named-to-forbes-list
ihcenter.org/projects/maliburealtorsfoundation
gretherreal.articlealley.com/malibu-realtor-949035.html


I could fill pages with this stuff.

I asked the first person from the Realtors association who requested that I change my URL, "What is the problem exactly?  Is it that the term is used generically in a top level domain?  What stops you from doing it?  Why are all of these other sites granted a license to use the term generically and I am not?  Why would you tie the hands of your own members to compete on a keyword that is clearly very valuable and give an advantage to non-dues paying  non-members?"

Her response?  "You agreed to our rules, so just make the changes that we dictate".  Period.

Without clarification, I had no real advice to act upon.  Slowly, my other blogs that used the term got targeted by these guys, at the real cost of about $250 in URL registration fees to me and thousands of unique visitors.  The amount of time, money, and effort that went into writing, researching, posting, and interlinking the sites is gigantic.

Is it really good policy to enforce this on your members and not on other businesses?  Is this even enforceable at all on other businesses, since fair use may be a solid defense for many?  Why even have this rule at all then if you are only hurting your members who depend on SEO for traffic?

All this comes from an association who raises their fees on members in the middle of the worst recession in 40 years.

Coming Out Of The Closet: Demanding Freedom

I have been keeping a secret.  I thought that people would hate me if I told them.  For someone who is supposed to be appealing to as many people as possible, it was unthinkable to come out of the closet.  Recent experiences have told me different, and the way we are being treated has become intolerable.

I think people have a right to be left alone and not be stolen from.  I am a Libertarian (as you may have guessed from my new blog title).

Often misunderstood, many people project all manner of silly and negative things upon us.  This is because we have allowed our school of thought to drift outside of the mainstream:

1. Odd policy implications derived from interpreting that we want to maximize the quality and quantity of our shared freedom:  It's not our policies that have perverse and unintended consequences.  We would like to do away with most of them all together and simply leave things undefined for individuals to make their own decisions.
2. Crazy and unyeilding Utopian views: Not at all!  We only wish to return to the state that made our nation great in the first place.  If a successful, honorable, and rich nation of free individuals who act as an example of great leaders among the rest of the nations of the world instead of the scolding, Image via Wikipediaquarreling, murdering, treasonous, warring, undisciplined, backstabbing nation we have drifted to is Utopian- tell that to George Washington and the mountain of dead patriots who gave their lives so that you can be free.  Utopia is unattainable, and a nation that has already existed is not a Utopia.
3. Selfish and rich fat cats who don't want to contribute to the the greater collective good:  NOTHING could be further from the truth.  By looking to history for evidence of our nations greatest successes, we seek to rationally recreate favorable conditions for our shared success as a community of citizens (something that many politicians repeatedly fail at, hence our distrust for their policies to govern us).

These misunderstandings are all too common.  It is also all too acceptable in communities across the internet and political circles on both the left and the right to demonize us, make us "crazies", or otherwise discount us without rational conjecture.  This, of course is a fallacy and the people who try to use this "logic" require correction.  To let such comments stand without retort is to ratify them, and make it acceptable for them to continue to request that our policy makers use violence, theft, and lies on citizens.

It has become clear that leading the quite life that most of us wish to lead is not possible.  We will not be left alone if we do not speak up and assertively correct these misguided citizens.  Attacking them does not sway them, it only give them ammunition.  We have been ignoring them forever, and look where we now stand.

Which brings me to the reason for coming out:  Libertarians require a new contract with each other to bring our views to the forefront of our culture and to restore our nation to it's former greatness.  We need to become vocal members of the community, and act honorably and with conviction.  We need to establish best practices to educate our brothers and sisters on how to achieve the cultural change required for this transition.  Join me in working to define our path forward and away from simply wishing we could be left alone.

Do you agree that we must stand up for ourselves?

What are the rules of engagement for misguided citizens?

What are the best ways to influence others?

How do we maximize Libertarian participation in using these best practices?

$100 GreenHouse Recap- LA Realtor Gets LOTS of Heirloom Tomatoes

In past posts, I showed you how to create semi-permanent greenhouse on the cheap.  About 3-4 months into it's life, the plastic I used from Home Depot started shredding to bits from sun damage.  It got my tomatoes booming early on, and they were well over my head by the time they started waning.  It was great!  I easily have enough plastic left from spending $50 on a roll to re-sheath the entire thing in the fall, smaller houses will likely get a couple years worth of plastic from a single roll.

It is definitely cheap, but not exactly green considering the plastic waste you will be creating twice a year in fall and winter if you want to grow year round.  I am looking for a longer term solution, while trying to keep things a low cost as possible.  I believe that growing your own needs to be accessible to all, and the quantity of dollars you have should not impede you.

If readers have any suggestions, speak up!

Here is my next concept:  Dig down into the ground about 3-4 feet, and pile up the excavated dirt around the outside edges to raise up the side walls.  Pour sheer walls in place with clay, sifted dirt, and limited quantities of concrete against a sheet of plywood propped with 2x4s.  Then, create an inexpensive roof to top it.  This will have the added benefit of using a cave/earth environment as insulation from extreme heat and cold.  Added layers of plastic and less ventilation can be used to create an oven effect to get the heat up outside of summer if you are doing tomatoes.

Again, if readers have seen or done anything like this, please inform before I dig this hole.

Greenhouse Basics: Urban Homesteading Series From Your LA Realtor

In my last post, I detailed how to build a greenhouse for under $100.  It has been working out very well for me so far, and my heirloom tomatoes are HUGE and full of baby green heirloom tomatoes.  My purple, genovese, and il serenti basil plants are also well on their way to maturity.  Soon, it will be time for a wood fired clay oven pizza party (I will also show you how to make one of these soon)!

One thing that I would have done differently is making the greenhouse taller and bigger.  Just like ponds and fake boobs, it seems that if you are going to go through the effort of making it happen- you may as well go as big as you possibly can, or you may regret not going big.   I am running out of head space, some of the plastic sags and makes me duck to pass through.  You can never have enough space as your plants grow.  I may have to bring some tomatoes outside to make room.

I have begun planting seeds every 3 months to ensure a consistent supply of fresh foods.  Some of these seeds do take a while to get started from seeds, so I may have multiple generations growing at the same time.  This has necessitated the creation of shelves to hold all of the small seed pots.  I simply used some cinder blocks ($1 each at home depot) stacked two high and then use plywood as the horizontal elements.  They seem to work fine, I build them two levels high.  This yields three levels since I already have the ground covered.

Because of the large square footage and high humidity and production of the garden space afforded by my DIY greenhouse, I am going to learn how to keep my seeds and recycle them year after year from the most productive plants (like farmers do).  This will be a great step towards successful urban homesteading in LA.  Not having to go out and buy heirloom seeds every season will allow me to exist with fewer outside inputs and also save a few bucks.

Because I get to work from home as an LA Realtor often enough, I get to watch my variables within the greenhouse.  Temperature regulation has not been too big of a problem yet, but I foresee this coming up in July.  On a 75 degree day, the greenhouse can get past 100 degrees if kept entirely closed.  I open up the doors for ventilation and use a big fan during the days to keep things from getting too hot.  I also spray things down with a hose if temperatures are getting too high.  Using this method, I can keep things around 85 degrees- a great target temperature.

Attempts at creating a makeshift swamp cooler have failed.  I have read that you can expect only about a 7 degree drop in temperatures using evaporative cooling, so I will most likely have to create light restrictions and skip on the swamp cooler in favor of simple water spraying by the end of June to regulate temperatures through July.

Pests seem to be self regulating.  Mites, slugs, and caterpillars appeared, but I pick them off, kill them, etc and they are pretty much in check.  I lost a few heads of lettuce to caterpillars, but everything else is doing great.  It seems to be getting too hot for lettuce right now anyways.

If anyone has any questions about any of these issues, ask them in the comments section below.

How To Build A Greenhouse For Under $100: Green Living Series From an LA Realtor

Greenhouses have multiple uses for urban gardens.

1) They raise the temperature, extending the growing season into the winter (even throughout the winter and back into spring with additional equipment).

2) They raise the humidity level, making for much healthier plants, larger yields and allowing more tropical plants to be cultivated.

3) They protect your garden from pests like squirrels and rabbits (and possibly gophers if you add some additional safeguards).

4) They open the door to many other exciting food related projects including mushroom cultivation, aquaculture, aquaponics, CO2 supplementation for even larger yields, supplemental light cycle manipulation for perpetual growth without seed production in herbs, passive cooling techniques for climate control, stacking plants on shelves and letting light diffusion feed them, and many more exciting things.

This article is only about building the most simple of greenhouses.  Future installments will discuss additional topics listed above.

What you will need:

Multiple 1/2 inch PVC pipes, 12 feet long each (the smallest circumfrence ones available at home depot.  You may need to buy two 6 foot sections and join them together with a special two part glue.  If so, let that glue cure for a day before moving forward).

Twice as many 2 1/2 foot long peices of rebar as you have PVC pipes.

6 mil plastic sheeting, depending on how big your greenhouse will be.

Either zip ties OR thin wood slats to hold down your plastic.

Start by determining the size of your greenhouse.  The PVC pipes will become the arches and support for the rest of the greenhouse.  Plan on having your greenhouse be at least 7 feet wide.  Determine the length of your greenhouse and get enough PVC pipes to put up an arch every 3 or 4 feet.

Take your rebar and hammer it into the ground in the corners and on the longest wall 1 and 1/2 feet down, leaving 1 foot protruding above the ground.

Slide the PVC over the first piece of rebar in the ground.  Take the other end of the PVC and bend it down to the opposing rebar, sliding it over that rebar also.  The PVC should hold it's shape as an arch, standing up on it's own.  Continue with this process until you have a series of arches that run the length of your future greenhouse.

You will likely need help with this next step.  After all of your arches are up, drape your 6 mil plastic over the arches.  Make sure to either leave two extra feet of material hanging on the ground (to be covered in earth to hold down the plastic during winds) OR sandwich the plastic between two boards at ground level, holding the wood together with screws and sandwiching those boards with more boards to hold the plastic around the PVC posts.  If your plastic is not in one whole piece big enough to cover the entire building, use zip ties to secure the edges to the PVC arches by poking small holes in the edge of the plastic.

After your plastic is secured, cut a slit 3/4ths of the way up to the top of the arches for doors and hold down these new curtains you just created (keeping your greenhouse closed).  ONLY cut the plastic on the ends of your greenhouse.

You are done!  

During summer time, your greenhouse will heat up too hot for healthy plants.  You will require shade cloth/plastic and a passive and/or active cooling system (covered in later articles).  During very cold winter nights, your greenhouse will get too cold for healthy plants.  You will need to remove any shading and will require a passive and/or active heating system (also covered in later articles).

After only a few months, I have had great success with starting seeds for all sorts of great vegetables.  Organic produce, super cheap and grown by your own hands, is wonderful stuff.

Going Green In LA: Realtor Learns Urban Homesteading

Many recent studies seem to be proving that the common knowledge and assumptions we hold about nutrition and taking care of yourself are false.

Examples include:

Pesticide in pregnant mothers makes gives their children a 7 point IQ deficit.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/04/pesticides-children-intelligence/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wiredscience+%28Blog+-+Wired+Science%29

Sun screens accelerate, not protect against, contracting skin cancer. 

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/04/22/new-study-shows-many-sunscreens-are-accelerating-not-preventing-cancer.aspx

Sugar is killing us.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?_r=1

For these reasons and many more, I am pursuing a simpler and more nutritious diet and existence.  I am learning how to produce clean and healthy food and other products for myself.  Some of the projects I am pursuing are:

• Automated year round greenhouse food production
• Aquaculture
• Aqua-phonics (growing food with hydroponics/aquaculture water)
• Mushroom cultivation and mycology
• Wood fired ovens and other wood cooking
• Root houses, food storage, and passive cooling techniques
• Fruit tree hedging and high density fruit production
• Worm farming
• Animal husbandry
• Beer and wine brewing
• Green construction
• Composting and tea making
• Bee keeping
• Extreme cost savings on high quality organic food

I am sure there are some subjects I have left out.  Expect future posts on all these topics and more.