Construction Update

Over the weekend I bought a 500 ft spool of speaker wire and ran it to all 4 corners of the room. Not as easy as it sounds, as the rafters are about 13'-14' above the floor.

I wasn't worried about the wiring before as the upstairs has crawlspaces, so I figured I could run whatever wiring I wanted after the building was completed. But the thought of crawling 60' down a crawlspace for each side of the building made me decide that it was much easier to run wiring now. :-)

Construction Update

Okay, here's the picture update I promised.


The soffits.



This window goes in the upstairs gable and should give a really nice view of the mountains.




Getting started on the cedar siding.


Two 400A breaker panels. Mwhahahaha.


The AC outlets for the games.


Recessed ceiling lights.


Close up of one of the wired light switch boxes.

Construction Update

The weather has been really foggy so I have't been able to get good pictures of the garage. I'll throw a big set of photos here once it clears up.

Progress-wise, they've begun the cedar siding, the electrical wiring, and finished up the soffit work.

Pictures soon...

Construction Update

They brought some materials and tools out today and began siding around the edge of the roof and the soffit. I think they are planning on doing the cedar siding around the outside tomorrow. I'll get pictures up when there's something to see. The electrician is supposed to be out tomorrow as well, and I need to be available for him to talk to.

New Time-Out Scans / Photos

Added some cool Time-Out newsletters and some other stuff to my Time-Out site:
http://timeouttunnel.com/album_dan_schopf.htm

Construction Update

The electrician was briefly here today. Looks like he installed a bunch of AC outlet boxes. We are installing way more outlets than would normally be required (for obvious reasons!).

Also pictured are the ceiling fans that are going to be going in the gameroom downstairs (6 of the 8 fans I ordered)

Construction Update

So absolutely NOTHING has happened on the building this entire week. Kind of a bummer.

I did get 6 of the 8 ceiling fans I ordered for the gameroom (clear plastic housing and blades + blue neon tube light). The other 2 should be coming soon.

Construction Update

Bah, what rotten luck. We've had some damaging winds the last couple of days, and overnight it really tore up the (brand new) shingles that they just finished last week. The Tyvek plastic sheeting that they put up to go under the siding has been shredded up and huge pieces of it are scattered everwhere. There are mangled shingles sprinkled all over our yard. Not a huge deal as the builder said he'd take care of it, but it still sucks to see the building taking a beating.

Mac Version of Adventure:Revisited

I've been doing some Mac programming at work, so I did a Mac OSX version of my re-creation of the Atari 2600 game, Adventure.

I just finished it up today, so here you go!
Adventure:Revisited

This is a Universal Binary and requires OSX 10.4 or greater.

Construction Update

Here's an update for the last two days as I missed yesterday's update.

Yesterday I met with the electrician. We went over where I wanted the various switches, outdoor lanterns, electrical outlets, overhead lights, accent lights, ceiling fans, etc. We also tried to figure out how much juice this place is going to need. He was originally thinking a 200 amp panel would suffice. We looked at a bunch of machines I have - video games seem to pretty much all be listed at 3A per machine. The one pinball machine I looked at was rated at 8A (!), and my bill changers say 6A each. So allowing for say 100 machines - 20 pinballs and 80 video games - that would be WAY over 200 amps. He's going to do some sort of study to see how things are going to be wired. It also depends on where things are in the building. For instance, he said if the pinball machines are really 8A each, then you could only put two of them on a 20A breaker. So it's going to be interesting to say the least, and we may end up going over to a second panel just from the sheer number of switches we'll need. He will be meeting with someone from the electric company too to go over it all, as it's possible that they will have to upgrade the big transformer that feeds our house. Yes, I'm serious. He did say that they are probably going to be giving the garage its own electric meter.

Here's a picture of a panel, still in the box, sitting in what will be the equipment closet. No idea if this is the panel he's actually going to end up using or not.



In other news, today the carpenter guys came out and framed over where the garage door openings are. On the inside this will be just a solid wall. The outside we are going to put up some sort of decorative trim to make it look like they are garage doors. Something like a carriage door is what I'm thinking.



Lastly, today they also framed up where the air exchanger will go for the heating and AC unit. I REALLY wanted to keep all this equipment off the main floor, but it looks like we don't have a choice unfortunately. And the last thing I want to do is inhibit the efficiency of the AC system, as our current gameroom heats up to around 100 degrees after a couple hours of having the machines on. We are trying to NOT have that problem here.

Construction Update

Here's a picture of the completed shingles. I honestly don't know what the next step is after this.

Construction Update

The shingles are done! They finished up yesterday. They had to dust the remaining snow from the roof as they went.

I'll get some photos of the finished roof next posting.

Construction Update

Yesterday they completed the shingles on one side of the roof and got about 25% done on the other side before quitting for the day. Overnight we got about 1" of snow (!) which is now sitting on the roof. Maybe it will be gone by Monday.

Nothing really worth another photo so I'll skip it today.

Construction Update

They started on the shingles today. They got one side of the roof pretty much finished. Shingles take a lot longer to do than I would think.

I feel guilty looking at those poor guys balancing on the roof with the high winds we had today and temperatures in the mid-30s. And then I remember that I'm going to be paying off this garage for the next 30 years, and I don't feel as guilty.

Construction Update

Today they delivered the shingles and other roofing supplies. Other than that delivery, nothing has happened since Friday.

Here's a photo of the stuff sitting on the roof of the new building.