ZachEvans

Believer. Husband. Dad. Coach. Healthcare Thought-Leader. All-Around Good Guy.

Projects

Master Closets

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Mandy and I are blessed to have his and hers walk-in closets in our master bedroom. They were outfitted with the standard wire shelving but were not optimized at all foe the space (Mandy’s closet, for example, had a large window in it eating up a large amount of wall space). So, as Mandy’s Christmas present, I remodeled both closets.

I started with hand drawn plans and measurements before laying everything out in more detail with Visio. I aslo ordered two ready-to-assemble cabinets from my friends at The Cabinet Authority to provide each of us some drawer space.

Below is a gallery of pictures showing the closets beginning to end:

One thing I did differently on this project than I have done on previous built-ins was to use pocket hoes and crews rather than routing dadoes. It provided a different construction process but did not save any time, caused issues hiding the pocket holes, and I would not choose to use this technique again on a similar project.

All that is left now is to have the built-ins painted, which will be Mandy’s present to me (paying someone to paint them, that is).

Project Scorecard

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In my professional life, I serve as a consultant on several projects at any time. Part of my role in relation to the management of this project portfolio is to provide input on prioritization. All organizations have limited resources to spend on projects and analytical tools can help inform decisions leaders are faced with in regards where to allocate these resources.

One such tool that I developed and have used successfully is a project scorecard that analyzes several dimensions of a project, assigns a relative weight to each dimension, and provides a recommend project rank based on the overall score of a project. This particular scorecard looks at the following project dimensions:

  • Number of departments impacted
  • Revenue impact
  • Quality impact
  • Safety impact
  • Project sponsor
  • Projected cost
  • Urgency
  • Priority
  • Budgeted
  • Security
  • Interfaces
  • Existing installations (in other divisions of the company)

Based on your needs or organization, the dimensions analyzed would vary greatly, but the value behind the tool would not. Furthermore, I would not recommend making decisions based solely on a tool such as this, but would use its outputs as one data point (although, perhaps, one that carries a great deal of weight).

Are you in need of having a tool like this built for your organization or do you have other questions as to how a tool such as this could be implemented? Please contact me for more information.

Related files: Project Scorecard

Garage Storage

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When Mandy and I moved in to our new home in Franklin, we knew that it would be difficult to replace the basement storage we had at our old home. We decided to take advantage of an extra-large garage and build some much-needed storage. The result is a 16-feet long, 8-feet high shelving system that allows us organize our holiday decorations and more while also putting both our cars in the garage.

Note: You can find Simpson Strong Tie products here.

 

Raised Garden Bed

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When I was growing up in Ohio my family planted a large garden each spring. At about an acre in size, we had plenty of room for corn, green beans, lettuce, tomatos, peppers, cucumbers, carrots, squash, pumpkins, sunflowers and okra. Mandy and I have planted a few tomato and pepper plants over the years but we have never had room for anything more than that. Last year the boys asked us to plant a garden but, with everything else going on, we did not get around to it. This year would be different.

After doing a fair amount of research, I decided to build a raised garden bed in our back yard. The good news was that it was only about a 2-hour project to build the bed (5 total cuts for the wood) but the bad news was that it was not cheap (about $175 for the supplies, including $85 for enough garden soil to fill the 4 x 8 foot bed to a depth of 8-inches). Our next task will be to decide what to plant but I am leaning towards a mixed-vegetable garden following a pre-planned layout utilizing a planting grid. Here is to having fresh vegetables all summer and fall!

Built-In Bookshelves

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Build-In Bookshelves

Growing up I spent a lot of my free time with my grandfather in his workshop. He was a general contractor and I spent several summers as I got older working side-by-side with him as he build homes in mid-Ohio. I learned a great deal from him (Such as, did you know there is a wrong way to shovel gravel? Well, there is, and he taught me that!) and had a great time doing it.

I’ve been slowly collecting tools over the years and have turned a portion of our basement in to a workshop complete with a homemade work bench. I’ve done a few small projects around the house but about six months ago I decided to take on a much larger project: Built-in bookshelves. I had a perfect wall for built-ins in my home office and, given the fact that I’m an avid reader and book collector, I needed the display space.

I turned first to the Internet for ideas and instruction and found this great article by Joseph Truini on the Popular Mechanics web site. I went through several drafts of plans, customizing the look-and-feel to what I wanted (painted shelves versus stained, for example) and began looking for a time when I could start construction.

I ended up having a day to myself the Saturday of the Ohio State – Michigan football game and I decided to take advantage of the lack of “help” from the boys to get things started. I avoided any big mistakes by planning out all of the details in painstaking accuracy (four decimals on my measurements) and by making sure that I always measured twice before cutting once. Below is a gallery of my results.