Infinite painting

I time-delay captured some repairs and painting while in the U.S. Messing with the camera became a nuisance so I stopped before I moved along to the 2nd house which was more renovation-heavy. Video editing is also low on my fun list, so here are a few still images. :D

Wooden door. Vinyl shell on the rest of the garage. Lots of loose and old paint on the door.

I spent some time scraping flaking paint off.

Tribal ritual.

Got the paint can in a head lock.

Table tennis and painting stances have much in common.

Here, hold this for a min.

Smooth McGroove.

Squirrel!

Awesome Mobile panel updates

After returning home from some hard work in the States, I decided to treat myself to some replacement panels on my car. The clear coat on several panels was an issue when I bought it a few years ago. It's not something the car *needs*, but it's what Gotham wants...

I had to juggle the option of spraying the panels myself, or finding some at the wrecker in better condition. Spraying means the car is off-the-road while I paint, and is also a huge pain in the butt with weather considerations due to dust etc... I can always repaint my old spare panels if I actually keep them.

Front right panel clear-coat peeling off. The entire hood had suffered from this fate.

The car had been in a light collision with a towball before I got it, and the front bumper was always a lil' wobbly due to damage .

The bumper had other signs of misc damage also.

So the day after I got back from the states, Jana and I went down to the local pick-a-part-wrecker and I grabbed a hood, fender, and bumper for ~$200.aud ($140.usd) Luckily the front-end of the station wagon is identical to the sedan's, there're plenty of them at the wrecker. For 22yr old parts these look great!! (new panels unwashed in photos)

It probably took a good 2.5hrs to get all 3 panels swapped out on the car at home. There were minor model differences here and there which slowed me down a little, but familiarity would make this a 30min job max. Super happy with the way it all came out. :)

USA house number four renovation

Just a rough and ready video of our roughest property in the states after I'd done some work. ( a lot of work crammed into two weeks). I may upload before/after photos later.

https://youtu.be/RVC9fSg3R3g

Some strangers showed up to help with demolition at the Adella property. They saved me GOBS of time.

Flight Luxury, just add one bazillion dollars.

On the 2nd flight back to the states this year I tipped into the lowest tier of frequent flier status of "Premier Silver". The biggest kick-back is that it puts you on a standby list for cabin upgrades if there are spaces available.

I got 1st class on the flight from Des Moines to Houston, and Economy Plus (in an apparently empty plane) from Houston to Sydney. Sweeeet!! Normally the LAX to MEL flights are packed, so this IAH to SYD might be the new favoured path.

"Sorry about the crudity of these *screenshots* Marty, I didn't have time to build it to scale or to paint it!"
"That's OK Doc."

Dining table, hard rubbish style

Found a really nice solid timber dining table on hard rubbish. Yet another absurd find on the side of the road. This is easily repairable and has the classic look that everyone wants. It's clearly a student project and had many indicators of the classroom.

...So I bolstered it with dowel pins and glue throughout, fixed some split timber and pinned those with more dowels, and repositioned some table-top fasteners that had shifted completely out of usefulness due to timber shinkage over the years.

The top has been belt-sanded by a barbarian and then coated with combination varnish-stain...the worst timber finish ever. Don't use that stuff, it ALWAYS looks terrible. Use separate products; a stain, THEN a varnish.

I'm putting this table into the spare room as a hobby-bench as we already have a nice small dining table in the kitchen. As such, the goofy finish and whacky sanding underneath is going to remain...still looks pretty good though.

Previously had wood-screws into end grain. What a derp. Fixed with dowels and glue.

Oh I also found some carpet underlay in a different hard rubbish pile. This happens to be precisely what I need for the van underlay. Saved me ~$25bucks/meter for regular automotive underlay, there're a few meters here.

The width on the larger piece is the width between foot-steps. Handy.

This piece had some nasty splits across some of the joinery holes, so it took x5 very long dowel pins to get some strength back into it.

Table-top fasteners floating out in space doing nothing. I repositioned these.

Looks pretty good. Item #3431234 of my hard rubbish finds in Australia.

International Travel

Rockets: check
Computer: check
Hat full of underpants: check.

Well I'm packed and ready to go...

Bedroom ceiling TV computer

I found an LCD TV on hard rubbish, including the remote in the pile. It even had batteries and works perfectly fine. It's 720p, so 1080i, but that's OK...free. Naturally I had a spare computer kicking around and decided to mount it and the TV on the ceiling above the bed for some advanced Netflix viewing.

No pic of the computer mounted up there, but it's all set up now and works fine. I'll run cables through the roof some time this weekend.

Fence palings I found on hard rubbish. They serve to suspend some 150mm M8 galvanised bolts and displace the load across a few ceiling rafters.

Bolts through the plasterboard.

Some 30x30mm framework scavenged from our customer-returns junk pile at work. Spray painted it black to hide misc damage and scratches.

Desktop power cord management hole.

Frame mounted to the ceiling. Cavity up top is for the computer.

Blue 3mm acrylic panel for the PC to sit on.

Standard 100mm x 100mm spacing VESA monitor mount made from some 6mm polycarbonate panel.

Monitor hung and mounted on a hinged arrangement, tilted slightly towards the viewing zone. :)

"Double Rainbow...all the way..."

Mt. Buller (one of the local snow/ski destinations during the winter) had bush fires, evacuations, and a record high temperature yesterday. Today it snowed there months before the regular snow season.

We got a sun shower and a nice rainbow.

Months ago I traced the roof arc of the van onto a board. Today I finally transposed the shape to a piece of coreflute so I could fine-tune the shape and be sure it was OK. Ultimately this will be a shape template for some new roof support struts when I raise the roof of the van.

I got it pretty spot-on, but the back of the van where I traced it is approx ~30mm narrower than the font of the van. Didn't realise 'till test fitting the piece. Oh well, more work for later.