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New games room/studio build


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We are pretty much at lock-up stage apart from the fact that Trend windows and doors has still not provided a door that we can actually lock up! Its been months since we have told them of the issue and they are so useless at responding. They were meant to send the replacement door out on Friday last week but it never arrived. We aren't really surprised given our dealings with them up to this point. They did finally send the L-shaped window out that they had originally built the wrong way around (flashing on inside, reveal on outside) Got that installed and then after the rains recently we found there was a leak in the window. There was also a leak in the bathroom window... We ended up just using silicon on the windows rather than having to go back to them and wait many more months for them to do something about it. 

We also had our electrician come out and rough in and the plumber has done all he can for the moment as well. 

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We have also completed installing all of the insulation in the walls and ceiling. There seems to be a bit of a shortage of insulation at the moment so I went on marketplace and found a whole lot available for really cheap. Seems like a lot of people over order how much they think they need. The R4.0 stuff from Bunnings is $100 a covers only 9m2. We would have needed about 4 bags of that and then another 4 for the walls. I ended up buying 3 bags from a guy for $60 and then another 2 bags from someone else for $80, but when I got out to collect the 2 bags they said that I could take all of the bags they had there for $80 and there turned out to be 6 bags available so ended up with 9 bags of insulation for $140. Definitely worth checking on marketplace.
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We were also able to move our 5000L water tank from the front garden 30m down to its spot out the back. Luckily we had bought the modwood decking a few weeks ago and we able to use the decking boards to slide the tank across. We only had three people (two pulling and one pushing) and we got it in place in no time. Plumber came out and got half of it installed (we still need to build a car port off the side of the house so the rainwater can go in there)
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We had a great floor tiler come out and complete our small bathroom job for $2000. He did the waterproofing on Monday morning, screed on Tuesday morning, all tiles (floor and walls) on Wednesday and grout Thursday for an hour in the morning. Pretty happy with the job. Tiling is not something I really wanted to try my amateur hand at. 

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Next step was to build the landing and stairs that will lead into the studio. Got the landing done pretty quickly but the stairs were a bit trickier. Took a couple of goes to get the angles and sizes correct. A lot of sketches and measurements were taken but we got one of the stringers made and it worked out pretty well. image.thumb.jpeg.7ddbc90a43e91c44bd9db6f9ea5cb16e.jpegimage.thumb.jpeg.cb147c47ee78b361fae6f5e7c7a2b0bd.jpeg

We have the sewer access points right between where the stairs will go so we need to use the modwood decking boards over the top of the stairs so that the certifier can still access the pipes. The wodwood decking can just be taken off by hand so hopefully that solves that issue.

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We also got gifted a pool cover from a friend and my son though he might have a go at trying to walk across it. Obviously didn't work too well 🙂 Can't believe they are still wanting to go in the pool when it is less than 10 degrees.

Next thing will be doing the gyprock. 

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So we got the landing and stairs built and the place is almost at lock up stage. Building the stairs was quite a tricky process. A lot of drawing of stairs and in the end I still got the dimensions wrong. The steps are fine for the first step, but then each successive step was out by the thickness of a modwood board. I had worked out the steps to each be 2 boards wide, but then added the thickness of a board to each step which meant I had to attach a 2cm packer behind each step after the first. They still turned out ok so i'm not too worried about it.

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It gave me some practice for the next set of stairs I need to build from our old deck. I really like the look of the modwood boards and so am in the process of ripping up our blackbutt timber decking to put the new boards in. This is quite a slow process because probably every 10th screw is threaded and needs to be cut out. Gone through a few blades on the recipro saw but i'm slowly getting there. Hoping to get the new deck completed this weekend. I have some yellow tongue flooring that I will put down so I can move the fridge onto while i remove the boards from under there. Also got out my home-brew gear that has been in storage for a few years. Might have to get back into it. 

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And we finally had our bi-fold door fixed just this morning. We have been waiting on trend to come out and fix the door which opened to the wrong side and didnt have a lock on the outside. We informed them of this problem on May 28th and they have only just fixed it. Pretty much every week for the last 10 weeks we have had promises from the company saying they will definitely be out the following day, or that we were "booked in" for the following week. It was just getting ridiculous. They were telling so many lies that they couldnt keep track of the lies. We only had the contact details of the salesperson so we were constantly contacting her about what was going on and we would get messages saying:

"I'm just with a customer, ill check and be back to you in 15 minutes" 
45 minutes later " Sorry, got held up with a customer. The office is following this up for you and we will ensure you receive a phone call shortly"
4 hours later "We are running at a shortage due to staff having COVID (including the general manager) We are doing the best we can - allow us to get back to you and we will give notice prior to arrival"
"Sorry ive been on site and jut read these messages now. Let me follow up now that im back in the office. Give me 5 minutes please. An hour later " I'm just waiting on a call back from the service technician. the second he calls back I will come back to you. Please allow me to come back to you shortly."

This was happening on a weekly occurrence and ended up being a daily email or text (never a phone call as they never answered the phone) We finally got a call from the technician yesterday saying he would be out in the morning. My wife said "Now do you have the new door and do you know what you are supposed to be doing?" 
"New door? Dont you have one on site?" We were told by the salesperson that they had built a new door for us to replace the old one. Guy showed up this morning and just replaced some parts in the door we had and was gone within an hour. Took him an hour to do a job thats taken 3 months to actually arrive at. 

We had a totally different experience with Modern shutters who did the roller shutter on our storeroom for our pool equipment. Very nice on the phone, salesperson came out on time to quote (although he was a bit pushy when he gave the quote saying "so what would you like to do then? Pay now?" I dont like to be rushed into making a decision like that) Someone came to check measure on time, they said they would be out to install between 8-9am - they were. All wrapped up within a week of ordering. Text messages saying what was happening. Honest. 🙂

 So next is finishing up the modwood around the bottom part of the studio and then getting gyprock done.
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54 minutes ago, nich2pat said:

So we got the landing and stairs built and the place is almost at lock up stage. Building the stairs was quite a tricky process. A lot of drawing of stairs and in the end I still got the dimensions wrong. The steps are fine for the first step, but then each successive step was out by the thickness of a modwood board. I had worked out the steps to each be 2 boards wide, but then added the thickness of a board to each step which meant I had to attach a 2cm packer behind each step after the first. They still turned out ok so i'm not too worried about it.

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It gave me some practice for the next set of stairs I need to build from our old deck. I really like the look of the modwood boards and so am in the process of ripping up our blackbutt timber decking to put the new boards in. This is quite a slow process because probably every 10th screw is threaded and needs to be cut out. Gone through a few blades on the recipro saw but i'm slowly getting there. Hoping to get the new deck completed this weekend. I have some yellow tongue flooring that I will put down so I can move the fridge onto while i remove the boards from under there. Also got out my home-brew gear that has been in storage for a few years. Might have to get back into it. 

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And we finally had our bi-fold door fixed just this morning. We have been waiting on trend to come out and fix the door which opened to the wrong side and didnt have a lock on the outside. We informed them of this problem on May 28th and they have only just fixed it. Pretty much every week for the last 10 weeks we have had promises from the company saying they will definitely be out the following day, or that we were "booked in" for the following week. It was just getting ridiculous. They were telling so many lies that they couldnt keep track of the lies. We only had the contact details of the salesperson so we were constantly contacting her about what was going on and we would get messages saying:

"I'm just with a customer, ill check and be back to you in 15 minutes" 
45 minutes later " Sorry, got held up with a customer. The office is following this up for you and we will ensure you receive a phone call shortly"
4 hours later "We are running at a shortage due to staff having COVID (including the general manager) We are doing the best we can - allow us to get back to you and we will give notice prior to arrival"
"Sorry ive been on site and jut read these messages now. Let me follow up now that im back in the office. Give me 5 minutes please. An hour later " I'm just waiting on a call back from the service technician. the second he calls back I will come back to you. Please allow me to come back to you shortly."

This was happening on a weekly occurrence and ended up being a daily email or text (never a phone call as they never answered the phone) We finally got a call from the technician yesterday saying he would be out in the morning. My wife said "Now do you have the new door and do you know what you are supposed to be doing?" 
"New door? Dont you have one on site?" We were told by the salesperson that they had built a new door for us to replace the old one. Guy showed up this morning and just replaced some parts in the door we had and was gone within an hour. Took him an hour to do a job thats taken 3 months to actually arrive at. 

We had a totally different experience with Modern shutters who did the roller shutter on our storeroom for our pool equipment. Very nice on the phone, salesperson came out on time to quote (although he was a bit pushy when he gave the quote saying "so what would you like to do then? Pay now?" I dont like to be rushed into making a decision like that) Someone came to check measure on time, they said they would be out to install between 8-9am - they were. All wrapped up within a week of ordering. Text messages saying what was happening. Honest. 🙂

 So next is finishing up the modwood around the bottom part of the studio and then getting gyprock done.
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My hug offer still stands 

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  • 3 weeks later...

So I took 4 days off work to do some more work on the house while my kids were at school and day care. Its almost impossible to do any work while the 3 year old is at home. Also called in a few friends to help with taking the blackbutt timber from the old deck. We have a small laundry area at the back of the deck that I decided to just leave with the current floor. The laundry has doors ove rthe washer and dryer anyway, so nobody will see the 2 different floors. And it would have been a huge pain to remove the cabinet around the washer and dryer and disconnect everything and put it back together. Moved the fridge onto some yellow tongue and got the joists ready for the kleva clips to go on. I like this system as there are no visible screws once you put the modwood decking down. And the boards can be easily popped out if you need to get under there without having to unscrew anything.

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I was able to learn from my mistakes with building the previous stair stringers and so my calculations were a lot better this time around. Got rid of all of the junk that we had sitting under the deck for the last 6 years. We had some old weatherboards that we thought we were going to use "one day" but really we were never going to. We put them out on the street and our neighbour came and picked them all up for a project that she has going on. So a bit of a win. We also sold the blackbutt decking to a friend so they will come around and pick that up soon. Cleaned up the area under the stairs and put down some of the old pavers that we were also saving to use at "some stage". Well they actually got used. 🙂

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Really like the look of the modwood in this colour. I wasnt sure about all the grey but I have come to appreciate it. Just need to do the sides of the stairs and that will be ticked off too. We had to pool fence installer come around to check the progress and he will start installing the glass pool fence in September. 

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I thought because we had some more modwood left over I would redo the front landing as well. My father-in-law built it 6 years ago and when I pulled up the blackbutt I noticed there was a heap of rotted wood under there. I was surprised it was still holding up to be honest. I replaced almost all of the timber used under there and then went to put the kleva clips on but realised it was out by 8cm... 🙂 I was just going off the dimensions that my father-in-law had used, so needed to do a bit of reworking to get it all straight.

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My wife was able to finish off all of the modwood on the stairs and landing and I think it turned out well.

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But back to the games room / studio...

Got the gyprock delivered on Friday last week and made a start on that. My nephew will be doing the jointing and finishing, we just have to get the sheets up there. We got about 3/4 of it done and are hoping to finish it off next weekend. Then we will be able to call our sparky back in to finish wiring it all up. Pretty rough job but hoping my nephew can make it look a bit more respectable 🙂


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The view from the studio looking back towards our house. The temporary fence will be replaced with a nice glass fence all the way around. Weather is starting to heat up a bit too so cant wait until the pool is ready to jump into. (well its always ready to jump into, just not by me when its only 10 degrees in there) Got the modwood around the base of the deck on both sides so will be ready for the certifiers tick of approval next month (hopefully)


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  • 1 month later...

So we started on installing the eaves boards on the pool side before the pool fence got installed as the pool fence installer told us some horror stories about ladders falling down and smashing glass fences. 

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The fence turned out pretty nice but the panels seem quite wobbly. they only have the support at the bottom of them, but they got approved by the certifier so thats a bonus. I was looking up parts to secure the top of the fence better but they were about $100 each and I need about 20 of them. So i'll just make do with what I have. There are actually a few things that I thought about fixing or updating but I have moved onto something else and left it for a "later" job. Which will probably not happen 🙂

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Got all the plaster up and our sparky came out to finish off. I think he quoted for this job in October last year and it was almost a year until he finished, so a pretty slow process.. We had my nephew come out a few hours at a time on weekends to set the plaster but it was just taking too long so we just hired a couple of plasterers who came out on a Sunday morning and were done by lunchtime. Very fast workers and relatively cheap.

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Next step was to clean up the yard so we could get it levelled out. It was draining back towards the pool and studio which isn't ideal. Lucky for us our neighbour got himself a one way ticket to Thailand and so we were able to store a bunch of our beams and posts in his yard. His garage has half of our stuff in there as well. Good thing we have some nice neighbours. Took down a fence panel to make it easier.

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Guy came in and levelled it all and we will be putting grass down the side between the side gate and the back of the property. Behind the water tank to the opposite side will be a 20mm grey gum drainage aggregate.

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Truck was unable to get down to the back of the studio so had to dump the 4 tonnes of rock in the driveway. Had a few mates come around and move a bunch of wheelbarrow loads for me.
 

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We also scored a free trampoline from marketplace from a friend of ours. The boys have been missing their old one that had to go when we started the renovation. Went and hired a car float and brought it back and it now resides out the back behind the studio.
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Also now that all the electrical work is done I have been able to move the pool storage area around a bit. All of the control panels have been moved up onto the wall behind the filter and I made some shelves to put various pool stuff. 
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Now I am on to the painting and its a bit of a punish. At least we have lights in there now so i can work on that when the boys go to bed at night. Ive got the base prep undercoat and then its going to be a natural white on top. That wall will be right next to the pinball machines so I will probably come up with something better for that wall in the future. It is 3m wide and almost 4m tall so a good canvas to work with.
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Next thing we need to do is build the carports at the front and back. As part of our DA we needed to add a carport to the main house because we knocked down the old garage out the back and so it needs to be replaced with a similar structure.... even though the garage was never used as one. It was just a storage shed that was about to fall down. Once we get the carports done we can get the certifier back and hopefully get the occupation certificate. Its getting close now, right in time for summer 🙂

I still don't have any pinball machines to put in there though 😞

Got a call from AMD about a Stern JP Premium I was on the list for a while for, but i had to pass as I didn't have any funds at the time. Now I do have the funds again but i'm guessing will be another long wait.

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About your pool fence, we have the same setup. It is wobbly and freaked me out a bit....nek minute a mates kids climbing the bloody thing - hands on top, feet on the pane. I cringed when I came out.  Panel survived - I dont know how. Get yourself a professional window cleaner setup. I use Wagtail - dont fall fo the domestic window cleaner setup - been there done that.. Another tip if you go this way, the smaller the blade, the easier it is to clean . Cant wait to see your end result - getting closer by the day.

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Speaking of glass pool fences, this was the door on mine yesterday....

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Size "was" 1200 X 900 X 12mm thick. Cool, a standard size but 6 holes in it to mount the hardware that needs a diamond tip drill to do.

How did it happen?.

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A black kelpie bitch named Tess. Wife left the door open after sweeping around the pool and Tess clipped it running after her ball. Door swung fully open obviously further than it is supposed to go.

Had the wobbling posts myself on the fence. The guys come back out and put down two pack epoxy. That was 8 years ago, no problem since.

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Moving on and we are getting closer to our final inspection with our certifier. Over the last week we worked on getting the back carport up and finishing off the painting inside.

For some reason our engineer has made our carport cyclone proof... He specified 600mm deep concrete pad footings with screw piers that extend 1500mm into the ground. Then he has specified 190mm square posts to support the 6m long beams. I wish we had fought back a bit on some of the engineer's plans. Our certifier told us that most of the stuff the engineer has requested is not even needed, its just a way for them to cover themselves if something goes wrong. We would have been happy just to use 90mm posts and have a few more of them. It would have worked out a lot cheaper. The posts were about $800 each and we need 5 of them (3 out the back and 2 for the front) Then add to that the t-blades that the posts needed to sit on which were $100 each and even the M16 bolts to support them at the base were a few bucks each as well. 20 of those and it all starts adding up pretty quickly. 

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We got my nephew and brother-in-law to come and help with getting the posts and beams up. We thought it would be a nice quick job but we kept running into little problems along the way. I think in 6 hours on Saturday we had only got the plate beam on the studio and the taller post up. Lots of measuring and then issues with the dynabolts. Wife and I ended up doing the last two posts on Sunday and getting our neighbour to help lift the beam into place. Then it was a matter of finding the angle to cut the rafters to fit into the joist hangers. 

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We were able to finish off the structure of the carport yesterday and we will need to order some polycarbonate roof sheets. Want to have that area semi-transparent as there will be grass all the way down that side. Wanted some light to get through there. And no it wont be used as a carport, it was part of the DA that required us to have a carport-like structure there because we had knocked down our old garage... 
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In between taking our boys to weekend sport and building the carport we also finished off painting inside the studio and I can say I really hate rolling. I didnt mind doing the outside cladding with the paintbrush as the brush was just the right size to go along the length of each board. Doing the raked ceiling thats almost 4m high... not very fun.

Theres a few patches that I will need to get back to today but its good enough 🙂 Also did the walls and ceiling the same colour because I couldnt be bothered cutting in around the cornice. 😂
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I think next step will be to get the bathroom set up. We have a vanity, mirror, shower and toilet to install. We can get most of that done ourselves (hopefully) before our plumber comes in to hook it all up.

We also had some friends over to swim in the pool on the weekend and the boys were splashing a LOT of water out. Showed us where the water seeps to and I think we will need some kind of gravel drainage pit just outside the pool area. I got some free ag-pipe from my brother in law so will need to hook that up before the turf goes down.

I have also just bought a couple of pinball machines so they will be able to go into the dedicated pinball room soon. We are looking at some flooring options and were thinking of a laminate floor. I got some nice free carpet squares from work after the remodel there so will probably put them in the pinball area. We also put an order in for all of our cabinetry and kitchen which will be ready in about a months time. So hopefully it comes together before the end of the year. Will be able to actually spend some quality time with the kids without having to go and work on the house.

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We have dug a drainage trench just along the fence line of the pool as we found a fair bit of water was making its way onto the soil. We have connected the 2 strip drains on each side of the pool into a gravel pit that should help with water runoff from the pool area. We still had some 20mm aggregate left over from behind the studio that we will put along the pool fence line. I made a call this morning for soil deliveries for garden beds tomorrow, turf underlay soil on Thursday and turf is arriving on Friday. 

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I have tried to time the delivery of the soil around when the concrete for the carport footings is to be done on Thursday morning. We will have a few busy days of wheelbarrow work getting 2 cubic metres of organic soil for the garden beds put in on Tuesday and then 6 cubic metres of turf underlay soil on Thursday. Will need to make some space on the driveway so it can all fit, or make sure the previous soil is in the garden beds before the next lot arrives. Speaking of the concrete pad footings for the carport, our engineer has requested 600mm deep by 600mm wide square footings. It really is overkill.


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Moving back inside we have installed the shower that we bought 6 years ago when we moved into our house. We didn't end up using the shower in the main house but we kept a hold of it just in case me might need it in the future, and we have! It was a bit of a pain drilling into the tile. Bought a single glass and tile drill bit and it was about $18. Lasted about 2.5 holes... Had the water spray on hand as the bit heats up quite a bit but it was just useless and took forever to get through. Ended up getting a bunch of cheaper brand $5  ones from Bunnings and they were actually better than the expensive one.
Got the screen all installed and also got the mirror put in too. Only thing left for the bathroom is the toilet and securing the vanity.


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Was looking at different flooring places for flooring options. Prices for the cheapest stuff were from about $40 per square metre up to $130 for some blackbutt timber floor boards. We need about 35 metres worth and so even for the cheapest stuff we were looking at $1400. Had a look on marketplace and there was a guy about 45 minutes away who was selling 60m2 of blackbutt flooring. We offered $800 and he accepted that. Went out and picked it up on the weekend and it was in really good condition and looks great as well. Almost made me want to redo the floor in our main house instead of the studio. The longer pieces are 2m long and he had a stack of other shorter lengths. They are all 150mm wide which I like more than the narrower versions. Good old neighbour is still overseas so we have been able to store them on his back deck.
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My wife and father-in-law are currently working on installing the boards and have done about a third of it already this morning. 
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I have also recently purchased a pinball inspired comic book by Jon Chad - http://www.jonchad.com/books.html#pinball

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There is an illustration in there that I thought would look really good on the wall in the pinball area. I have an old projector that i thought would help me beam the image up on the wall and I bought some Posca paint pens to do the outlines. Well the projector works fairly well, just a little bit blurry in some places and I couldnt figure out how to get the whole image displayed on the wall. I have had to try and do it in 2 parts. My wife and I have almost finished with the top section and will do the bottom section over the coming days.
The pens tend to run out of paint reasonably quickly. I have gone through about 6 of the thick ones now so I think I will just get a tin of black paint to do the fully black sections.
I also am going to redo the first sections I did because the lines are too thick. They dont look very good. I didnt make reference back to the original image enough and just went off what was being projected and it wasnt the best detail. I also cant work on this during the day because the projector doesnt work well in full light.
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I will probably put the image of the illustrator Jon Chad in the little circle rather than the one that is in there currently.

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So next week hopefully will have the turf down and the floor in. Our flat pack kitchen cabinetry will be finished later in November so will be installing that in a few weeks time.

I also just bought a Johnny Mnemonic pinball machine last week and will be picking it up on Saturday. I also got a call from AMD asking if I wanted to get a Godzilla Premium that I have had my name down for all year and that is a big yes. I paid that deposit and will be waiting for that to arrive next year.

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Wow another great post. Love the timber you got - real nice. LOVE the artwork.

Aliexpreess for the win (bit late now) for your drill bits. Talked to a tiler a few years ago and made the suggestion. Only done a few holes but still sharp

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Finished off the mural in the games room. I ended up using the image of Roger Sharpe from the same book. You know the one - where he saved pinball? 


I think I ended up going through about 10 poska 7mm paint pens. I bought a 1L tin of black paint to fill in the shaded parts and used the paint pens for the outlines. Few little bits I wasn't too happy with but when you stand back and look at it, you can't see too many of the mistakes. 

My wife and father-in-law almost got the whole studio flooring complete apart from about 3 rows. They had to leave to take our youngest to swimming lessons.

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Had 2 cubic metres of good organic garden soil delivered yesterday and so the garden beds have all been topped up. As part of the DA we need a 2m tall vegetation barrier between ours and our neighbours properties. We have some tiger grass now planted all the way down the fence line. We went with tiger grass as it provides good screening and its kind of a clumping bamboo style plant without the wild spreading of the root system that bamboo has. 

Tomorrow our concrete arrives for the front carport footings as well as 6 cubic metres of lawn underlay. The Tif Tub Bermuda turf arrives on Friday. 

Getting closer

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"Few little bits I wasn't too happy with but when you stand back and look at it, you can't see too many of the mistakes. "

Just liek when painting rooms where wall meets ceiling LOL - you forget about it after a couple of weeks. No one looks at it unless your like my wife. I like your answer previously and just paint the same colour.

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Before the turf underlay arrived I got a start on painting the back carport. Its just going to be the same colour as the roof. I had a spare 4L tin of Monument paint so used up a bit of that. Also built the garden beds along the fence line from the timber we had from our previous garden beds. Transplanted the tiger grass from pots into the garden beds, and they are looking a little worse for wear. My brother in law has some well established tiger grass at his place so we can possibly grab some of that if ours doesn't grow very well.

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The first truckload of soil arriving (3 cubic metres) 

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It took my wife and I about 4 hours to transport the soil from the driveway down to the back of the property. I checked my Fitbit and ended up on 24,000 steps that day. We had enough for about an 80mm underlay. 

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We got all the soil fairly level (bit tricky without heavy machinery) and then the next day our Tif Turf Bermuda turf arrived. We were lucky that we ordered the Tif Turf because the delivery guy said they had about 3000 square metres of Sir Walter that they had tried to remove the day before and even though the top of it looked fine, it just crumbled underneath when they tried to lift it. A lot of unhappy customers calling up the landscaping company.

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We had our best and most helpful worker (father-in-law) on the case loading up the wheelbarrows. Got the grass down as soon as it arrived and it only took about 3 hours between the three of us. We also got some Straightcurve Rigidline edging to put between the pool and the pavers. We made the little channel for the pebbles to go in so the water run off from the pool wouldn't be directly touching the grass. Just ned to top up the rocks in that section.

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I also finished off the flooring in the studio and put down the carpet squares that I got from work. Im going to pick up a Johnny Mnemonic today and will see if I need to rearrange the carpet squares to fit the pinball machine onto.

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  • 5 weeks later...

Got up the frame for the back carport and started painting it, but then the turf arrived and I wasn't able to get the ladders up at the back so I had to get up on the top on some yellow tongue and paint from the top. It was a bit tricky. I was lying on the yellow tongue on my stomach and then reaching down under the rafters to paint. At the end of the day when I had finished I was wondering why my lower back was stinging so much and realised that I got severely sunburnt on a 5cm section of my back where my t-shirt had risen up while painting. I was covered in sunscreen for the rest of my body but didn't think about that. So, for the front carport I decided to paint it all while it was on the ground. Saves me from having to go back up the ladders again.

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Had to cut out a space on the house where the plate went and as we were removing the old forever boards we had tonnes of old coal dust come out from under the eaves. We are right near the coal train lines in Newcastle and a hundred years of coal dust has built up under there. We know of people in the area that have been renovating and have filled up garbage bags with coal dust from their ceilings.
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Had a bit better idea of how to go about this the second run through. On the back carport we had to have it a bit higher than we would have liked as the lights on the side of the house were installed a bit high. For the front we could pretty much use any height we wanted. Got some helpful neighbours to come and help lift up the heavy beams and just finished off putting the battens on last weekend. 


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We also got a new back sliding door installed a few weeks ago. the previous one we bought off gumtree 6 years ago and it was falling down. We had to prop it up in the middle because it was sagging so much and we werent able to even close the door in the end. New one is great.

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We got some quotes for a bunch of different cabinetry from a few kitchen installation places. Average was about $35,000 for all new kitchen in our current house, servery, wardrobe storage area, kitchenette and storage in the studio. We ended up going through the cabinet making service of one of the kitchen companies and it came to $10,000. But then we had to put it all together ourselves... which hasnt mattered so far, so we thought we would be able to do it. There are a LOT of components. 

Helpful guy from Cabinetline helping us to load up the truck

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We have our best worker back after his broken ribs and we got through about 75% of the cabinets over the weeekend.

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We just need to install a sink in the kitchenette, plumb in the toilet and put some doors on the storage cabinet and we will be mostly done in the studio.

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  • 2 months later...

I was up in Brisbane recently for the QLD pinball championships and invitational tournaments and was told by a couple of people they have been following this thread and that I need to update it 🙂 

I was looking at the property on NearMap from when we first bought it in 2015 until now and there is a massive difference. There's not much left over from the original house. There is only 1 room in the house that is the same as when we bought it (my bedroom) The rest of the house we gutted and swapped the original floorplan around. Added a back deck, put in solar panels and painted the whole house as well as the roof. Put in a front fence and a gate down the side. Then obviously the rest of the build that has been documented here.

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We have got to the stage where most of the big things are done and now we are doing the small jobs to finish up. One of the first smallish jobs was to put up the architraves around the doors and windows. Also where we put in all the skirting boards inside too.


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Ordered a clothesline and installed that too. It is under cover of the back carport and I can tell you I haven't missed having a clothesline. I have just been throwing everything into the dryer. Its a pain having to hang clothes out 🙂 



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We also got a new basketball system set up for my son who has just started taking an interest in basketball. I was working on setting it p by myself for about 3 hours and I got hardly anything done. It said it was a 2 person job but I was determined to get as much done as I could while my wife was out with our boys. Well I got fuck all done and she helped me finish it off when she got back. 


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I am saying that I have done a lot of these things but the photos seem to be showing otherwise. I promise you all that I have actually been doing stuff. Somebody needs to be taking the photos of the progress 🙂

Back to inside and all of the cabinetry has been installed and my wife has set up her work from home area in there. Its still pretty messy but we are on the home stretch now.


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I currently just have the one pinball machine in there but I have heard from Bruce from AMD that my Godzilla Premium has arrived and it will be getting delivered shortly! I had a few pinball trophies that were gathering dust inside that I thought would be good to show next to the pinball area. I went on marketplace and found a glass display cabinet close by for $50. Put all of the trophies in there and even managed to score 3 more while I was away in QLD on the weekend.

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I can occasionally get my son to play pinball with me but it is very rare. He only really comes in to play when he is meant to be going to bed or something. Here he is explaining to his friend how to stack spinner millions with multiball to get the big points


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Had a great game on it recently and got 65 billion. I bought it a few months ago from a nice guy in Camden in Sydney and he had the machine for over 10 years. He said they key to getting a high score on the game was getting to the Powerdown mode. Well, the real key to the game is getting spinner millions and hold bonus, the collect bonus from crazy bobs. Powerdown is also a great mode as well. Because my JM has a broken hand mechanism I have it set up to be payed without the hand. This makes it a lot harder to get really big scores. Its very difficult to get the ball to go up into the top lanes and as you don't ge too choose your modes with the glove you always need to start with video mode and then awards and given in the same order each time.


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The turf is growing in quite nicely and I just need to keep it watered. The tiger grass has been growing well too, we just need it to grow up over the top of the fence in order to get our occupancy certificate. It was part of our DA that we needed some vegetation screening so we couldn't see into our neighbours property. He has written us a letter to give to the certifiers saying that it doesn't matter if the tiger grass isn't high enough just yet and he gives them permission to pass inspection for that.
The last thing we need to do is finish off the roof on the back carport and get it plumbed into the water tank. Then we can hopefully get our OC and be done.

Then I just need to buy another pinball machine. I really want to get a Stern Jurassic Park or Iron Maiden!

 

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Edited by nich2pat
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Awesome update Pat and top job. I do question your statement that you did some of the work....your wife seems to have all the skills haha.

Great game with Johhny. A word of warning from personal experience with tiger grass. It will grow quickly and look great for the first bit. However when it starts seeding there are millions of seeds and bits of tassel that spread around. Could be a real pain with the pool. We dug ours out eventually which was a real prick of a job but very worthwhile.

May be worth considering getting it passed approval stage and then look at other options. Lilly pillys or syzigium species are pretty good. Native, fairly fast growing and always green and only need a light trim every now and then.

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23 minutes ago, robm said:

A word of warning from personal experience with tiger grass. It will grow quickly and look great for the first bit. However when it starts seeding there are millions of seeds and bits of tassel that spread around. Could be a real pain with the pool. We dug ours out eventually which was a real prick of a job but very worthwhile.

 Lilly pillys or syzigium species are pretty good. Native, fairly fast growing and always green and only need a light trim every now and then.

Thanks Rob, I'll have to have a look into some of those other plants. 

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