It would of course be nice to be able to dedicate weekends just for resting, but since there are always various deadlines that require an academic to work also during weekends, you might as well dedicate all mornings and late evenings to house repair or building projects — logical, isn’t it?
I have been spending some hours lately downstairs doing my “media cave”. This is essentially just a small home theatre room, located at cellar level, but it should offer us rich opportunities for enjoying that DVD or HD movie in the dark, or playing games in the big screen. Looking some high resolution digital photos in this scale would be nice to try out, too.
The starting point was to build a tech centre at the back of the room; this is still half-finished, but I aim for a sturdy table fixed to the back wall, and on top of that there will the ‘equipment tower’: a rotating cabin filled with amplifiers, media players, computers and game decks. It is build for rotation and to such a height since I am too fed up to plugging and unplugging cables that lie among piles of dust somewhere at the back of some heavy piece of furniture. This time, every connection is planned to be accessible at the comfortable, working height. And since I am building it on top of large, round bearing, it rotates easily to show all those connectors and cables (the bearing is one I got from Isku’s “Multiplan” tv furniture, it claims to be able to handle max 100 kg mass). Near the ceiling there is the new video projector, Sanyo PLV-Z5; a nice, moderately priced thing with sharp and colourful image. (I wanted mine in black, and ordered it from Germany where prices are a bit lower.)
The actual projection surface has taken most of work so far: the front wall was uneven fibreglass wallpaper which needed to be whet, dusted and then covered with another, special wallpaper (a smoothing wallpaper, ‘tasoitustapetti’, made by Sandudd; see the link: http://www.sandudd.fi/fileadmin/kuvituskuvat/Tasoitetapettiohje.pdf).
Now I am having a break after one round of painting. The entire back wall will be painted several times with Tikkurila’s Harmony indoor paint, hue H499. It has non-reflective matta surface and as light grey it will give better dark levels on LCD projectors than an entirely white wall would had done. More on its use: http://www.tikkurila.fi/kotimaalarit/index.jsp?cid=valkokangas_edullise&hid=01.01.06.01.
There are still several steps remaining on this, and there are half-a-dozen rooms (and the garden, the courtyard and the garage) with several other projects waiting after this, but — you need to start with the essentials, after all! 😉
frans goes blog 