Paint the Tiger, Carve the Swan

I have used a number of Computer Aided Design and CAD packages. Today, I used Google Sketchup for the first time.

It has some differences, and could be an excellent program, but it just does lots of things (IMHO) wrong.

For instance, it allows you to place a dimension on a line, and then change it. But it doesn’t actually change the length of the line. If it did this one thing, giving it parametrically controllable dimensions, then it would do most of what I want. Instead, I need to create a line or box, (change tools to) place a dimension, (change tools again to) resize it until it is close enough to the size I want.

To make it a bit better to use coming from Inventor, I set up ‘D’ as a shortcut key for Dimension, and F5/6 for Previous View/Iso View. Much better for my muscle memory!

It uses a different paradigm than Inventor, rather than using a series of parts, it really is just a sketch. Having said that, here is an accurate representation of my house. Accurate in some ways, not all.

And the best thing over Inventor? It runs native on OS X.

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Well, after living in our new house for more than two years, we have finally unpacked all of the crockery and glassware into the kitchen.

I mean, there was a rationale: we were renovating.  Initially, we had thought it would take us a couple of months to get the house to a liveable state.  We were at least an order of magnitude wrong.

We have put enough of the kitchen in (including the microwave and dishwasher, but not the benchtops, stove and sink) to allow us to use it effectively.  In particular, the dishwasher was the main reason we were able to even consider moving more than just two each of plates, cups, spoons, etc.

Actually, living with just two of everything was very liberating.  Granted, you have to wash everything before you cook every meal (or after, I suppose, but that’s not really my style).  But never having more than a couple of dishes means that washing up isn’t such a chore.

Entertaining wasn’t really an option.  Other than that big party we had for our 30th birthdays, but that didn’t really require much crockery.

So now, we have stuff again.  We got rid of a heap of stuff we aren’t going to use.  I’m still hanging on to some of the stubby holders and Star Trek mugs from my younger days, but we have really consolidated what we have.

After all, if we didn’t use stuff for the last two or so years, we can’t need it too badly, can we?

Desperado • Eagles • Eagles Live ★

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People often bag Ikea, and, especially in terms of their kitchens, think the build quality is poor, and the kitchens somehow substandard. I think it has to do with the cost, as well as a somewhat elitist attitude, but people who think themselves above the mass-market appeal that Ikea offers.

I’ve actually always quite liked Ikea. Most of their stuff is well designed, and in some cases, well made. The first stuff we bought (before Ikea opened in Adelaide) was some crappy CD racks, and wasn’t that good, but it was only a few dollars a rack. Most of the things we have bought, especially recently, has been very good.
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I’m in school holidays at the moment, and I’ve been rather busy doings some more of my house renovations.  The floors are all oiled, and just awaiting the oil to harden before it’s possible to put furniture on them.  They look great, Jaq did a really good job doing the oiling.

I also bought a heap of timber for the architraves and skirting boards - 90×12 meranti.  This is thinner than normal skirting boards, which tend to be 19mm.  Before I started putting them in, I had a bit of wiring to drop.  Because we are having an island computer and work bench, all of the cables need to come up through a trapdoor in the floor.  There was already a power point installed there, but I needed to pull some ethernet, phone and USB cables through a conduit.  These then needed to be terminated at either end with sockets, which has all been done.

With the cabling done, including dropping cable from the ceiling for the telephone connections, I was able to start on the skirtings and architraves.  I began by cutting some skirtings for the front corner of the lounge, where there were some fiddly bits that needed to be cut, before I discovered that I am much better off doing all of the architraves first, and then measuring the skirtings to fit.

Thus, the major part of today was spend cutting, sanding and priming the upright portions of the architraves for almost all of the doorways in the house.  Excluding internal doorways on rooms that haven’t been sanded, or finished yet.  I’ve been using an airless spray-gun, and have had fantastic results.

Tomorrow I plan to finish painting these, and put them up.  Measuring and cutting the top sections of these will be much easier with the uprights in position.  Then it will be skirting time again!

Anybody’s War • Icehouse • Man of Colours ★★½

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I know that a couple of people read this who are a bit interested in how my house renovations are coming along.

Jaq and I have spent the last couple of months preparing the main living area: Kitchen, Dining, Lounge and Study. We knocked out about 3m of a wall which will have a table inserted into it, and replaced the floorboards, ceilings and fixed the walls.

We have spent the last weekends doing some final prep for painting, and now painting the kitchen/study area. The edges of the wall where we had cut a big hole look great: we’ve use a Rondo Shadowline product to get lovely 10mm shadow lines around the framing, and now it’s all painted, you can’t see where the original plaster ends, and the cornice cement and top-cote start. It does look really nice. Similarly, where the old Air Conditioner was is almost invisible from the inside now.

We’ll build the kitchen ourselves - Ikea have some good kitchen cabinets, and we’ll just get the doors made up. The kitchen will flow through into the study, although it will have a seperator that does distinguish between the two.

We also got some new furniture in the past couple of days: a Hans Wegner Daybed and some nice Danish beds. Furniture Auctions are the best place to find great bargains.

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It started on Friday night with Touch training. I coached rather than training, as I was carrying a bit of a hamstring injury, and I wanted to give it a bit more rest. Still, it meant I didn’t get home until around 8. I’m just glad I chose not to ride my bike!

Saturday was the annual Colley Reserve 5-a-side Touch Carnival. Normally Touch is played with 6 on the field, but for a more exciting game, and because the fields are a bit smaller, this carnival plays with 5. It’s mixed, so 3 boys and 2 girls are the order of the day. I played in the UniSA team, knowing only two of the players beforehand. The guys, and most of the girls were pretty nice people, and we wound up making the final in the Pool B division. Which we lost, to a team that pretty much plays together all of the time.
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The last few days has seen extreme weather in Adelaide. 42°C for 4 days in a row. And this at the time we decided to:

• Chop down the 13 Cypress Pines along the side fence.
• Remove the old air-conditioner and brick up the cavity.
• Knock down the old greenhouse.

Mum and Dad were up from Naracoorte to help us - Dad manned the chainsaw and they brought with them a 14″ × 6″ trailer, which we loaded up with Cypress offcuts. We kept the trunks, as they are pretty straight, and we’ll use them for garden beds.

Anyway, we got all of that done - and a lot of it in shorter time than anticipated. The cutting down of the trees only took about 4 hours, which is lucky, as we may not have completed it otherwise. It was so damn hot.

I took a heap of pictures. One day I’ll get around to posting some more.

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We were just about to head off to Robe - literally, we were just packing bags ready to go, when Jaq came across some termites in the linen press. It’s a little too hard to tell how widespread the infestation is: the house had been damaged in the past, some time ago (long before we bought it), but we weren’t expecting to find any more.

So, this has put the holiday on hold for a couple of days - we are having a guy come out for a quote tomorrow at lunchtime, and hopefully will be able to head off shortly after he has been here.

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Simon breated me for not posting any house pictures lately, so here you go.
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Well, today was a busy day. Beginning at 8:45, we removed 2.5m of the wall between the kitchen and the lounge. The cavity doesn’t go right up to the ceiling, but is at about normal door height.

Apologies to everyone, but this is avery photo-heavy post.
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