Apartment Projects

3 projects I have been thinking about for the new apartment...

1) Balcony Herb Garden

Pretty straight forward. We now have a nice balcony that gets a decent amount of sun (but not too much) that I would like to take advantage of. I am thinking about either getting several medium sized pots or maybe one or two longer boxes to plant some herbs and other veggies in (peppers maybe?). I am still in the very preliminary stages of researching this (what to plant, if the time of year will screw up anything, how much will it cost for everything including soil, fertilizer, tools, etc...) but am pretty excited about the prospect of having fresh and cheap herbs to cook with.

2) "Upright/Vertical" Balcony Bike Stand

This may be hard to describe, but I want a bike stand that will hold both of our bikes "upright" on our balcony. By upright, I simply mean that the back tire should be on the ground and the front tire directly above it (vs in front of it on the ground like a normal riding position). We have decided to store our bikes on our balcony for the warm weather months b/c there isn't a plethora of inside storage space and our balcony is a decent size. By putting them upright, they would have a pretty small footprint.

I have seen several solutions online, but none fit my needs exactly. Something like this achieves the upright approach and is nice since its free standing (we have siding on all of our exterior walls, which means no bolting or screwing into the building) but isn't "upright" and I am not sure it would fit on our balcony.

Something like this is exactly what I am looking for, but needs to be bolted to a wall, which I can't do. These, and these, are similar but only hold one bike at a time and still need to be bolted to a sturdy vertical surface.

My current thought is to possibly build a stand similar to those that are used in the first example but buy a couple of the last wall mounting hooks to attach the bikes (thus freestanding and vertical).

Granted, the more I look at it, the more it seems like it could be more $$$ and time than is worth the small amount of space saved ... but I press on!

3) Nifty Photo Hanging System

I saw this on some random home improvement show several months ago. Basically, the guy used a single rail/edge mounted high up on the wall near the ceiling. From this rail you hang thin wires or something like fishing line down. Finally, on these lines you attach hooks which you hang your photos or frames from.

Yeah, its a fair bit more complicated than just banging a nail in the wall ... but it allows you to slide the wires left/right wherever you want as much as you want ... and the hooks on the lines can move up and down. So your left with a system where you can mount a ton of pictures in any arrangement you want and then change it completely without any tools or more holes in the wall.

I found some hardware for doing this on a couple of websites (similar to this). I think I could make a custom rail system that would be a fair bit cheaper (just some decently hard molding and some hooks that can clip onto it) but the price for small wire clips (here) are nice at a buck a pop. Granted I would have to purchase a fair number of them, but at least its reasonable. And if I could fashion something myself or get them at a local store, it would be fine.

I plan on for sure doing the garden. Possibly doing something to hang the bikes on and probably something for my photos (maybe not my initial idea but something else) Who knows. Wish me luck.