And so it ends...

Here's the final look. See the first post for what came before.

Final thoughts.

Loads of fun. And I think I managed to hit all the high points of my about me blurb. Offbeat idea. Check. Freaked out wife. Check. Creative outlet and problems to solve. Check. I learned about a lot of stuff I hadn't tried before. How to work with pink insulation, casting and molding parts, woodworking and staining, lighting, flooring, and building/refinishing furniture pieces.

I like how it turned out. Undoubtedly you'd have done things in a different way and that's cool. What I hope to have achieved is this--As kids we always come up with great ideas for the perfect tree-house or go-cart or carnival or haunted house but we never really get them done. We lose interest, don't have the money, or the parents say no. I just wanted to finally finish something cool like that now that I didn't have those constraints any more. This room IS my perfect tree house now.

I say to anyone out there, think it up and DO it. It gives you an immense feeling of connection within yourself and sense of accomplishment when you finish but of course as I have said, its more about learning what you can do and who you are in the process.

Thanks for following along it was a hoot. Get out and do something yourselves to prove to the world you are here and perhaps slightly "off".

And laugh more...

Strange and mysterious Powers

Here we are nearly at the end of our trip.

A couple of final projects here. I have some touch ups on the paint around the room and some small things to do before we tie up at the pier on Vulcania for some much deserved and exciting leave...

Well as much excitement as you can possibly have at the bottom of a crater. In an extinct volcano. With no women or bars around for thousands of miles...

Anyhow, the gauges are back with a refinement requested, nay DEMANDED, by alert blog reader Jeffry. I added some piping to each of them to simulate some sort of functionality. They look oodles better and it was cheap to boot. Thank you my loyal fan...

See the previous post for how utterly out of place and ugly the functional inside of the paint booth looked. Using some spare rivets I had just lying around, some wood, and a mysterious orb given to me by a Gypsy, I built a removable front for the box. Its like a mini power supply room from like in the movie. Right? Well the Disney people used clear salad bowls and Christmas lights for theirs so this works. Anyhow it turns an unused part of the room into a little slice of Hollywood.

Once the cleanup and last couple of small projects are done I'll post some before and after shots and a round up of the salient highlights and pitfalls of the room as a warning to others.

I'm sure there are TONS of Nautilus bedrooms being made over out there...

Oooh...Check out this video. Pretty.

Nicest paint booth ever!*

*Not necessarily the nicest ever. Don't sue me.

Still its pretty nonetheless. At its heart is a regular old stove top exhaust fan unit where previously I had made a box under it with some thin MDF. It worked fine with a dryer hose run out through a blank board sandwiched in the window. Ugly and functional.

Here we have gone all hoity toity. The exterior is thin plywood glued on to the existing MDF and trimmed out with some wooden craft moldings exactly like those I used on the shelf on the computer desk. Some glue and a little time with the brad nailer and its done. The top has a flap on hinges to provide access to the fan controls and otherwise look pretty, and the bottom is a top-secret hidden compartment with the face being held in place by some stout magnets. I will keep paint, jars, airbrushes, and other stuff hidden in here.

Whats left to do,(when it warms up some), is to run a more permanent and attractive hose up and out through a 4 in. hole to exhaust outside via a standard dryer vent fixture. I am also thinking about something to block off the front of the booth when its not in use, the inside is just so ugly. Hey, I think a 27in. flatscreen would fit nicely in there!

This was the last of the major projects. (Huzzah!) I have a couple of smaller more or less set dressing type projects but I could start modeling in here anytime now if I wanted, but first I'm going to get all the paint dings and shiny screw heads covered while I still have my steam up. I figure once I start working a model then that's it for room work and we can declare the festivities closed.

However, can't get too antsy yet, there's still more to do...

A - Door - A - Bull

Right then. Here's the finished "door" for your viewing pleasure. Door to all you Land Lubbers out there, but its a "hatch" to us salty sea-going types. This was a living room project, Marsha's favorite. I put up a couple saw horses to work on gluing all the trim parts and rivets in place in the only open space we have inside. When that was finished I still had to wait for a warmish day to spray paint the thing outside.

It was primed a dark grey then given an overall coat of rust. Then I over painted with the final color that matched the porthole mirror I purchased at the USS Razorback museum last summer for just this purpose. Hiya co-tripper Jeffty! Some of the rust color kind of bleeds through giving a more three dimensional look to the finish. I am happy with the result.

The handle is supposed to look a little like a "dog" which is navy talk for the handles around the edge of water-tight doors to seal them tight against the sea or foul weather. Its kind of a neat design in any event.

The final major project, the re-facing of the paint booth and its associated exhaust piping, is well underway and will be operational soon. I am putting in a dryer vent style fitting for the exhaust and I will need a warm day for that since it requires a 4 and a half inch hole in the house. Then its on to final touch ups and details.

Alas..(or Hurray!) The end is near.

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.

Genuine imitation wood paneling at no extra charge

These are posts are coming quicker now...

Just a quick down and dirty one this time. My workbench is done and as you can see has certainly gotten a makeover from its stark whiteness. The legs are painted the same aged copper as the other "fittings" around the room. The side panels were too. The design is a decorative resin decor thing from Hobby Lobby, and the corner pieces are a couple wood pieces from the Home Depot. Sometimes you just gotta poke around these places fending off the "May I help you"s until something clicks in your head.

The front is some more of our old friends the rivets, and the top... the top is a stroke of genius. (well inspiration maybe) That beat up white top was just something I thought I'd have to live with but then I saw wood grained shelf paper at Wal-E-World and that saved the day. Just a last minute idea but it really will help catch glue and paint spills when I get to modeling again and be very easy to replace when it gets too mucky.

I am working on those brass gauges I mentioned in an earlier post now. I have the inclinometer cleaned up and am preparing fairly passable Engine Order Telegraph, an Seawater Depth gauges to go with it from a couple of surplus barometers. Should be ready in a day or two.

Only two major projects remain. The painting booth that you can see in the background here and the inside of the bedroom door. Thats got to be made to look metal like the walls. How am I going to make that hollow core wood door with all that grain look metal? Stay tuned!

Biggles! Put her in the Comfy Chair!

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

It turns out it wasn't the torture I'd feared, but "restored" may be too strong of a word for what I have wrought here. Whatever else you can say about my skills though, it IS a functioning chair again. I have learned that I am neither naturally gifted at upholstery work or that I could ever make a living at it either for that matter.

Originally it was stuffed with grass and horsehair or something but I just went with some seat cushion foam cut to size for the bottom. I used the old seat as a pattern and just cut everything a bit long around the edge. I pulled it tight with clamps and worked around the edge tacking it into place hoping for as few wrinkles as possible.

I used patterns to make the exact and symmetrical shapes for the chair top front and back and tacked them taut around the edges as well. Once I started it got easier as I went along. For the final touch I used some fancy looking upholstery nails and a gold trim around all the edges.

The chair itself is somewhat shorter than the computer desk chair it replaces so a lap keyboard pillow is going to be in order for any kind of typing. All in all though a nice compliment to the room.

I will be starting on my workbench project next. It is getting repainted and disguised a bit but nothing too exotic going on. The weather looks decent for the next couple of days so I should get a lot done. Things are clipping along nicely now.

Is that a light I see at the end of the tunnel?

Steam valves O' light

While waiting for what I believe will be a no-show satellite dish repairman I fiddled in the room a bit and actually got most of the track lighting project done today.

The track lighting cord has been hidden under this coppery colored cord run. Hopefully it looks a bit like steam piping but it don't look like white power cord which is the point I'm trying to make.

The track lighting just plugs into a wall socket but I wanted a way to turn it on and off, well a COOL way, and decided to use a dimmer switch with what appears to be a steam valve or something on it. Once I figured out where to plug it in making the switch box came next. I just built up around a standard fixture to try to get it looking a little more squarish. Made a lid to match it, lined up the screw holes, and bada-bing, instant steam box thingy. Painting this and the cord runs outside was troublesome in the current arctic conditions but we got there.

The dimmer switch instructions were in every language but Merican so I had to set up a test board and try out different configurations of wires till the light came on. Eureka! After that installation was straightforward and now the overhead floods and the hanging chandelier are both working off these dimmers.

Next up. Probably the chair. Scary scary chair...

A light in da pipe

Hah! I love it when a plan comes together...

I did get held up a bit trying to figure out how to cut the tubes to fit. You see one end is at a 45 degree angle because of the false wall and the all other cuts would need to be straight up and down. What I came up with was a cutting "jig" that I could set to any angle I wanted and would hold the tube still while I sawed it in half. It worked like a champ. Sometimes if you don't already have the right tool, you can make it.

The "pipe" is up there and its working now. I still have a few touch ups here and there. The main one will be covering all those screw holes with some same painted rivets. You can also still see the white from the track lighting unit itself so a little camouflage in the form of some carefully applied paint will be in order once the current blizzard passes. Stupid winter.

The cord and switch will be handled next. The switch will be a dimmer with one of the wheels I cast way back mounted on it. The cord will be in a run painted a brass color. This should be a cool way of turning on those overheads.

But right now I'd like to bring it down a little. Mellow out our groove some. And sincerely wish you all a joyous Christmas and a great New Year! Make it count!

And thanks for the support you have all given me over the years. Peace.

Nook of Armaments, Chapter 2, verses 9-21

Sorry no Holy Hand Grenades in there...

Christmas season and the weather have slowed down my progress. The track lighting itself is up but the "ventilation" tubing is not since it requires painting. Which requires outside. Which requires good weather. Etc etc.

We turn then to a quick little project to hide my utilitarian looking gun cabinet which certainly does not look the Nautilus part. It is simply a half box made from masonite, a couple long hinges, and some more of the ubiquitous rivets to form a door to hide and give access to the locker. Its been painted the same three part scheme as the surrounding wall and topped with some spare molding. Simple. Boring.

What you WILL see on the face of this thing though down the road is a number of aged looking brass gauges with depth and speed indicator needles and everything. One of the gauges will actually be functional. It is a real working inclinometer that ,when on a ship, shows the degree of roll the vessel has as it moves through the sea. Clearly the house won't be rolling or pitching but still, a neat nautical touch I thought.

Next post-I swear- will be the whole overhead track lighting tableau installed. Its going to be tricky to do but will look O' so cool.

Station the track (light)ing party

Sub talk..Ha ha

Anyhow, we are back at work in the room. We? Me, myself and and Buddy-Lee. We have spent the last couple of weeks un-halloweening the house and getting parts prepared for the overhead track lighting.

We can't just have a klunky looking track screwed to the ceiling but I need more light for the worktable and the painting booth. So what I am doing is trying to disguise the whole thing as rusty ventilation or seawater piping to blend in and look more subby.

The tube is a concrete form normally used for making patio deck footings and the other aluminum bits are actual home heating ventilation parts. The aluminum bits needed beefed up a bit to look like steel plates instead of the thin flashing they are. I glued on some painted foam core to do just that. The tubes themselves only come in 4 foot sections so I needed the better part of three of them to go across the room. Only the middle one will actually have the lights. Brackets were needed on the ends to hold them up and the far ends will connect to the walls with the beefed up aluminum bits. Hopefully the whole thing when done will look cool and be functional.

Which is what I hope to present in the next episode.
Plus! Where did I put that darn gun cabinet again?

Sir Not-appearing-in-this-Halloween

NARRATOR: A year passed. Winter changed into Spring. Spring changed into Summer. Summer changed back into Winter. And Winter gave Spring and Summer a miss and went straight into Autumn. Until one day...

Winter showed up two days before Halloween with 6 inches of wet snow. Very frustrating after all the effort over the past few weeks. A lot of it has melted but that just means mud and I can't have the kids traipsing through that.

Well, if nothing else I have made a great start on my cemetery entrance pillars and arch for next year. "You just wait Charlie Brown. Next year I am going to find a pumpkin patch that's REAL sincere and wait for the Great Pumpkin!"

Next up I'll be starting back up on the room and the track lighting in particular...

Don't eat PINK snow either...

Old man winter has come early to Potter--that sumbitch. Nothing gets you in the holiday spirit like eight inches of snow. Problem is wrong holiday! We here at Kisler Manor will endeavor to persevere however...

You will start to get the big idea where I'm headed now with these images. I have routed out some corners and various odd patches here and there on the pillars to a depth of about a quarter inch which creates the illusion of layers in the foam to represent the stucco and the bricks. It also creates a blizzard of pink dust particles even worse than the drywalling mud was earlier with the room. These things have a wicked static cling and they won't just brush off and they track everywhere. Marsha is all smiles about that I can tell you.

Since its a deep freeze in the garage I moved into the living room (more wedded bliss, uhuh) and began laying out the brick pattern in the carved out sections using some brick sized templates and lots of rulers. Next I will carve away the "mortar" areas between the bricks just a little bit for a third layer. This should take the better part of the coming week.

I finished up the half-round trim moldings too. I created a sanding form from a piece of thick cardboard tube and some rough sandpaper glued to the inside. I was able to give them all more or less the same dimensions this way. They'll get glued on later.

By the way these columns are NOT my original idea but a Mr. Juggernaut's that I came upon surfing here: http://usersites.horrorfind.com/home/halloween/juggernaut/projects.html . I have made some changes more to to my liking however.

Upcoming steps will include painting of course and a arch over the top proclaiming
"CIMETIERE TORTUGA" to set the theme of a haunted pirate graveyard.

Right now Santa and some Christmas trees seem more appropriate.