Home Theater Makeover, Part III

I’ve been wanting to build a real platform for the second row of seating in my home theater ever since the living room makeover started five months ago, but my miter saw was misbehaving, so I didn’t dare use it (never trust a malfunctioning saw).  Which meant I had to wait until I could afford a replacement.  Two weeks ago I finally got one, and Brad was kind enough to assist me in building a new platform.  He brought his fiancé Erin along, who picked out the carpet for it and offered moral support.

So there it is… 8’ x 11’ x 10” of very solidly-built platform, constructed and carpeted in a hair over 3 hours.  It might not necessarily look that sturdy, but it is built very well – much stronger than the floors in your home, so I trust that it will last a long time.  And it has lots of storage underneath.  I’m thinking of adding safety lighting underneath too, but I’m still undecided on that.

And here’s the new saw, a DeWalt DW717.  It’s very nice.  And hopefully I’ll never have to replace it.

Next up for the home theater: a new equipment rack, and a stand for the TV and center channel speaker.  But who knows when either of those will happen.

Living Room Update II

The painters are gone; they have “done their job.”  Or so goes the theory.  I’m still not impressed, but we live with what we got.

I’ll just start with the pictures. Click to enlarge.  Pardon the mess; it’s still very much a work in progress.

It looks a lot different, doesn’t it!  The white walls are quite a change over the hideous wallpaper.  I still would have preferred tan walls, but I wasn’t the one paying the painters, so I can’t complain too much.

Those of you that have been here will notice that there is a large piece of furniture missing.  I got rid of my desk.  One whack with a sledgehammer and it fell to the floor in two large pieces.  (It was too big to get out the door, so it had to be broken up.)  Breaking the rest of it up was really easy, and we were able to fit the whole thing in the garbage cans.  Good riddance!  Now I just need to figure out where to put everything that was in and on it (that’s what’s in the boxes).  The monitors, one professional inkjet printer, and the speaker system are all still available for the asking.

So this leaves me the opportunity to build a platform behind the couch to setup a second tier for the home theater… pseudo stadium seating!  I don’t know when I’ll get to it, but I hope it’s sooner than later.  I’d like to start doing movie nights regularly and I can only seat so many people with the existing furniture arrangement.  Keep your fingers crossed that I’ll find the time and resources to get it done quickly.

Living Room Update / Free Stuff!

It has taken me about eight hours to move stuff away from the walls in preparation for wallpaper removal and for painting next week.  Two hours the first night to do the front half of the room, and another six to do the second half.  The second half took a lot longer because I had to move two bookshelves, and my desk, all of which have been sitting in the same place for more than a decade.  As a result of moving things around, I have thrown out several hundred pounds of stuff, and have created a real mess.

The up side is that the living room already looks a LOT better without the sleeping bag wallpaper, even if it is rather bland at the moment.

I also promised a picture of the wiring behind my home theater equipment, so here you go:

Free Stuff?

One casualty of moving everything around is my desk.  It just didn’t want to be moved (it’s about 300 pounds), and when Brent and I finally got it to move it decided to crack in half.  It’s barely holding together at the moment, but it isn’t going to be usable again.  So I guess I’m forced to retire the old office area now. 

So I’m getting rid of some old stuff that I won’t need any longer with the old office gone.  To start with, the computer monitors need to go.   So I’m giving away a 19”, two 17”, and one 15” CRT computer monitor.  They all work great, I just won’t need them any longer.  If you need a monitor, they’re available for the taking; just stop by and pick one up.  (Shipping probably won’t be an option; it costs $75 and up to ship a monitor these days.)

Specs: 19” will handle 1600x1200 at 75 Hz, 17”s will do 1152x864 at 75 Hz (or 1280x1024 at 60 Hz), and the 15” will do 1024x768.

I also have a professional quality Epson inkjet printer that I’m giving away.  It needs new ink cartridges (which will run about $100) and a good cleaning.  It has seen very little use and probably has only been used to print a couple hundred pages total.  It is one of those models that can print on CDs.  I just don’t use it, and won’t have a place for it.

More free stuff will follow once I’ve had a chance to triage the remaining pile of stuff.  I’ll start by posting info on my blog for my faithful followers, and anything left after a few days will go up on facebook, then ksl.com.

Busy Week!

So General Conference was this last weekend.  But I didn’t get to see much of it; both of the guys I’m working with on our Point-of-Sale application were tied up with other things, so all customer questions and problems fell on my shoulders.  So I pretty much missed most of Conference.  The part of the Saturday morning session when I could have watched because I wasn’t on a support call was missed because I only got four hours of sleep so I pretty much dozed off right after getting off the phone.  Fortunately I did record it, so I can watch it over the coming weeks.

Saturday night after conference Brad and I headed up to Riverton to visit some old friends.  Our friend Jessica had flown into town from Dallas, and wanted to meet a bunch of friends at Lalis’s apartment that night.  Jenn and Ariel were also there as well as some other people I didn’t know.  It was fun to see everyone.  Lots of good memories.

Since we hadn’t seen Jess since before her mission, Brad and I went to lunch with her yesterday.  Brad had to leave to get back to his studies, but I brought Jess back to my place and we watched August Rush and played some Guitar Hero for a bit.   (Don’t worry, Jared, I had my laptop and cell phone nearby during the movie, and took care of the issues that came up during that two hour window.  I’m not a slacker.)

In a few days I’m flying back to Spokane to help install our software in another Little Caesar’s up there, and to have a multi-day powwow with the rest of the Custom Register Solutions party patrol personnel.    Have you ever noticed that the word powwow is half Ws?

While I’m gone my living room is going to be painted (hooray!!! no more 1980s sleeping bag wallpaper!).  So between now and then I have to move everything away from the walls.  It’s going to be especially fun moving a 300-pound desk that has been sitting in the same place for ten years.  And the bookshelves which have been there for eleven.  I can’t wait to see who what is behind those.  I spent a few hours tonight moving my TV and audio equipment away from one wall so the wallpaper can be removed from behind it tomorrow.  (I’ll have to remember to take a picture of the wiring involved in a fully equipped home theater setup while it’s visible… it’s impressive.)  I’ll need to finish moving everything before Saturday morning when they want to remove the rest of the wallpaper.  I’ll also need to do a bunch of rewiring between now and then to “neaten up” the room.  No more visible wires dangling from the ceiling or clinging on the base of the wall around the corner into the next room… at least as much as I can get away with it, anyway.

As part of the living room makeover I plan to remove the computer and desk behind the couch to add a second row of stadium seating, and to build a new professional rack for all of the A/V equipment.  I was also going to mount my new TV on the wall, but the more I think about that the more I think that isn’t such a great idea; it wouldn’t be visible at all from the kitchen or one of the couches if it were on the wall.  So I’ll have to build a nice (and simple) stand for it at some point.  Things to ponder.

My friend Dave is also getting close to needing my help wiring his studio.  He’s has built a video editing / audio recording studio in his dad’s back yard and it’s now time to run the wires before putting up the drywall.  We went over the last little details before purchasing the wires last night.  But I still need to figure out how to terminate the wiring.  We’re going to be installing about 2 miles of wiring in a couple hundred cables, and I’ll have to add ends to the vast majority of them unless I can teach him how to do it.  Fun.

The POS stuff is going well.  We’ve had about twenty sales in the last two weeks.  And we’re getting more referrals all of the time.  Nearly everybody we show the software to is buying it.  I also just found out that we are trying to get into a tradeshow/convention thing in early November.  Which means I’ll have some big changes, as well as a demonstration video, to make between now and then.

If only I had something to do with my time.