Making it Flat

Now that Ive pretty much finished renovating the house and have cleaned up most of the mess inside and out, Ive been doing a bit of work on that table top project...

The first problem was to get the huge slab of wood down to a more maneagable size... Like Id said, I was initially torn between two possible table formats and I needed to make a decission so that I could make the cuts in the right places... Well, I decided to go with the long thin rectangle styled table over the elyptical option since it keeps the slab of wood more intact and after all, thats what I really like about it... the size and thickness of the single piece of wood.
Having decided that, I set about trimming off the edges (they were very rough and had insect holes etc... I really couldnt have used them on the final table even though its nice to preserve the "live edges" of the original tree trunk). The slab was still over 3metres long though, so I also decided to make it just 2.4m long so I also lopped off 60cm of the narrow end (Ill use that for a bed-side table that ill make later I think).

Right, the slab of wood is now becoming much more manegable :)
But I cant work on it where it currently is (tucked up next to the house under the back deck), so I get some help from a neighbour and the two of us move it without too much struggle around to the front of the house.

I put it on work horses here and have a look at that "crowning" problem that is then next "issue" to be addressed...

Hmm, well its still there :)   See the curvature of the wood in the picture below - looking across the end edge of the slab.

Right, so Ive figured out how Im going to try to deal with that.
I get two big flat and straight planks of pine and I attach them to the sides of the saw horses as "rails" for my "contraption". These are going to be my references for making the table top "flat", so I spend a while making sure they are parallel to each other and that they are solidly attached to the horses at the right height.
But the big slab of wood also has a bit of an "arche" too it along its length... This is much more slight than the crowning, and while I could just machine the table top to be exactly flat, I decide that the little bit of arch is a good thing as it will resist gravitys tendency to make the table sag over time with a long unsupported span of over 2 metres... So instead, I decide to make my two side rails have the same arch by using a very coarse grit belt on my sander and spending about 10 minutes on shaping each of them to match :)

OK, now to make the "contraption"...
Which is just a carriage for my router so that I can run it over the whole surface of the table with a repeatable and solid height setting. Im more or less building a very large milling machine :))
The side rails (longitudinal rails) are bolted to the saw horses.  And a friend let me have the use of an old exercise treadmill frame that he had (its a very solid rectangular aluminum frame) and Im gonna use that as the "latteral rails"... essentially, Ill rest this aluminium frame across the side rails and slide it along the table top to whatever place I want it.
Now, I have to build a carriage for my router to run on the aluminium frame rails...
I looked at a bunch of roller and wheel options for this but I ended up deciding to use a couple of simple old "clothes line runners" as the wheels for the carriage...
They come as a pair of about the right size; They are pulley wheels that will run nicely on the edges of the aluminium frame (rather than wheels that need a track). They are solid and well centred (so there is no flex in them and thus variability in the hight of the router)... and finally, they are as cheap as dirt :)))

So then I spent an hour or two cutting up a 2x4 and screwing it together around my router to make the carriage...
And this is what "the contraption" looked like...





... You cant see much I guess, but I ended up with a router carriage that was very solidly tracking (not more than about a milimetre of lateral movement) and had virtually no vertical "slop" but was still acurately height adjustable with the routers built in height adjustment system :)))

So, I layed it over the table and moved it around to see what sort of cut depths I was dealing with....
Hmmm quite a lot !! 
It looks like im gonna need to take off about 15mm of wood in some places... Thats a lot and more than the router can do in a single pass, so Im gonna do two rough cuts to get the bulk of the material off and then one more finer finishing cut... This is gonna be a lot of work because I can only take "swipes" of 10-15mm width with the router bit (channel cutting bit of about 25mm diameter). and after each swipe, I need to physically slide the whole router,carriage, and aluminium fram along the side rales by 15mm before I take another swipe...
Oh, and I have to be carefull too, cos this isnt a professional milling machine... If I move too fast or carelessly, the router carriage could jump off its rails and then the router would dig a lovely big and un-hidable hole in the top of that very expensive lump of wood... we definitely dont want that, so I need to pay attention and go slow (The "pay attention" part is no problem, but the go slow is definitely a challenge for me!)
Oh well, just have to get started...
... push, pull,slide, push, pull, slide ... repeat about a thousand times: and all with the wood chips flying and the whine of the high speed router... great way to spend a day :)))

 ... And about five hours later, after spending the whole day in the sun working on "the beast", this is what I had...

                               

Yep, it is now "Flat"... but its still, far from "smooth"... I figure Ive got about the same amount of time again to spend sanding it down to make the surface good for coating.

I spent another hour and a half with the belt sander using 50 grit to get the router lines out of the surface... next is 80 grit, then 140 grit... etc, etc...

But look at the beautiful grain :))) ... its really gonna be nice when its done I think :)

Im gonna keep at it when I can after work in the evenings, but time is rappidly running out.
The leaves here in Vancouver are starting to change colour, and the sun is now set by 8pm. Im definitely not going to get this project done before the rains come, so Ill just try to get the top smooth and flat and maybe a "sealing, coat of finish so that I can bring it inside the house for the winter...

Work in progress... Ill keep you posted.

Lost Summer

House reno' update... and life in general too.

OK, so once I'de "done" the floors, it was time to put the kitchen back together...

Well you see, Id removed a section of one kitchen wall before I did the floors so as to open out the space a little more... Obviously, it would have been silly to do the floors first and then remove the wall and try to patch the floor... and as a result, one side of the kitchen was something of a disaster...

And if I was going to rebuild one half of the kitchen then I may as well rebuild the other half as well of course... You know how these things go!... Actually, I consider myself lucky that I managed to "contain" the "chain reaction of destruction" just to the kitchen... It could have just kept going until I was left with nothing but a bare plot of land with no house at all :))

So the first task was to refinish the wall in some basic form and get the stove and fridge back to being useable... Drywall work; which is not hard but is always very dusty! 

Then I hung a new extractor hood on the wall hooked up to the duct and power where the old one had been, and wheeled the fridge and stove back to their original places.

That was easy enough, and to fill the gaps between the appliances I installed a couple of reasonable quality premade cabinets with some solid wood "butchers block" counter tops (I like wood and its a cheap solution for the benches on this "low use" side of the kitchen).

The next challenge though was the other side of the kitchen...

It was all old "built-in" cabinets and very ugly and over used counter tops... Id already chisled off the matching (and equaly ugly) back-splash tiles when I jackhammered out the old tile floor.

... Oh well, nothing for it but to "get started"...

I was hoping to just have to replace the cabinet doors and drawers with new ones and leave the cabinet boxes as-is (built-ins are nasty to try to replace), so I was just going to replace the old stainless steel sink with a nice new pocelain one... I used that most imprecise of modern power tools - The reciprocating saw!

And I got the sink in, but it was larger than the old one and it didnt really fit the cabinets that well... and by the time Id finished "hacking" away at the old cabinets to make it fit, there was not that much of the old cabinets left ... And after due consideration, I decided to remove that section entirely and replace them with some more of the new pre-made ones that Id used on the other side... So, it was back to work with the demolition tools!  :)

And so, I removed the old cabinets, rebuilt the sub-floor, refitted the telephone line (that ran through the old cabinets), and put in the new section of cabinets... And they fit quite well... and the sink fit in nicely too :)

So, then I bought a bunch more doors and drawers for the remaining old cabinets and set about sanding and repainting the old boxes (very dusty job but I guess Im used to it after all the drywall work Id just done), followed by installing the doors etc. (actually quite a bit of work because the cabinet openings all had to be "resized" to fit the standard sized doors and drawers... But it looked good on the lower cabinets when it was done, so I continued with the upper ones too.

... And then it was time for counter tops and back-splash.
I spent quite a while looking at counter options and what I found was that there are about three or four basic choices... In order of my preferences...
    Concrete (DIY is only real option, expensive, difficult to do well, looks great)
    Stone/quartz/corean (very expensive, low maint', looks great),
    Wood (few options - DIY if you want more, high maintenance, cheap, looks great)
    Laminex (lots of style options, lowest maint', cheap, looks average)

After looking at it all I came to the depressing conclusion that it was going to cost lots more than I wanted (of course)!... It seems that although there are a huge number of laminex options out there, that look nice and although it is tough and low maintenance and easy to install and cheap... Its just not "done" any more... It seems that kitchens in Vancouver are done in "stone" these days... Laminex is considered the cheap and low quality solution... Which if I ever want to sell my house (to go off and live in a tropical paradise?) will matter...
The wood counters option was a real possibility, not least because I could build them myself out of any wood that I want... And so I'm sure I could make them look good... But they are the least durable and require the most maintennance... Again, Im sure I could live with those aspects and I actually enjoy the "character" aspect that the petina of wear and tear gives them.... But, again if I want to sell or even rent out my house (while I go traveling again) then I think its a really bad idea... So wood is out too.
The concreate counters option is really expensive to have done professionally and is a great deal of effort to do myself (not to mention that I dont know exatly how to do it)... Its also got a high probability of being a bit of a disaster if I do it myself!...
And that leaves me with Stone... It can look great and as I said, is effectively du riguer' in kitchens around here these days... But its pretty expensive (fortunately the popularity has meant that the prices have been reducing :)

Anyway, I looked at assorted options and dident see anything that I really liked for a long time. Eventually I settled on a quartz (which is a "manufactured" material with lots of "sand" in it) and ponied up the cash to have the counters made... And about two weeks after that a couple of guys showed up and installed the counters while I was at work (I started another contract to try to earn enough money to pay for all the spending Im doing on the house!). In the mean time I went and selected some tiles for the back-splash.
And so, about a week after the counters were installed, I had tiled and grouted and seald, and then a couple more days to install the light switches and the under cabinet lighting, and all of a sudden, the kitchen was basically done!

I have to admit that Im not completely happy with the overall apearance (it just ended up a bit "dull" if you know what I mean) and I probably should have gone with a darker/bolder tile colour choice, but its done now and its not bad enough for me to want to rip it out and do it again! :))

So this is the new and now finished (well for a few years at least) Kitchen...

And so I find that I have at last got my house back in order and I can finaly relax a little more... Ive pretty much spent the last eight months working all my available time either on contract to earn some money, or renovating the house. Ive not spent more a half dozen days when I was not working on the house and as a result it seems that Ive more or less "missed" the summer!

Although, Id have to say it wasnt a very good summer season here in Vancouver anyway... We had more rain and grey days than I can ever remember having before. I honestly think there were not more than three fine days in a row all the way in to late July... And, its only late August now, but already I can feel the evening and morning air has that cold edge to it and its getting dark before 9pm again... Summer is "on the run".

But I guess I dont really mind :)

Ive had a great time working away on the house... learning new skills and feeling good about working with my hands to make something that I enjoy using. I admit though that I am now feeling rather "tired" of all the renovating and Im ready to spend my time doing something else for a while.

There are still plenty of jobs to do on the house, but none of them are urgent and I can take my time getting around to them :) Im going to spend the next week or so clearing up all the construction mess of tools and materials that have accumulated, and then I can start working some more on the "big lump of wood" table project.

Other than that, Im faced with the usual problem of trying to figure out what that "something" that I should be doing is?

For the time being, I think Ill potter away at smaller things and just see what "life" brings into my path :)...

Nibblit

I bolted on all the new bike fairings... The ones I had painted by a professional.
Rather than a somber gunmetal grey, it is now a warm yellow with subtle flame/smoke markings. It looks really nice, and I think I can pretty safely say that this bike project is now done!

 Now though, people seem to want to give it a name, but there are not that many yellow objects that you can name it after... The current two favourites are:
"Ra" (after the Egyptian sun god) or, more light heartedly, "Nibblet" (after canned sweet corn kernels)
... although, I should note that I vetoed both "Daffodil" and "Daisy"   :)

It only Hurts when I Laugh!

Well, while everyone else in Vancouver was experiencing a "Hockey final to remember" and splashing their vitriolic oppinions about regarding the post-game antics of the less "mentaly enabled" denizens of the city, I was having a far more "internal" experience...

I dont suppose you recal my "Judgement" post of a couple of years ago??.... Probably not, It wasnt that special :)   But I sure as eggs do!

...And thats because Ive just had a rather indellible reminder of it.
To refresh peoples memories, that old post was about a spontaneous gastro-intestinal "blockage" that I had and that lasted several days before "clearing" by its self.
Well, two and a half years later, more or less the same thing happened again, but this time it didnt "self clear", and after a week of discomfort (but no seriouse pain or disability), I went to see the doctor....
.. By that time, Id had a while to think about it, and I told the doc' that I figured I probably had appendicitis...
The doc prodded and poked and asked questions and listened carefully to my responses and said he figured it wasnt appendicitis for the moment and then sent me off to get blood and urine tests.

So, I let the labs have some of my fluids and I went back home and , well, waited... and waited...
But things didnt clear themselves, so after a few more days I went back to the doc' and said "something is definitely wrong"... which he agreed with and promptly sent me off to get an X-ray and some more blood tests... and they also set about scheduling some more "imagery" in the form of a sonogram, and a barrium meal and followup x-rays, and a CT scan... I have to admit that I had no faith in either the blood woork or the X-ray since they have never shown anything on me in the past for obscure illnesses, but of course they have to be done.
Now, saddly, it all takes a while to schedule for this imagery (about three months for the Barrium meal, and about six months for a CT scan... assuming of course I survived that long while ot being able to eat!!), but the sonogram was only a couple of days of waiting... So, again I waited and things continued to "not clear themselves" and at the duly appointed hour I turned up for my scan...
And the sonographer did his thing and when he was scanning away in the lower abdomen, he made a couple of "hmmm" type noises and then excused himself from the room for a short while and returned with another person,.. a doctor, and they both looked at the screen and pointed and "hmmmd" and had a bit of a conversation (the screen was not visible to me though), and then they included me in the discussion and said that they were seeing stuff that looked consistent with an accute appendicitis... to which I said that I didnt think the little guy was in the least bit cute and that I would be quite happy if we set about removing it as soon as possible!
So, agreement was reached, and they said I should go straight back to my doctor and they expected Id be off to the emergency room pretty much immediately!

But, I had something else I needed to do for an hour before I did that...
I had that great big slab of wood being delivered to my house in half an hour!
So I hopped on my motorbike and rode home to meet the guys on the big truck... And from there, we (me and three other guys) man-handled this slab of wood up the back stairs to my house... OK, OK it probably wasnt the greatest idea Ive ever had... hefting a massive lump of wood about while I am nursing a seriously inflamed appendix... But, it all worked out OK and the slab of wood is now safely stashed under my back deck.


After that I went to the doc' again and was then dispatched to get a small bag of personal effects before heading down to the hospital emergency department at about 2:30pm
From there it was about an hour wait to move through the ER process (it was a quiet day it seemed) and then they prepp'ed me for surgery...
And then at 6:30pm, I was wheeled into the OR and they put me under...

... and I woke up a few hours later with a sore tummy and no appendix!
So, now I think I know what it was that I was suffering from over two years ago, and Im pretty sure that that particular issue will not be back!


... and for the time being, It only hurts when I laugh!  :)

p.s. good thing that I got all the stone work completed in the house just the day before, cos I really cant do any heavy lifting for a few weeks now :)

Oh, and I got a new paint job done for the motorbike project, though I havnt had time to put the bodywork on the bike yet.


... and its been Prawn season in Vancouver, so Ive been enjoying a couple of "feasts with friends" ...yum yum :)))

A Lump of Wood

Ive enjoyed woodworking ever since I had a class in it during early high school (about thirty years ago).
Ive built a few pieces of furniture at various times, mostly of moderate quality but getting better each time I do it :)

Years ago, before I went off riding my motorbike, I came across a really nice big slab of exotic lumber at a wood retail store near wher I lived in Vancouver. It was a really really nice piece of "figured" Bubinga (I dont know, its exotic hardwood!)... It was about four meters long by one meter wide and 5cm thick... and it "weighed a ton"... Like I said, it was really nice and just perfect for a "feature" table top (though the dimensions were a bit hard to work with in order to keep it as a single piece) and in fact I didnt even own a house to put it in at that stage, let alone any woodworking tools... Anyway , it had a price tag of some $4000 which was a lot more than Id ever considered spending on a chunk of wood before!
... So, I didnt buy it but I looked at it each time I went to the wood shop to get some other item and I thought about it every time... Id love to work on a table project like that.
Many months passed... actually I think it was a year or two!, and then one day when I went in, it was gone!... I asked at the counter as to who had bought it and they told me that it was a group of local artists... sculptors, and apparently it was destined to be cut up into small pieces and carved into sculptures...
Now it was clearly going to make the sculptors happy, and no doubt they made some beatiful pieces with it, but to me, it was a bit of a tragedy!... A single piece of wood of that size and with that "figuring" is just begging to be made into a table... To me it seems like the size of the piece is half of the beauty and it seems like a waste to cut it up into smaller pieces...
But it was gone, and I hope it made the buyers happy.
However, it was only after hearing about what was to become of it that I felt regret ... Regret for not having pursued a dream even though it was only a small one... And ever since then, whenever Ive gone into that shop or whenever I see a nice "feature" table made from a slab of beatiful wood, I feel regret...

And again, years passed!


And then, a few months ago, after I got back from my "long ride", when I went in to the wood shop to get some mahogany veneer for my model boat,... And there it was again... the same slab of wood!

Well, actually it turns out that its not the exact same slab of wood but in fact another slab of wood from the same tree... Its pretty much the same dimensions as the original one, but this one is not as good as the first one because it is a slice more from the side of the tree trunk than from the center...But the price is somewhat lower too..


Hmmm
...But I have no place to work on a piece of wood that size!... I cant even move the thing without three other very strong people to help me!... I dont have any tools to be able to machine a pice of wood this big!... I have no clue about how I would work on it!... I dont even have my house back from the tenant yet!... And it still costs a rediculous amount of money!...
So I walked away again... but the urge was still there and is still strong...
But I was left feeling that same "regret" again...

Another couple of months pass and I go and have another couple of looks at the "lump of wood"... and my little "engineers mind" (emphasis on the little! :)  ) is occasionally tinkering away with ideas of how I would go about solving the problems of working the wood.... you know, just in case... :)
And another couple of months pass and now its Christmas and the wood shop has things on sale ... And the lump of wood is a few hundred dollars cheaper... so I go have a chat with the staff about it...but Im still not making any commitments.
Its just a chat, but it keeps me thinking about it...

More time passes... and my thinking on the subject continues in its sporadic fashion...
But after a while I come to a a kind of closure on my thinking...
And know what?   In the ballance of my emotions, it goes like this...

Yes, its a stupid thing to spend money on... Money that I dont really have and cant really afford.
Its just a lump of wood, that doesnt really matter or make a difefrence to anyone.
Sure its a project that I dont have the space, skills, or equipent to execute well.
And it'll just be a table that will likely only ever be seen or enjoyed by a handfull of people on a handfull of occasions.
Its just another project in a long line of projects that are really all just ways of me spending my time while I wonder what I should really be doing with my life...

But theres a bunch of little "sayings" that come into my head:
   "Life is what happens while you are making other plans"
   "We are not put into this world just to work... We are put into this world to live our dreams..."
   "If you dont go when you want to go then by the time you do go you may find you've gone!"
   " Id rather regret the things I have done than the things I havnt done"

... and in the end, I kinda feel that Im "done with" regretting that prior decission! Ive got another chance this time and Ive decided Im going to act on it...  Damn the torepedoes!!as they say...

So, I may yet regret doing it, but I will no longer regret not doing it!
... and with that, I went down to that shop and paid them a very large sum of money for a very large chunk of wood !   :)))



Now for some more details about the "block of wood"

Well, like I said its about four meters long, one meter wide and 5cm thick... Its really dense wood and Im pretty sure it would sink (or barely float) in water so based on that, Id say it weighs about 200Kg!
Its from a Bubinga tree (also called African Rosewood) which I looked up on the internet, and they come from "Tropical West Africa". The "figure" I refered to is a carpentry term and does not refer to the shape of the block of wood, but rather the patterns and striations in the grain of the wood... I took a picture of it but the lighting was very bad and the picture is very washed out... The board is coverd with swirling grain patterns that look really nice, and should look amazing once it is planed and finished. The wood colour will be a rich orange brown once sealed :)


And Ive been thinking about what sort of table to make from it too... Ive done a few sketches and it at this stage there are two options.
The first is to cut the slab into a 2/3 and 1/3 length sections and then slice the 1/3 section longitudinaly. The two small pieces then get glued along the sides of the big piece so that an eliptical table top of about 1.2m x 2m size can be cut... but this wastes a fair bit of the wood.
The second option is to leave it much more "as it is" and make a long thin rectangular "banquet style" table... say 3m x 0.8m.  Its a bit unusual as a dining table but it can work :)

The elipse seats six and the thin rectangle seats eight.... not that I have that many friends... or even really know how to cook for that matter, but there is always hope that I may eventually find someone else to share my life with who has some other friends and knows how to cook too!  ;)

Anyway, at this stage Im leaning toward the "banquet table"... maybe just because I like the emotional and mental immagery evoked by the word banquet :)))

Ive also done some sketches and I think I like the simple "trestle" type legs I could make for the rectangular table... just a few curves in the profile of the legs to "spice it up" a little :)
 

... But, I wont know what Im really going to do with it till Ive got the wood home and had a good long look and measure of it all... You see, the slab of wood has a significant challenge ... other than its sheer size... Its got quite a bit of "crowning" at the narrow end of the slab. That means that the plank is "bowed" and the mid-line of the plank is higher than the edges (as if the edges have "sagged" down).
This "crowning" is too pronounced to simply machine off because at the worst point (at the narrow end) it looks like its about half the thicknes of the slab!
... Hence the idea for the eliptical table of cutting off the narrow end third and using it as sides... that way I cut it in half and the crowning effect is reduced by half...


... But perhaps a bit of an explanation of why its "crowned" wouldnt hurt...

The best wood  for furniture making is taken from right across the centre line of the tree log. Its called "quarter cut" and it means that the grain of the wood is "ballanced" and runs through the wood at right angles to the width of the slab. Slabs cut from any other place in the tree trunk are inherently "unballanced" and you can see it if you look at the end section of the slab... you will see the curve of the tree rings in the wood grain.

And this "unballanced" issue is not at all just an asthetic issue, it is a very important quality that is critical for making furniture... You see, wood is not an inert stable material. It is pourous and organic and it responds to its environment and changes continually. What this means is that it is always expanding and contracting slightly as temperature and humidity change around it. Now these dimensional changes are usually very small and unnoticable. And solid wood furniture is usually constructed in a way that these changes do not effect things much... This is done by using smaller pieces of wood in combinations that counteract the dimension changes... A good example is ply wood which is a sandwich of several layers of wood with the grain running in different directions... Plywood stays pretty much flat and square regardless of its environment because the different pieces of wood all want to warp and streach and twist in different directions and it all kind of ballances out as internal stresses in teh pannel...

But, when you want to use a single very large piece of solid wood, its gonna warp and twist and stretch and bow and split as the season change... and this is a problem...

Everyone hates a table that wobbles because floor is uneaven, but a table that wobbles even though the floor is dead flat, just because its that time of the year is a real pain.

Back to this particular slab of wood...

Its VERY big which means the dimensional and allignment changes will be quite large. It also means that it will be impossible to physically stop the warping with other elements of the table design (since this piece is so large it will simply over-power any smaller braces etc).

And becase its not "quarter cut", it will develop a bow... and in fact it already has (it is after all, quite a few years old) and it has a substantial "crowning" at one end .

The good news however is that while its not "quarter cut", it is the full width of the log and the bowing is reasonably symetrical from one side to the other. But its significantly more pronounced at the narrow end than at the broad end (because the narrow end was less central in the tree trunk).

...work in progress...

Projects a Plenty

Well, its been quite a while between posts again , and as usual Ive been keeping myself quite busy :)

Apart from filling my working days as an electrical engineer (to earn some money to pay for all my distracting projects!), I seem to have about half a dozen projects on the go...

The major project is renovating my house. This started with fixing up the basement after I had a "bad" tenant, but I completed that work well over a month ago now. But I had planned to do some other work on the house while I was away traveling (you know, lots of time while riding the bike spent thinking about all sorts of stuff... including some house renos!). So, Ive also had all the old single pane windows replaced with nice new double glazing, and Ive installed two out of three new double glass doors to replace the worn out old single pane glass sliding doors. And Ive removed most of one wall between the kitchen and the dining room to get more of an "open plan" layout... And the big job, which is still underway, has been to replace the old tile and carpet floor coverings with hardwood.

Having spent the better part of a month on this last big job, it is now about three quarters done. Its slow work because I only get to work on it about three hours a day. After I finish the days work as an engineer, I ride over to my place and spend the next three hours renovating, and then after that, I ride home (at a friends house about 40 minutes ride away), grab a bite to eat, have a shower and then the day is done... I get more work done on the weekends of course but its still nothing like working on it full time.
Its not too hard to stapple down the hardwood, but there is a huge amount of work involved in preparation... taking out baseboards, ripping up carpet, pulling out thousands of staples, jack hammering out the old tile floors and ripping out the old ply sub-floor...  and then leveling/preparing the main sub-floor before the stappling starts... but its nearly done now, so here are a couple of pics of "work in progress"...

And of course, Ive also been "tinkering" away at the motorbike project about one evening a week. The latest task was to remove, sand-blast, and repaint the engine side covers... They were all scuffed up and looked quite bad, so Ive now repainted them. Yesterday I reinstalled them on the bike, and Im quite pleased with the results :) 
I also changed the front sprocket over to be a 14 tooth instead of 15 tooth unit (It will reduce the top speed but will make stop-and-go city riding more pleasant and easier on the clutch). I also removed one of the front fork legs and replaced the oil seals (it was weeping suspension oil) as well as changing the engine oil filter and replacing all the oil and coolant... and bolting all the plastic pannels back on again... Busy day!
I think the weather around here is pleasant enough now, so Im going to re-register the bike this week and start riding it for the summer :)))

But, Ive also had another little side project running for a few months that is nearing completion too...
Ive been building RC model boats and planes for decades now, and I never seem to get tired of doing it. I get a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction from working on them and it doesnt take up too much space (I spent years living in one room basement suites!), though at times it does make lots of dust... Anyway, the latest project was started soon after I got back from my long motorbike trip, but it was while the tenant was in my house and so I couldnt work on renos...
And the project is a 75cm x 30cm scale model race boat... A 1960 prop driven "three point" hydroplane. The model is fully built and Ive been doing the painting and detailing... Just need to install the driveshaft, prop and rudder and then make a stand for it now.

... but Ive also found the time to look for some plans for future model projects too :)...

Though I think these will wait a while... like till after Ive done with the house renovations perhaps!   :)



... But there's also another, bigger project "on my radar" so to speak...

Bike Project Done

 

The bike as it currently is.

OK, I got the bike all back together and then I got the engine fired up (after having had to buy a battery charger and crank the engine over a few hundred times). And then I got the chain on and bled the rear brakes...

... and then I went for a short ride around the block :)))  (and discoverd that id put the gear linkage on slightly wrong and that the gears were consequently "upside down"!)

But, there it is, the bike is "built and ready to be registered in a couple of weeks.

There are still lots and lots of "clean up" jobs to do to make it all "pretty", but they can be done slowly over the summer.  For now, I need to get back to house renovations cos Ive got a hardwood floor to install and another bathroom to do a bit of a renovation on. :)