Nearly two years at sea...

February 19th 2008 was the first blog post. Wow time flies.

It looks like we are about to wrap up this little trip under the sea. Just a couple more items to do, but they are fairly busy ones.

Pictured are the gauges I was referring too previously. This was a fun little project that let me use some of my Adobe Photoshop skills. The inclinometer on top is from a real ship somewhere and I bought it last year at a nautical shop in Galveston which has really bounced back from the hurricane by the way. Some Brasso cleaned up the old brass and made it all shiny like. I had the opposite problem with the barometers I used for the other two. They were TOO shiny so I took some light grit sandpaper and a hobby product called "Patina-It" to them to tarnish them up a bit. Now they and the inclinometer look pretty close.

I started on the inside of the door too but I way way over-thought it at first. I tried using thick sheet plastic and silicone adhesive to cover the whole thing and give me a nice flat surface with the intention of hiding the wood grain. It laid out fine but as the glue dried it shrank causing all these bubbles to form (just like my map fiasco earlier). I was able to rip it off and remove the glue with mineral spirits and start over. A couple coats of primer will more than hide that grain I have since concluded. Point is, great ideas don't always work and in fact "great ideas" can end up just being plain stupid upon execution. That said, I still learned from the event and Plan B is working out fine. Not everything works right out the gate.

I have to make more rivets to finish the door. I also have to begin work on the painting booth and its hose that will exhaust outdoors. With a little decent weather, (current temp is 18 with the wind chill), I should make great strides on this in the coming week and THAT my friends will end up being the final big project for the room though there will still be some remaining tweaks here and there before I call it done.