This Old House #11: Thanksgiving and Dining Rooms.

What, y'all thought I gave up? Spent a portion of Thanksgiving break sucking up leaves...



Then the snow hit, and it got COLD.











Then we had a poop-load of people over for Thanksgiving dinner...







And the day after Thanksgiving, my wife decided to enlist everyone that stuck around in ripping the dining room to shreds. Something along these lines:



That left me to the simple task of peeling the wallpaper strip off the ceiling, cause, you know, I'm the tall one.







I scraped, I rolled, I sprayed, I sanded, I tired everything under the sun and that stuff DID NOT want to come off... Finally what ended up working sorta okay was the iron- yup, I spent the first three hours trying things out, and the last 2 hours holding that iron over my head while standing on a ladder, heating the strip up and scraping it off an inch at a time. Barf.

Moving on. Starting to look pretty good! One problem- never ask an "artist" to help you "paint".





Alas, it was in an awkward spot and had that green showing from behind so it got painted over.

Some of the help.

Custom Hot Wheels: Batbuild 6.0!

Here it is: Batbuild 6.0!  The latest build-off is finished and looking for your votes.



Several entries. Please follow the link below and vote for your favourite by "liking" it. DO NOT attempt to figure out who made what, just pick your favourite and VOTE!

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1497568640552444.1073741832.1459737441002231&type=3

Custom Hot Wheels- Steampunk 2-4-2 #3

And in the category of trying something new, why not spin some walnut wheels up for it on the lathe!





First attempt at the skinny sets. Didn't work out the way I wanted so they got remade.


Drive wheels were a different story. I wanted some tractor lug style patterns but have never been able to find anything close, so here's what I came up with.



See the wire? Yeah. Thats the lug burner...



Result:





Didn't like these ones either, so I redid them with a bigger chunk of walnut and a different lug burner made out of a sliver of sheet metal. Pattern came out great.

Here's roughly what I'm shooting for.





Don't care to count how many hours I already have into it at this point... *sigh*

Custom Hot Wheels: Steampunk 2-4-2 #2

Steampunk. Copper, right? Lets see what we can find in the scrap bin.



Look like some useable bits here.



Start with the boiler.

Custom Hot Wheels: Steampunk 2-4-2 #1

Starter pic. Started out as a decent looking old Chevy. I've noticed that there are a few "standard" cars that people use for builds, and I'm trying to not get stuck in that rut so I went with something a bit off the wall for me. Well, it's a Chevy, anyways... Old trucks are kind of my thing.





Chopped.



Stripped.



Hacked.

 

Winter's here.

So after like 2 years of dealing with the stupid buggy ignition switch, I finally got fed up with it and swapped it out. Also borrowed the battery from the 316, and now it fire's right up without the song and dance. Got our first snow so I went out and put the Plow on. Also got to test the lights out for the first time ever, and WOW are they bright!





The middle lights leave a little bit of a dark spot but not to bad!



Now that the plow's on, we probably won't get any more snow for the rest of this season...

This Old House #10: Winters on it's way.

Few more items checked off the list. Been busy with the roof so I haven't had time to work on the leaf situation... Spent Saturday vacuuming up leaves and hauling them to the back. Only got one little corner of the yard done but there were a LOT of leaves just in that one corner. Spent an evening draining the pump and the hoses too...



Taped the leaf blower up to the line and went down it pushing the air out.





Even managed to get all 9 billion feet of hose unhooked and drug over out of the way.



Canals are finally empty, so the boys went exploring. Found some racoon? tracks and some dead crawdads.





Still hoping to get more of the leaves picked up over Thanksgiving break.

Custom Hot Wheels: Lickety Split #8

Final pics.











And done.



This was a way fun build. Very challenging and very rewarding. Tried lots of new things and they ended up working out great. Pretty proud of this one!

Ready for another? The Steampunk build is up next!