Progress report #2

[ginzokid]

I locked the other thread. There is some good stuff in there that probably has been reposted in other threads. I'll check. In the meantime, here's another place to write. B-)

[barrysfp45]

I know all about the pain of working on the house, my legs and knees ache something terrible when I am up and down doing wall rebuilding in the bathroom and the heat is driving me mad, I get a little done and then need another cold drink before I can proceed, it's taking about ten times longer to do this modification than most of the rebuilding I have done on the house, and I am still getting some modeling done in my spare time. ]:)

[g-pa1]

My Daughter is getting married the beginning of April and the 'to do' list is more than a pain in the neck.Filling in and touching up the walls where the grandkids play - (just about everywhere below 5 feet) and getting the house ready for out-of-town guests along with the wedding stuff and plans with the wedding coordinator, the table centerpieces, the favors,table pairings-(this one wants to sit with that one doesn't want to sit with this one), the response cards not being sent in by the deadline and worry that people will show up that we hadn't accounted for, (having to call people to see if they will be coming), the photographer, the DJ, the cake, the flowers, the bar people, the church, the night before and the next few days after with the out of towners. I'm thinking of excape!! Thanks for letting me rant. the layout offers some relaxation. Until it decides that because it wasn't invited to the doings decides to start making me pay close attention to see if the caboose is being all of a sudden pushed by the loco or the loco is missing a few cars somewhere on the layout. Anyway bring it on. we're as ready as we are going to be! Gene -- Edited by g-pa1 at 03/18/2009 5:42 AM PDT

[dl85vette]

I hear all of you with house maintenance. I still have baseboards to do in recroom. The &^^%%&$ ceiling tiles is stil only half done after 2 years as I need an electrician put in pot lights and remove the 2 flourescent lights. After painting my trainroom floor with concrete paint (before I assembledlayout when I moved in), the pain is chipping in spots, the cheap sticky tiles I laid at my work table are crumbling form the low spots,crevices and from the rollers on chair. Wouldn't mind putting in the expensive floating vinyl tiles I did in laundryroom. Wishing too now that I had put in baseboards too as I was so happy to have a dedicate train room that the painted floor and painted walls were good enuf, but now 3 years of seeing the vapor barrier stick out from under the sheetrock that it looks messy. I probably could do basebaords without having to pull layout apart. I still have a stackstone planter to finish in the front yard. (ran outta money for it last year) With the low interest rates I should refinance mortage and get some extra cash so I can put in some new windows and redo the kitchen. (My father will build me cabinets so that will cost me materials, professionally clearcoated (varathane) and shipping. Rest of kitchen will be sheetrock,insulation,countertops and electrican to move around some outlets. enuf ranting from me.

[barrysfp45]

Dave I don't think either Pete or I are saying anything about money, cost or time, it's the broken worn out bodies that get in the way of having fun rebuilding and of course the weather, I guess it's still to cold where Pete is and it's still in the mid to high 30s during the day here, a lot cooler at night though but then it's too dark outside to do any building and I still need to rebuild the rear wall of the bathroom as we want to move the window about 18" to the right, will make a big difference to the shower once done. ]:)

[dl85vette]

I was just saying that with renos/projects it all costs money so sometimes you're limited sometimes what you can do at that time. with home ownership there's all kind of projects.

[ginzokid]

Dave, I put indoor/outdoor carpet down right on the concrete in the train basement. My office chair rolls around easily on it and yet it is still soft enough to stand on for a long time. You might try that. My carpal, tennis, golf and tendonitis in both arms is what slows me down on the house work. So I just do one wall a day for the painting. For heavy work like carpentry I hire the professionals. I'll be doing our taxes for the next few days, then back to the painting on the weekend. I need Kim's help moving the curio cabinets and all the knick-knacks in them. Will I ever return to the train room......??? B-)

[barrysfp45]

I have faith in you, of course you will........eventually ]:)

[g-pa1]

I find building things fun...usually. I ordered Walthers N Scale 3 in 1 kit one and look forward to configuring my own building ideas. I usually bash whatever I build anyway so it should be interesting with the 3 in 1 kit. On sale for $14.95 at Walthers. Gene

[taz-of-boyds]

We are redoing a bedroom and bathroom in the basement. They are worn out and suffering water damage. When we first moved in it was dryer and we had one year it was really dry and the mental-wackos were all excited about the great drought and implementing government controls to stop people from using water (in our case it was really stupid, we have our own well and it never had any trouble). (The weirdest part was one day the reservoirs were drained down a bunch without explanation or announcement, and then a few days later the news outlets were acting as if it had been that way all along and it was proof we were all gona die without strict government controls on our lives.) But since then it has been rain and rain. Not so bad, except the grading round the house has problems and now the basement is staying damp. So our kind-of big project is correcting the grading and drainage around the house. If I owned a small bulldozer it would be easy, but I think we are going to do a lot with a rented tiller, rakes and shovels. I know what you mean about aging bodies, my knees just don't like being crawled on anymore. Charles

[dl85vette]

Gee. you will like the Walthers 3in1 kit a lot. I bought one when they first came out and they are pretty well done for casting quality and obviously quite easy to slap together. With some scrap plastic to aid in reinforcing walls, it is an easy kit to kitbash. I used mine for my brewery and had a section of wall angle outward to get away from the rectangle shaped industry. I made mine low relief so the walls that didn't get used,were then usd to make the bldg longer and added an extra story. I consider DPM structures simple enuf to construct (with prep work) so the 3in1 is even easier. As well with the way the wall segments are done, you have options in more than one style. Use a couple kits to make one super (industry) structure. Unless you're planning on building out of the box Gene, take your time in planning for placement of bldg and the design. It is rewarding to build something that doesn't resemble anything on the box, or anyone else's kit. my review. ****

[g-pa1]

Dave, Thanks for the infor on the 3 in 1 kit. It sounded interesting and I want to try another triangular building. Those flatiron buildings are neat and fit in many odd areas. The Clever Brothers building triangle came out so small I placed it with my z scale mine track stuff. It looks like it belongs there too. I should have ordered the HO one but Clever Brothers card structures has seen the last of me. I was hoping someone had experience with it. I've seen some other triangle buildings one even has extra floors available but cost was high I thought and it was more of a modern building and looked to be too tall and too many windows. Gene

[barrysfp45]

I know we need buildings to make our mini worlds look productive, I once recieved a phone call from a small hobby shop in Tamworth and the owner had aquired a few boxes of prebuilt buildings and as I was a regular customer offered me first bite, most was not what I wanted but the stuff I did want made it worth while to buy the lot at the price he wanted for everything instead of the individual pieces I wanted, what I didn't want I took to a hobby shop in Sydney and swapped for four new M/T boxcars, I actually think I made money on the deal, anyway the things I kept are placed around the layout, no big industrial area or anything as I am still planning to build a new layout someday, for years I have been buying kits whenever I see something I think will come in handy, I think I have about 30 unbuilt factorys and warehouses plus other buildings, when I actually do build my new layout I will probably have about a years worth of kit building to do, BTW a lot of the second hand stuff I bought was scratch built and kitbashed so maybe a lot of the unbuilt will have the same treatment.......Eventually. ]:)

[dl85vette]

Gene, I'll take a pic of my brewery bldg and post it so you can see how much dfferent I made mine.

[dl85vette]

STarted construction of another building for my cement plant facility. It will be for storage of crushed limestone (where my GHQ payloader will operate out of). Got the foundation more or less done. fun part will be the H-beam frame (clad with corrugated "sheet metal".) I have a couple envelopes of silver corrugated mylar film that I purchased for a couple bucks years ago so may as well use some of it.

[barrysfp45]

I was able to get some decaling done today, most of my freight cars are now done. A little while back I bought some brewery decals for freight cars, the first lot washed out in the water so the seller sent some more to replace the buggered ones, I tried today to paint them with micro decal film, they were looking good until I tried to put them on, they curled up in a tight roll that just would not unroll, what a waste of twenty bucks!!! as they say.....thems the breaks...Now I start looking for more decals for some trailers, what is available from Microscale is NOT what I want. ]:) That sucks. I know when I started with my idea of a couple personalized boxcars for my brewery, I thought I'd look into whatever big business in model Railroader that will make decals for you. Holy Crap, I'd have to decal 100 boxcars to sell to get back some of my money. Hence I ended up just painting the logo on the boxcars. But not easily done if intricate logo. What sort of brewery decals are you looking for Barry? -- Edited by dl85vette at 03/22/2009 8:37 AM PDT