One of the concrete slabs (7′ x 8′ x 3″) by my driveway was cracked and sunken. The previous owner created the slab and didn’t include rebar. I paid someone $75 to break the slab into small chucks.
He used my jackhammer to break the slab, which you can buy on Amazon for $140.
I then rented a box truck from Home Depot for $29 / 75 minutes and took the concrete to GreenWaste. The cost to dump the concrete was $54.
Here’s how the space looked after removing the concrete. I would need about 0.5 cubic yards of concrete.
If I wanted to pay a concrete supplier like EZ-MIX CONCRETE to deliver pre-mixed concrete by truck, it would have cost me about $600 because they charge a minimum of 2 cubic yards.
I posted an RFQ on Yelp and Thumbtack and got the following quotes for both labor and materials:
Contractor 1: $1200
Contractor 2: $950
Contractor 3: $800
Contractor 3 happened to live 2 blocks from me. I chose him because he showed me the sample concrete work he had done, which looked very good, and his quote was the most reasonable. He went to Home Depot to buy rebar and about 35 bags of 60 lb concrete.
According to Home Depot, the concrete cost would be about $160 + tax, which includes 10% extra concrete.
There were 3 workers who came at 7 AM to start the project. First, they cut the rebar using an angle grinder and laid it down.
They then mixed the concrete with water in a wheelbarrow by hand using small shovels.
They should have just used an electric mixer to make mixing easy.
They then used a rake and a long bar to push and even out the wet concrete.
They then used a rough float to even out the surface.
They then used a large float to smoothen the surface.
Cypress trees are fast-growing, tall, narrow, evergreen trees.
They look nice, but if they grow too tall and it’s very windy, they can become a liability if they fall and damage your or someone else’s property. Unless they’re located far from where they can cause damage, the safe thing to do is to cut them short. If you wait too long, cutting the top off can be difficult and expensive. For example, in the video below, you can see one person on a ladder cutting the tree trunk on one side and two people on the ground holding and pulling a rope tied to the top part of the tree to ensure the tree falls away from damaging anything.
Cutting tall Cypress trees can be expensive. For that reason, it’s best to cut these trees before they get too tall. For example, I have 6 Cypress trees in my backyard. I was able to cut them so they were about 10′ tall. I rented a 14′ A-frame ladder from Home Depot and strapped it to the roof rack of my car using heavy-duty ratchet straps.
If the trunk was too difficult to cut with the sawzall, I’d use my Ryobi 40V HP Brushless 14 in. Battery Chainsaw. Cutting the trunk with this chainsaw was easy but a bit dangerous as you had to hold it with two hands due to its size and weight, unlike the one-handed compact sawzall.
To be safe, you can have someone hold the ladder while you’re up on it or strap the ladder to the tree or a nearby fence to prevent it from falling over.
To eliminate maintenance and water costs, I replaced my front yard with rocks and 6 Cypress trees. The front yard slopes away from the house toward the street. Since I don’t need to water any plants or trees (the Cypress trees can survive off of rainwater in the Winter), I put down 20-mil thick pond liner. Where two pieces of pond liner meet, I overlap them by 12 inches.
Along the perimeter, I screwed 2x4s into the sides of the concrete using concrete screws. I stapled the pond liner to the 2x4s along the perimeter and then screwed 1.5″ x 1.5″ brown drip edge to prevent weeds from sneaking their way up along the crevices.
If one of your edges is not a standard concrete slab, you may install a short retaining wall. In my case, I made a wall using 12″ wide pressure-treated wood that I held in place using metal stakes. I used brown deck screws that were designed for exterior use to minimize rust and corrosion.
I should have placed the pond liner under the wood before securing the wood in place. Since I didn’t do that, I stapled the pond liner to the side of the wood and then screwed thin wood wrapped in brown plastic (bender board) over the pond liner and into the wood. That should prevent weeds from growing between the wood retaining wall and the pond liner.
These instructions are for a 2019 Toyota Prius Prime, but they should work for most cars. Some people use a bungee cord, but I prefer this 1/8” Adjustable Rope Hanger I got on Amazon. It has carabiners on both ends rather than hooks, which is more secure. It also has a simple ratcheting mechanism to shorten or lengthen the rope.
To hold your trunk partially open, take one end of the rope hanger and push it into the locking mechanism on your trunk as shown below.
The lock will close, preventing the carabiner of the rope hanger from disconnecting.
Then, take the carabiner on the other end of the rope hanger and hook it onto the metal lock part that’s at the other end of the car’s trunk locking mechanism.
Lastly, pull on the rope that’s connected to the ratchet to make the rope hanger shorter.
When I was a kid, there were 2 foods I ate a lot of
Pizza
Greek Gyro (pronounced “yee-ro”) Sandwiches
Pizza is available everywhere, but there aren’t many places that sell Greek Gyros in the San Francisco Bay Area. One place that has it is Nick the Greek, but at $12.50 for a small sandwich, it feels overpriced. So, I tried to make my own without the hassle of cooking the meat and making the Greek Tzatziki sauce. I couldn’t find precooked doner kebab (“doner” is Turkish for “rotating”) meat, like a rotisserie, but I did find kebabs at Costco, which take a minute to heat up in the microwave, come out juicy, and taste delicious. For the Tzatziki sauce, I bought Tzatziki salad dressing from Target. It tastes good, but it’s thick, so getting it out of the bottle required using a knife.
French Fries (I bought frozen ones from Costco and cooked them in an air fryer)
Tomato
Lettuce (I got chopped and pre-washed lettuce for convenience)
Instructions
Cut 10% of the pita bread so you can open it like a pocket
Toast the pita bread in a toaster
Heat the beef kebabs in a microwave for 1 minute
Smear the Tzatziki sauce on both inner sides of the pita bread
Insert the kebabs in the pita bread
Add some lettuce, sliced tomatoes, and french fries in the pita bread
Enjoy
UPDATE
Stuffing a pita bread such that the ingredients are distributed uniformly so that you can taste each ingredient with each bite is a bit difficult to do. Instead of using a pita bread, you can use Lavash bread, shown below. It’s much easier to place the ingredients on Lavash bread. First, smear the Tzatziki sauce all over one side of the bread.
Then, place the ingredients as shown below (I added some extra Tzatziki sauce on the lettuce).
Then, roll the lavash and place it in a panini press.
Older videos tend to be in the 4:3 aspect ratio rather than the 16:9 we use today. If you enlarge an old video, you’ll end up cropping parts of it. To keep all of the existing video, but extend it horizontally or vertically, you can use Photoshop’s Generative AI Extend feature. Here’s an example.
I have a video with dimensions 1350 wide by 1080 tall.
You can see this by looking the at file’s properties.
To extend this video horizontally so that it has a 16:9 aspect ratio, we’ll use Photoshop.
Create a new document with the same dimensions (1350 x 1080 px)
Drag the video to the blank document. The video will be on a layer above the white background layer. Click “Done” or the checkmark at the top to accept importing the video into the document.
Click the Crop tool
A white border with handles will appear on the video. A floating toolbar that says “Generative Expand” will also appear. Ensure the dimensions are set to 16:9.
Drag the handles so that the crop border covers the video. In this case, I dragged the vertical handle on the right toward the right.
The original video had a black vertical bar on the left. I don’t like that, so I will drag the video to the left so he black bar is outside the crop rectangle.
Click the Generative Expand button in the floating toolbar.
You can then enter a prompt if you want. I will just click “Generate”.
Photoshop will generate 3 variations. Click on each one to see how they look.
I like variation 1, but I don’t like that Photoshop added 3 purple and green boxes on top to the right of the original box.
Select the 3 boxes so we can remove them using Generative Fill.
Click the Generative Fill button followed by ‘Generate”.
Those 3 boxes are now gone.
Click “Window” > “Timeline” to open the timeline. Then, click “Create Video Timeline”.
You will see a track for the original and two tracks above it, one for generative expand and one for generative fill.
Drag each generative track so they are the same duration as the original track.
Click the play button in the timeline to preview the modified video.
If the results look good, export the video by going to File > Export > Render Video.
If you inspect the video’s properties, you’ll see that they are now 1920 x 1080 px.
There are many tools for removing objects and people from a video, including Adobe After Effects. So far, the easiest one I’ve found is Fotor. You can also use it to remove watermarks on videos.
Upload your video
Click the “Remove Object” button
Paint over the objects you want to remove (you can adjust the size of the paintbrush, if needed)
Click ‘Generate Preview” to see how it looks. If it looks good, you can download the generated video if you are a paying member.
Here’s an example. Below is a video clip from a music video.
I wanted to remove the 2 people, which I identified in Fotor using the purple paintbrush.
Usually, people create AI videos by describing what they want using a text prompt. This can be very difficult depending on the results you are looking for. Another way to create an AI video is by creating a “driving performance” video, which shows what movements you want to mimic. For example, if you want to make a video of yourself dancing and lip syncing exactly like someone else in an existing video, you can upload the existing video as a “driving performance” video and upload an image of yourself as the “character image”. This post explains how to do it using Runway Act-Two.
In Runway, click on Act-Two. You will see the UI below.
In the top section, you upload a “driving performance” video, which will contain the body movements and facial gestures you want to copy and apply to your character in the bottom section.
In the bottom section, your character can come from an image or video that you upload. For simplicity, and to match the driving video, I will upload an image containing my character.
For demonstration purposes, I want to make myself sing and dance exactly like the subject in the following video.
Ensure the subject’s face remains visible throughout the video
Frame the subject, at furthest, from the waist up
Well-lit, with defined facial features and expressions
Certain expressions, such as sticking out a tongue, are not supported
No cuts that interrupt the shot
Ensure the performance follows our Trust & Safety standards
[Gestures] Ensure that the subject’s hands are in-frame at the start of the video
[Gestures] Start in a similar pose to your character input for the best results
[Gestures] Opt for natural movement rather than excessive or abrupt movement
Since my “driving performance” video has people playing music in the background, I need to remove them. One way is by using Capcut’s Auto Background Removal feature.
While it’s not perfect, it may be sufficient for Runway’s Act-Two. Here are two other AI-based video background removal tools that seem to do a better job.
As a real estate investor, I’m often needing to know what’s behind some drywall. I normally use a stud finder, but after removing a bunch of drywall, I sometimes find pipes, which, unlike electrical cables, are difficult to move, so I end up wasting my or my contractor’s time patching a wall back up. So, I bought the Walabot DIY 2, which claims to be able to detect wood and metal studs, plastic and metal pipes, and wires behind drywall up to 5/8″ thick and 4″ deep.
I put this to the test and compared it to my Franklin ProSensor M150, which can detect wood and metal studs as well as live wires up to 1.5″ deep.
I tested both sensors on an actual wall with pipes and live wires as well as a test wall.
My test wall below has, from left to right,
2×4 stud
15A Romex wire (non-live)
Pressure-treated 2×4 stud
2×4 stud
2″ black ABS drain pipe
Metal copper pipe
2×4 stud
The Walabot DIY2 detected all items, but it couldn’t differentiate between a wire and a pipe. Also, the Walabot got a bit confused by the 2 touching studs in the middle because of the small gap between the studs. The Franklin only detected the wood studs, but it detected them very well, including the two touching studs.
On an actual wall with wood studs, pipes and live wires, the Walabot performed the same, and it couldn’t differentiate between pipes and wires. The Franklin sensor, however, was able to detect live wires. The lightning symbols lit up yellow when a live wire was detected, as shown below.
Conclusion
It looks like both detectors are needed to see what’s behind your walls. I’d use them as follows:
Use the Walabot first to mark all wood/metal studs, and pipes/wires.
Use the Franklin to confirm the location of the wood/metal studs and to determine whether the pipe/wire detections by the Walabot are live wires or pipes. If the Franklin detects live wires, then that’s what they are. If the Franklin doesn’t detect anything where the Walabot detected a pipe/wire, then there’s a pipe there.
In America, many people use their garages as storage rooms rather than what they were intended for (parking vehicles). I do the same, but I also use my garage as a home gym. Along the side walls are 5-tier shelf racks with wheels and on each shelf there are 3 transparent plastic containers.
Having shelves with wheels makes it easy to move everything around.
But what do you do when you are renovating or remodeling your garage or if you need a temporary place to store your stuff for about 6-12 months. You can put everything in a self-storage unit, but for a 20’x20′ garage worth of stuff, you’re looking at paying hundreds of dollars a month if you are in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can buy a shed and put it in your backyard, but a large one would cost your around $1500, and you may not necessarily have the space for a large one in your backyard. Plus, you’d have to spend a lot of time assembling it, and it’s more of a permanent solution rather than a temporary one.
One low-cost option is to simply put your stuff in heavy-duty plastic storage containers with lids and stack them up in your backyard. Since they come with a lid, you wouldn’t need a shed because they are waterproof. If you’re worried strong winds could blow the lids off, just place something heavy on them, like a concrete paver.
The 27-gallon plastic bins are a good size as they’re not too big to carry and they’re not too small to fit somewhat large items.
The transparent kind is nice because you can see what’s inside and don’t need to necessarily label each bin. If you do want to label the bins, you can buy a label maker. This Brother P-touch PT- D610BT can print up to 1″ labels, making it easy to read them from a distance.
As of this writing, the price for a 27-gallon bin is $14, so even if you needed 35 of them, you’re only paying $500 for them, and when you’re done using them, you can easily empty the contents and stack them inside each other for future use.
UPDATE: Costco Business Center has the same 27-gallon bins for $11. Both the bin and the lid are transparent, which is even better.
If you have a lot of stuffed bins, some of which may be heavy, you don’t want to have to carry each one. For convenience, you can just buy a folding platform truck.
For $36, it’s totally worth it. The plastic bins fit on the platform and the handle allows for comfortable pushing or pulling (I prefer pulling). When you’re done moving the bins, you can fold the handle down so the dolly doesn’t take up a lot of space.
Now, you may have some large or long items that won’t fit in those 27-gallon bins. For these items, you can either but a few larger bins, like this 75-gallon one, which comes with its own wheels.
Or, you can just buy a small shed just for those items.
If you leave things exposed to the elements for a long time, they can become weathered and even break down. Thin plastic, for example, can become brittle from long exposure to the sun’s UV rays. To prevent this from happening, you can cover the bins with a heavy-duty tarp that is treated to prevent deterioration from UV rays.
If the tarp doesn’t cover the sides and you’re worried water might get in through some small gaps between the bins and their covers, you can cover the gaps with duct tape.
Or, you can buy a bigger tarp. The one picture below is 9mm thick (heavy duty) and from Harbor Freight.
But what if you have a bunch of shelving racks with uncovered bins in them? In this case, rather than disassemble the racks and buy lids for those bins, you can buy a cover designed specifically for shelving racks. There are many on Amazon with many different sizes. I bought this 72″ H x 48″ W x 18″ D one on Amazon. It’s waterproof and the zippers make it easy to open one side when you need to get something.
If you have to store a bunch of clothes, a cheaper storage option is to put the clothes in a cardboard box or a plastic tote bag, like this.
For just $5, these large, 20-gallon plastic totes are cheap and, since they’re designed for light items, like clothes, you can easily carry them without the need for a platform truck or dolly. They also come with a zipper. If you go with cardboard boxes, not only are they not waterproof, but you’d have to use tape to close them, which is extra work.
So there you have it. A cheap, easy, and organized way to temporarily store stuff in your backyard.
