Wednesday, October 29, 2008

My Secret Lair


On the Unique Geek Forum site: http://groups.google.com/group/theuniquegeek. There is a post about villain lairs. Well your truly has one as well. It is my house of Spaz, or Spazhouse. In the listing of lairs there is one section that is missing should be called hiding in plain site. My house is hidden from the prying eyes of the Google satellite. From the street it looks like an ordinary small house. But my house has two camphor trees and a sweetgum standing sentry.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Troll Dolls and Bicycles


My Sister gave me this 10 inch troll woman from Norway. They bring good luck to the owner. I have had her for a good number of years. I like the fact that Norwegians believe in trolls. They know you can't see them but that does not mean they do not exists.

We had a cool bike event this evening. Not quite critical mass but fun any way. There were also some neat bike movies for the event.

Checkout the www.needcoffee.com The latest Weekend Justice has me on it. Check it out.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Little Hot


I thought I would post a toy picture a day since I received a great 18 inch Hellboy Figure. I have had great luck using toys as subject matter

Since I was food shopping I thought I would take toy and camera with me. I shot a few images. I like this one the best.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

More Steampunk influenced Kitchen images






As I have said I am happy with the way the floors came out. The paint job on the some of the appliances are nice as well. There was some over spray left on some walls. I could not find masking tape at the time.

Well here are some photos I took this morning as the light hit the kitchen nicely.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Steampunk Inspired kitchen




So after days of ripping up linoleum and tar. I sanded. Since my kitchen is small I did not see the need to rent a sander. I own a belt sander and it woks well. As I have said earlier, I never remove anything while I am working. So wood dust went everywhere. I vacced and sanded in turns. I started with an 40 grit, to remove left over tar and paint. There was paint as well as linoleum. Then I went to an 80 then 120.

When it came to coating the floors I like Minwax Polycrylic waterbased poly. Clean up is a snap and you can apply a new coat in a number of hours. So I used a plan of coating the floor at night and then sand an re-apply the next evening.

There was some water damage, so there is some color change in the floor as well as some of the planks have some gouging near the sink. I think this adds character since now I am thinking to create a Steampunk inspired kitchen. Not necessarily gear and such but in color scheme. There was a BBC America show I enjoyed called House Invaders. The house would just add bits and pieces to revamp an area. In the previous images the cabinet doors are metallic green. This time I thought a gold copper mix would look nice. I like the over all green color on the walls and the Brown in the ceiling so I left that alone and just concentrated on painting the doors the cover to the water heater, shelves, clock, and fridge. I am overall happy with the results.

I did spend some money on a clean up helper. I asked a friend of mine if his daughter would like to make some money. My sister's family moved away so I had to look outside of the family for help.

Anferny, you dodged that bullet.

Anyway, since I neglected to move dinner wear out I spent a lot of time washing and Lizzie (The helper) dusted all the upstairs books and washed horizontal surfaces. Thanks Lizzie.

Anyway I will post other photos later that shows the full kitchen.

Uncovering Hardwood floors





Like all home improvement projects that I have ever worked on it always starts out as my thought that the project would be easy. One morning on a whim I was contemplating the flooring in my kitchen. I had placed down peel and stick a few years ago and of course they never last and you can never really clean them once you trash them. I have noticed that the kitchen floor seemed thicker than the hallway. So I took a flashlight and chisel and discovered hardwood floors! From the hallway into the kitchen the linoleum pulled up quickly. I thought wow this should be pretty easy. Take an evening rip up the floors, then sand, and polyeurithane. what could be so difficult?

Well the three layers of linoleum and the tar holding the ancient layer to the pine floor. One night turned to three or four with a heat gun and chisel. I had to heat the tar to near melting and then scrape it off. Then I would use a large scraper if I could het a foothold on section.

Yeah and I forgot, I never remove stuff out of a work area. I left all my dishes and what not, in the kitchen while I worked. The photos shows removal of the flooring.