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.

Tyre puncture, slow leak submersion tub.

I'd had a slow leak in a rear tyre that's been a nuisance for a few months. Depending on how I park, I need to reinflate every 4-5 days, and it rarely drops below 20lbs.

Slow leaks are hard to find with the "soapy water" method, particularly once the tyre is off the car and pressure drops due to the car weight being removed. I've been keeping my eye out for one of those kids sea shell sand pits/pools on hard rubbish for weeks. Yesterday I found a massive pot-plant shallow tub. It's incredibly PERFECT for a tyre submersion!!

It took about 10 seconds to find the leak when submerged. So good. What a great find!! Very pleased. Hard Rubbish FTW yet again.

Panel beating

An assortment of misc photos. Three large dents including a panel puncture in the rear left pillar of the van needed attention. I fooled around with some experimental $2 epoxy and aluminium swarf filler for the undercoat/bulk fill of the larger dent. Worked fine.

The van is blinding to work on in the sun. I did all the filler-work in the evening as the sun was low, and the painting as the sun was setting. Now I've finally looked over it during the day I'm really unhappy with my sanding job. Really really noob-cake work. So upsetting. Going to leave it for now. Maybe.

Paint roller brushed on as per a previous post.