Kasblah » around the house

Lovely Christmas Tree

Kaspar — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 22:03:26 +0000

We cut this one ourselves at Sædalen christmastree farm. It’s almost 3 meters high!

Growths on a Plate

Kaspar — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 19:42:41 +0000

Despite a meager summer it seems we still have things to eat from the garden. The squash made a serious comeback and may yet produce more if the weather stays fair. Tonight we kicked our pasta up a few notches with a decent tomato sauce from specimens ripening on windowsill, and topped it with a stir-fry of homegrown squash and peas. Yum.

Growths

Kaspar — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 20:47:56 +0000

It’s been a lousy summer in our outdoor growing spaces. Cold and wet most of June & July makes for poor crops. This squash plant remarkably survived the weather and neglect from us and produced this fine specimen ( enjoyed tonight on the grill ).

Otherwise we had a few cucumbers and tiny, hard-skinned, but flavorful tomatoes in the green house. A small crop of sugar peas (should do more of these next year), berries and some apples on our new tree. Gardening is not for the faint-hearted in Norway

Making more tracks

Kaspar — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 19:15:12 +0000

As described in an earlier post the old Marklin trains found their way out of the boxes and into the spare room in the basement. Not surprisingly the layout quickly grew in complexity, new items were purchased/gifted and the train table is now crammed with tracks, levels, a town, etc etc

Early stage scenery in the “rural” section of the layout. I am trying a new technique involving extruded styrofoam pieces. These are easy to cut and mold, and do not “shed” like regular styrofoam.

Dilemma: initially I planned an analog layout with a few separate parking/passing blocks. All the new locos i got however are dual mode and when a digital controller showed up cheap on a local auction site I had to get it. But going digital means abandoning the older locos ( conversion is possible but ridiculously expensive and complex) What to do…

Making Tracks

Kaspar — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 20:20:22 +0000

In a closet at the cabin I found 3 boxes of childhood memories; the contents being my old Marklin trains. These are trains made for kids, solid metal constructions with less detail and realism but durable enough to survive years of abuse. Given the limited “trainable” space in the new house it seemed a good opportunity to build a small, “old school” layout with the Marklin stuff.

Back to the basement

Kaspar — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 15:53:42 +0000

Haven’t posted anything on the basement in a while now, but work has been moving along slowly and may be nearing completion! First the back wall came in place, with the mount for the sink. Then I worked on the tiles inside the shower area.

The next stage was to put up the rest of the walls. Finally the bathroom is enclosed.

Now we are reaching the final detail stages with tiles on the floor, paint on the walls.

What’s new in the basement?

Kaspar — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 18:07:59 +0000

It’s been a little slow lately with the bathroom, but some new stuff to report. On the shower I completed the glass block wall. Laying these blocks is much like regular bricks, except a special white mortar is used. I am not sure if it actually has any special bonding features, but it is white so that looks nicer. The home supply store sells a lot of these I think, and they have everything you need to do a good job: plastic spacers, metal support beams that you put between every other row, and wall hangers that anchor the blocks to the back wall.

We want to put some milky glass tiles on the end and top of the block wall, there is a similar installation at the university library and it looks very good. But I am still looking for a place that sells the right size in small quantities. Buying a box (30 pieces) is a little much when you only need 9!

We have also done a lot of work on the main area of the basement, which I really haven’t talked about here. We installed a wood laminate floor over the concrete, painted the walls and ceilings, constructed a new partition wall with an opening and shelf on top, and finally added some decorations. The theme is bollywood-inspired. Works well for our tv-room!

Building the shower

Kaspar — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 15:47:10 +0000

So early on we decided on a custom built shower, as opposed to a prefab fiberglass shell. This allows you to use ceramic tiles inside the shower, which looks great, but is also a bit harder to do. To guide me in this whole thing I found some great online tutorials at the John Bridge Tile forum “Liberry”. Definitely worth a look if you happen to be building a shower!
We also had Dog the plumber run new piping to the bathroom instead of using the old stuff that was there. We could probably have used some of the existing stuff but would have had to run some new lines anyway. Now its all nice and shiny, well not really since its all modern plastic piping. Looks pretty easy to do being all flexible and not requiring any gas-torch welding.
When completed the base has many layers. First a reinforced concrete base which establishes the slope towards the drain in the center. Next a PVC liner to waterproof the base and direct seepage towards the center. This is topped by another layer of reinforced concrete. The base is now ready for ceramic tiles.
With the base in place it’s time to put up some walls. I’m using cement board since it is the most water resistant (and this being a shower….) It’s really heavy though but fortunately it comes in smaller sheets than regular wall board. You can see the cutouts for the shower handle and head. The original plan was to put both on the inside wall, but apparently there is some code against putting the handle on a wall you cannot access from the other side, so off to the side wall it went. I think it works ok, although I wonder if it couldn’t have been a little further out from the corner.
For the other wall we are putting up a glass block wall. I am doing the lower third in brick, covered by ceramic tile. Here I am leveling the top to prepare for the glass blocks

More on the basement

Kaspar — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 19:36:32 +0000

With the old bathroom mostly gone it was time to start the new one. We are using metal stud framing for the walls, it’s lightweight and very easy to install.

But then we hit the first problem: the floor drain would not work properly with the planned new shower base! A properly built shower base contains a PVC liner that seals the shower area and directs water to the drain. There was no way to secure the liner to the older floor drain. A new drain was needed, which meant digging into the concrete. Scary!

To fix the drain we got the assistance of a professional plumber. Since he was already there we had him also dig up the toilet drain and move it further away from the wall. This lets us do a nice finished back wall, previously the toilet was right up against the concrete brick wall.

The problem with a “blah” basement

Kaspar — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 17:01:10 +0000

So we had a "blah" basement. 1970′s style complete with ugly carpet and dark faux wood paneling. And lets not forget the "prison-style" bathroom. It was in urgent need of serious TLC.

I had wanted to do something to it for a while but it wasn’t until Sabine’s parents came to visit that things got started. Sabine’s dad was itching for some renovation action and I think hoped to get this all done in the week they were visiting. Oy! Not happening. But he did make a serious dent (no pun intended) in the bathroom!