Tag: Frame

DIY: Bed Canopy Frame with PVC

writ­ten 6/17/24, updat­ed 7/28/24

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Overview

What

Mak­ing a DIY canopy frame over a bed with PVC

Why

Cool­ing. To trap A/C from floor reg­is­ter under­neath a canopy dur­ing sum­mer. Room is top floor of a 3‑story town­house. Can be use­ful for trap­ping heat in the win­ter, too.

Time and Effort

1 per­son project, 2 would be help­ful

Time: 1 hour

Effort: Easy

Materials and Cost

4ft 1″ PVC Pipe (your choice of PVC size and height)

PVC Fit­tings (depends on how many con­nec­tions you want)

Canopy Mate­r­i­al

Fab­ric Fas­ten­ers (ties/clips/hooks/attachments)

Tem­po­rary Secure­ments (option­al, but rec­om­mend­ed)

$93.99 (20 piece)

$24.86 (14 total)

$39.99

$14.99 (25/pack)

$15.98 (Qty: 4)

Oth­er Sup­plies: Ratch­et­ing PVC Cut­ter ($14), Dri­ver, Drill Bits

Total Cost: $189.81

PVC Fittings

For this 6′ x 4′ x 6′ canopy, I bought 4′ long PVC at 1″ width (you can choose oth­er sizes and lengths) and used the ratch­et­ing PVC cut­ter to cut the pieces to 2′ to cre­ate 6′ lengths. T

Fit­tings need­ed for the 1″ PVC

FORMUFIT, a com­pa­ny that spe­cial­izes in fur­ni­ture-grade PVC sells all of these plus more options in many col­ors. 100% USA made. I bought every­thing but the 3‑way elbows at a local big box store in the PVC aisle because FOR­MU­FIT’s prod­ucts come in packs of 10.

  • 3‑Way Elbow (4 qty)
  • 90-Degree Elbow (4 qty)
  • Exter­nal Cou­pling (4 qty)
  • Stan­dard Tee (4 qty)

Option­al Foot­ers

I did­n’t do this, opt­ing for cross­bars favor­ing sta­bil­i­ty, but using a Reduc­er Cou­pling can work as pipe feet

Schematics

Here’s a hand-drawn dia­gram show­ing dimen­sions. This is 6′ x 4′ x 6′ (L x W x H) or 72″ x 48″ x 72″.

For ref­er­ence:

Bed Size (USA)Dimen­sions (L x W)
Twin75 in x 38 in (6¼ ft x 3⅙ ft)
Twin XL80 in x 38 in (6⅔ ft x 3⅙ ft)
Full75 in x 54 in (6¼ ft x 4½ ft)
Queen80 in x 60 in (6⅔ ft x 5 ft)
King80 in x 76 in (6⅔ ft x 6⅓ ft)
Cal­i­for­nia King84 in x 72 in (7 ft x 6 ft)

Why 4′ width when a twin bed is only 3⅙’ wide?

In this instance it’s to try and cap­ture the cool air blow­ing from the floor duct reg­is­ter, under the over­hang­ing side

This is a Reg­is­ter Boost­er Fan

Cutting the PVC

There are many options! And they most­ly depend on what’s avail­able in your house, how much you want to spend, how much time you mind spend­ing, what mess you want to make/clean up, and future use­ful­ness of any new­ly bought tools (or will it just sit in a box some­where for the rest of your life). Options include any­thing that cuts from man­u­al saws to pow­ered saws to ded­i­cat­ed PVC cut­ters.

Method 1

My first go-to was the Cord­less Mul­ti-tool I’d bought but had yet to use.

Clamped and ele­vat­ed
Cut­ting!
Whoops. Cut line and drawn line are not match­ing!
Messy and very rough edges

VERDICT: It will CUT. But it will also make a mess, cre­ate rough edges, time con­sum­ing, and requires clamps, and it took me a while to fig­ure out if there’s a best blade to use for PVC.

Method 2

I decid­ed to buy a Ratch­et­ing PVC Cut­ter for $14

Mea­sur­ing!
Line ‘er up!
Watch the ratch­et­ing mech­a­nism work
Super smooth edge and NO mess!

VERDICT: It will KEAL and lac­er­ate the PVC. This method is supe­ri­or. No set­ting up, no mess at all, smooth edges, and super-fast. No pow­er source

Assembly

Well. There’s not much to say here. You push the pipes into the fit­tings and form them into what­ev­er shape you want. The hard­est part is hold­ing them in place while you fit more. This is why a 2nd per­son could be use­ful. I did it by myself.

Fastening

Now, this is option­al, espe­cial­ly if your struc­ture will be a tem­po­rary one. Before putting them togeth­er, I mulled over this a lot. If the shape you formed is sol­id, you like­ly don’t need to secure the parts as they’re pret­ty tight just dry-fit­ted. How­ev­er, you have the option of cre­at­ing per­ma­nent or secure-yet-tem­po­rary bonds.

Permanent

Many choic­es out there, but THIS is your tra­di­tion­al plumb­ing primer and cement. Sim­ply fol­low the direc­tions and prime then cement.

Make sure to use in a well-ven­ti­lat­ed area and beware the pur­ple stain­ing of objects and flesh

Secure-Yet-Removable

There are dif­fer­ent meth­ods of doing this: You can use a screw, you can use wood dow­els, I read some­thing about using rub­ber hos­ing, heck you can use tape if you want to. I test­ed out a method that’s sim­i­lar to the oth­ers, just a lit­tle fanci­er.

I opt­ed to try Quick Release Pins. They’re a bit pricey for a project like this that would need many to ful­ly secure, and it was dif­fi­cult to find a size that would not be too long. In the end I only installed the 2 that I bought.

You also need a drill, drill bit, a stool, and a vac­u­um because it will make a mess.

Seems to fit!
Chose the drill bit
Drilling and mak­ing a mess
Hole through and through (drilled from both sides)
Insert­ing!
Aaaand it does­n’t actu­al­ly fit through it.

While the first pin could not ful­ly engage the hole (per­haps I drilled it at an angle instead of straight through), the sec­ond one did. Advice: err on the larg­er side when choos­ing a drill bit. I had to use the bit to ream out the open­ing from many angles just to get the pin to fit

Suc­cess!

The pin secures the pipe to the fit­ting, ensur­ing that it will not come apart. The only flaw in this is that if you use many fit­tings, that’s a lot of secure­ments! I chose the top cor­ners of the frame as it would pre­vent the ends from bow­ing out if the canopy mate­r­i­al end­ed up being too heavy for the frame.

Canopy

This part, I’m still not super hap­py about. It was hard to find any canopy curtain/top/fabric at all, let alone one that appealed to me. Aside from sewing one myself from a cho­sen, ide­al fab­ric (which I may end up doing in the future), I end­ed up choos­ing a can­vas tarp. My orig­i­nal idea was to use an old fit­ted sheet. I did­n’t con­sid­er how slip­pery the PVC is and after about 15 min­utes of wran­gling, I gave up. Plus, how would I secure the fit­ted sheet? The can­vas tarp was not only as thick as I want­ed it to be, but it came in a white col­or. If I want to trap cool air, I don’t want it to absorb heat as a dark­er col­or.

White 8′ x10’ Can­vas Tarp

6″ Bungee Ball Cords

Assem­bly

8′ x 10′ seems large, does­n’t it? It kind of is… I thought that hav­ing the extra length would make it eas­i­er to drape and less like­ly to slip off. Also, that way, I can let the sides down as I please. Lat­er, I thought about spi­ders mak­ing webs in the folds…

Then a new prob­lem arose:

THE CORNERS

What to do? How to fas­ten? To this day, I don’t real­ly know the best option apart from cut­ting it and sewing it togeth­er (which would bring me back to square one with the canopy). I just kind of did some­thing.

Does it Work?

After all of that, does the canopy work? Does it trap cool air? I have to be hon­est, I’m not ful­ly sure! I think there is an improve­ment, yes, but it’s still not an end-all solu­tion. On the very hot days, I was hot and stuffy and found it hard to sleep. Low­er­ing the sides did make a dif­fer­ence, and I also end­ed up buy­ing an Air­tight Rip­stop Nylon Fab­ric think­ing that per­haps the tarp, which was made to be breath­able, was TOO breath­able.

HOWEVER. I do have a FLIR cam­era, so here are two inter­est­ing FLIR images (note: these images were tak­en before the addi­tion of the air­tight fab­ric on top):

A/C reg­is­ter behind the bed in the image (where the blue is)
A/C reg­is­ter to the RIGHT of the image

Blue is cool and yel­low is hot. The A/C reg­is­ter is on the right side of the right­most image. There IS a cool­ness to the canopy com­pared to the area out­side of the canopy. So, yes, in a word, yes, I think it does work.

VERDICT: Yes. It does trap cool air and main­tains cool­er tem­per­a­tures than the sur­round­ing air. Hav­ing a fan to fur­ther direct the air com­ing from the reg­is­ter might make it more effec­tive at cool­ing.

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Tell Me Your Story Puzzle Walkthrough Guide

Tell Me Your Sto­ry Puz­zle Walk­through Guide

writ­ten 5/15/24, updat­ed 5/18/24

  • Pub­lished: RedDeer.Games
  • Plat­form Played: Nin­ten­do Switch
  • Price: $2.99 from MSRP: $10.99
  • Rat­ed: E (Every­one)
  • Genre: Puz­zle, Adven­ture
  • Date Released: April 26, 2024

This game is a puz­zle game that does­n’t have any words or text or, real­ly, any instruc­tions, so you have to fig­ure it out. While it’s easy to get hints in-game, here is a walk­through

Quick Jump
 [Show]

Adventure Start: To-Do

Level 1 — Arrival

All box­es with the FRAGILE stick­ers are the bases and are immov­able. Start by remov­ing the ivy, then stack the plant pots so that they nest with­in each oth­er, then group all box­es so that they all match in size.

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 2 — Greeting Grandma!

Move the hands on the clock on each scene until the pic­ture changes for some fun. The goal is to find the cor­rect time for the back­yard lunchtime with Grand­ma. Then move the pro­tag­o­nist towards Gram­my to fin­ish the puz­zle

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 3 — Give Grandma the Notebook

This one needs no real expla­na­tion. Just slide the note­book up to Grand­ma’s hands

Level 4 — What to Do?

Poke the ques­tion marks until they become oth­er icons, then poke those until they all dis­ap­pear, them poke the thought bub­ble to fin­ish the puz­zle

Level 5 — Unpack the Dog’s Stuff!
  • Start by tap­ping the dog’s suit­case
  • Place the dog bowl on the bone mat
  • Tap the dog’s suit­case again
  • Move the dog treats to the bowl
  • Move the blan­ket on the table and the 2 pil­lows on the ground onto the bed
  • Now remove the bot­tles and tow­els from the bas­ket and place them in the appro­pri­ate spots on the bath­room shelf
SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 6 — Unpack Your Stuff!

Match items with their mates!

  • Cam­era + Pho­to­graph x2
  • Toi­letry Bag + Hair­brush + Aller­gy Med­i­cine + Tooth­brush + Tooth­paste + Bar Soap
  • Note­book + Pen­cil
  • Shirts x 4
  • Green Sock x2
  • Tan Sock x2
  • Red Shoe x2
SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 7 — Makeup

Col­or the dot­ted line areas any way you’d like. Move the mark­ers over the areas until they look like sol­id col­ors

Level 8 — Yay!

Match the upper speech bub­bles with any of the low­er bub­bles, then tap the box

Level 9 — washing Dishes

Drag the teapots, dish­es, and cups to the soap, dunk them in a few times, then wipe them on the cloth until they sparkle, then place them in the cup­board (teapot on top, dish­es in the mid­dle, and cups on the pegs)

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Adventure in Green: Into the Amazon Jungle

Level 1 — Adventure Hat

Tap the hat, then tap the back­pack, then match up the dots in the back­ground with the 3 orange cir­cles

Level 2 — Itinerary

Pull the leaves out of the way, then remove the hat

Level 3 — Break the Code

This is a tri­al and error puz­zle: drag an icon from the right side to one of the ques­tion marks. When you fill them up, Grand­ma will let you know how you did:

  • Green = Cor­rect icon and spot
  • Yel­low = Cor­rect icon, wrong spot
  • Red = Wrong alto­geth­er
SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 4 — Path to the Temple

Line up the 3 lines of for­est so that the path opens to the tem­ple

Level 5 — Rain

Tap 8 times

Level 6 — Match the Leaves

Match 4 sets of leaves

Level 7 — Find the Critters!

Find the Bird, the Tiger, the Capy­bara, the Croc­o­dile, and the Snake

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 8 — Colorful Flowers

Com­bine 1 col­or­ful flower with 1 set of green leaves

Level 9 — Lily Pads

Turn the lily pads until their Pac-Man mouths face each oth­er, caus­ing the flow­ers to bloom

Level 10 — Poisonous Frogs

Use the mag­ni­fy­ing glass to check out each frog!

Level 11 — Guide the Ferry

Use the con­trols on the left to guide the fer­ry down the riv­er. The wheel will turn the ves­sel, while the pro­peller advances it

Level 12 — Animal Totems

This was dif­fi­cult to com­plete with­out any clues. The ani­mals are straight for­ward, but the sym­bols are not. Turn the ani­mals until they face you, then turn all of the sym­bols until the totems sink down­wards

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 13 — Fit the Pieces

Easy puz­zle! Place the pieces so that they all fit with­in the dark squares

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 14 — Matching Smiles

Hov­er over the masks’ mouths to unveil their smiles and then match them togeth­er. Col­lect the bowl

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 15 — Guide the Bowl

Move the bowl through to the end of the maze

Level 16 — Cocoa Recipe

Tap to open the recipe!

Level 17 — Make the Cocoa!
  • Move the pot to the burn­er
  • Turn on the pow­er
  • Add the choco­late
  • Open the lid
  • Pour in the milk
  • Use the whisk until it turns brown
  • Enjoy
Chapter Clear

Match the stick­ers with the cor­re­spond­ing sil­hou­ettes to com­mem­o­rate your mem­o­ries

Adventures in the Orient: Mountains of Yunnan

Level 1 — Matching Lanterns
  • Match the lanterns to scare away the spi­ders
  • Remove the spi­der­webs
  • Find the box Grand­ma wants
Level 2 — Calm Down

Tap the boil­ing teapot to calm it

Level 3 — Uncover Your Itinerary

Remove the clouds and pink box

Level 4 — Pour the Tea

Slide the teapot and cup out­lines until they match their designs. What’s tricky is that the left cup’s dish out­line is on the right cup’s dish

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 5 — Cabinet Designs

Fig­ure out the cor­rect pat­tern sequence (HINT: find the cor­ner pieces and then the mid­dle pieces). When you hear the unlock­ing sound, remove the locks, slide open the cab­i­net, and take the dish­es

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 6 — Tea Time

Tap the teacup, then slide the tea leaves around until you line up a com­ple­men­tary set to the one in the cup NOT a match­ing set. Then pick the tea leaves and enjoy your fresh cup of tea!

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 7 — Pick Some Tea Leaves

This one is a lit­tle con­fus­ing until you get it. Basi­cal­ly there are 2 lines of both young and mature tea leaves. You want the top and bot­tom lay­ers to match in sequence of tea leaves. Pluck the ones that are odd ones out and leave the sym­met­ri­cal ones behind. If you mess up, you have to do them all over again

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 8 — Dry the Tea Leaves

Sort the leaves by size and group them togeth­er on sep­a­rate racks. They will steam when you’ve done it right

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 9 — Young to Old

Orga­nize the tea leaves from young to old (light to dark)

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 10 — Prepare the Tea Leaves
  • Move the leaves to the dry­ing racks
  • Wait for them to dry (dark­en 2x)
  • Move all three over to the spi­ral
  • Spin them until they com­bine
  • Move them to the bag
  • Repeat until the bag is full (3 more times)
Level 11 — Zen

Tap the “petals” until they form a flower shape (note the hexag­o­nal shape of the mid­dle image)

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 12 — Sushi Recipe

Tap to open the recipe

Level 13 — Make the Onigiri x2

Make Oni­giri #1

  • Remove the blue lid
  • Take 6 rice balls and place them in the tri­an­gle form
  • Move the fish to the brown bowl
  • Open the cap of the tall brown bot­tle, then pour it on the fish
  • Move the sea­soned fish to the tri­an­gle rice form
  • Add anoth­er 6 balls of rice to the tri­an­gle form
  • Place the sea­weed on the bot­tom of the tri­an­gle
  • Sprin­kle it the black sea­son­ings
  • Move the fin­ished oni­ri­gi over to the wood­en board

Make Oni­giri #2

  • Place 6 rice balls into the tri­an­gle form
  • Open the lid of the tuna can
  • Move the tuna to the brown bowl
  • Open the lid of the mayo and pour it over the tuna
  • Move the tuna to the tri­an­gle form
  • Add anoth­er 6 balls of rice
  • Add sea­weed
  • Add black sea­son­ings
  • Move to wood­en board

COMPLETED

Chapter Clear

Place com­mem­o­ra­tive stick­ers in their posi­tions

Adventures into the Past: Love on the Orient Express

Level 1 — Serve the Macarons

This one was tricky. You’re sup­posed to notice the col­ors of the plates and the tray, then coor­di­nate the col­ored mac­arons. The game will auto­mat­i­cal­ly place them into their cor­rect spots

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 2 — Dog Treat or No?

Feed your dog the dog treats, and place the mac­arons in the tray

Level 3 — Trial and Error

Basi­cal­ly, just move stuff around until they quit mov­ing, then open the string and move it to the bot­tom

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 4 — Examine the Photos

You need to move the 4 pho­tos in the cen­ter and on the right side into the hand, then move the glass­es so that it cov­ers the per­son in the hand pho­to AND in the left­most pho­to, then tap the screen. Do this until every­one in the left­most pho­to is look­ing at the cam­era

EXAMPLE

LEFT: Before tap; RIGHT: After tap

END PHOTO (Click to Open)

Level 5 — Dance Steps
  • Tap the pho­to
  • Match the foot­steps with back­ground
  • Tap Grand­ma
Level 6 — Remove the Envelopes

Tap the envelopes to remove them

Level 7 — Organizing the Shelf (Bad puppy!)
  • Tap the shelf to sta­bi­lize it
  • Note the designs on the back of each shelf
  • Match the spine of each book to the designs
  • Once the dog is hap­py, search for all the envelopes (6 total)
SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 8 — Postcards

Match the stamps to their respec­tive post­cards

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 9 — Sorting the Drawer

Place the let­ters in such a way that they fit per­fect­ly in the draw­er

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 10 — Work through the Memories

Pull the mom and dad down and then tap the enve­lope

Level 11 — Grandma Intervenes

Give Grand­ma all the let­ters

Level 12 — Comforting

Pull down and up the images

Level 13 — Tickets, Please!

Pull out all the tick­ets and then match them (one has 4 tick­ets)

Level 14 — Train Time

Move the red train up so that the blue train came pro­ceed

Level 15 — Meet halfway

Move the 2 red train cars out of the way so that the yel­low and blue trains can reach the heart

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 16 — Assemble the Cars
  • Util­itz­ing the con­nec­tor shapes, orga­nize the train cars in the cor­rect order
  • SOLUTION: Pur­ple Tri­an­gle, Blue Star, Green Dia­mond, Pink Square, Orange Star
  • Tap each car to see inside
    • Tap a flower bou­quet
    • Tap the male
    • Tap the female
Level 17 — ON Track to Love

Clear the tracks of any obsta­cles, then tap the yel­low cir­cle to start the train

Level 18 — Fig Pizza Recipe

Tap to open the piz­za recipe

Level 19 — Make the Pizza
  • Uncov­er all the ingre­di­ents
  • Refer to the low­er left box
  • Place ingre­di­ents on the upper right area until the ingre­di­ents are removed from the table
  • HINT: Use the cut­ting board to make the pieces small­er
Chapter Clear

Place stick­ers in appro­pri­ate places

Adventures with Grandma: Adventures to Come

Level 1 — Uncover the Adventure

Remove the obsta­cles

Level 2 — Outings With Grandma

Match the item pieces togeth­er and then drag them over to the appro­pri­ate pro­posed out­ings

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 3 — Picnic with Grandma!

Pack the items into the pic­nic bas­ket (HINT: start with the uten­sils, note the items already in the bas­ket, and then stack like items before plac­ing them in)

SOLUTION (Click to Open)

Level 4 — Biking with Grandma!

Com­plete the land­scape

Level 5 — Boating with Grandma!

Com­plete the land­scape

Level 6 — Camping with Grandma!

Com­plete the land­scape

Level 7 — Hot Chocolate with Grandma!

Place the mug

Level 8 — Onigiri with Grandma!

Place the oni­giri

Level 9 — Pizza with Grandma!

Place the piz­za

Level 10 — Photos!

Snap 3 pho­tos of your fun time togeth­er!

Chapter End

Place your stick­ers in your album

Game Com­plete!

Bonus Level

Tap the images in chrono­log­i­cal order

SOLUTION (Click to Open)