New Tool: Paint Mixer

Inspired by Luke at Geek Gaming (Youtube link), I thought about my ancient collection of paints. Some of them I've never opened since I got them maybe seven years ago. I'm sure that some of them were many years old before I even acquired them.

One of the problems with these paints is that they require considerable mixing to bring them back to life. This means lots and lots of shaking, and that's hobby time being wasted.

So Luke had bought this vortex mixer, and he was showing how well it worked. I had a few bucks left over so I figured it would be a good idea to get one from Amazon. And here it is:

As it turns out, it's the exact same one as Luke bought. I tried it out and it mixed a paint that had separated into pigment and medium in big splotches. It took a little while but the paint did mix. But doing so saved me about 50% of time and a whole lot of arm shaking. I just press the paint down on the centre and the mixer does the work.

Apparently, there is a danger to using the shaker to long because the vibrations aren't good for you. But I reckon that if I take breaks between mixing spurts, I should be OK.

Fencing, Again (Part 2)

 Continuing my project from last time, I completed all of the brush between the fence. I then spray primed it grey followed by a brown wash everywhere. This is what the fences looked like at this stage:

I loosely painted a warm grey and then semi-dry brushed white over top. Not really dry but more of a sloppy waving of the brush over the very top surfaces. I followed this up with a black ink wash. As a final step, I painted the base brown and used the same colour to give the brush a little tint so that they would stand out a bit from the rails.

I'm really happy with how I managed to age the wood and get the appearance of grain. The extra time spent carving up the sticks paid off so that they just don't too manufactured.

Because enclosures should have gates so that farmers can enter their fields, I made a couple:

That's 6 feet of fences. I really should have doubled this project but I can make more.

Fencing, Again (Part 1)

 With some free time, I'm getting back into miniatures. I've decided to make some fences. Specifically, I'm basing them on the fences that you see here:

(If you own the picture, please let me know and I will replace the picture with a link to your site. I tried to go to the site watermarked in the photo but there's no easy way to find this image.)

So my plan is to create a set of vertical posts with double sets of dowels between them. Then I will use wire to simulate the thin sticks between them.

I started with 12 popsicle sticks and drilled three holes in each. Should you be interested, I'm enjoying a Thornbury Dam dark lager.

Then I glued the horizontal beams on both sides. 

Finally, I laid down a bead of PVA and cut some bristles from an old paint brush (thanks Gerry!). I inserted the bristles between the beams to recreate the thin branches that were used to fill in between the posts.

I've just done the one half to see how it turns out.

Hiatus

 Well, it has been an eventful six months, not even considering a global pandemic:

• At the end of July, I lost my job as part of a corporate restructuring.
• I spent the second half of the summer and early fall searching for a job. We set a deadline of me finding a job by mid-September. I came really close, but there's no prize for coming in second.
  
  We set the deadline based on the real estate market being still hot in September and October before slowing in November and December. We also wanted to beat the surge in Covid cases that everyone was predicting.

• Simultaneously, I was preparing the house for sale, so this meant a bit of cleaning and clearing out of junk. You can see the results of that cleaning and clearing out in the pictures of our Abbotsford house.
• We then sold the house, so the cleaning and clearing out switched to packing for our move back to Ontario.
• One day, I emerged from the basement following a job interview and my wife asked, "What's wrong with your eye?" I couldn't feel anything different so I went to a mirror. My left eye was wide open while my right eye had it's normal semi-lidded position. I basically looked a little like Bill the Cat from Bloom County
  
  
  
  
• So it was off to the family doctor, who immediately sent me to an ophthalmologist, who immediately sent me to the hospital for a CT scan.
• The CT scan showed that some muscles that control my eyes are inflamed and maybe there was a blood clot in the vein for those muscles. The swelling has moved my eyeball a little forward and that's why my eye seems to be more open.
• I got referred to an orbital specialist who ordered an MRI and then another CT scan but using a dye. The swelling has gone down some but not completely as you can see here:
  

  

  
  
  
• I did discover another side effect: I get double vision if I am looking at anything closer that about four feet. Since I work with computers, this is a distinct problem. I can see fine but only one eye at a time.
• At the end of November we moved. The movers were a disaster. They managed to dent our dining room table and mash the bed headboard. They took forever to load the truck because there were only two of them and only one knew what he was doing.
• We also discovered that despite having to wear a mask all the time, travelling by airplane in the Age of Covid was actually very pleasant and smooth provided that you ignore the fact that there is an infectious and deadly disease spreading. There was lots of room and the WestJet staff were so nice and attentive.
• After we landed, we had video with the orbit specialist. She gave me the rather alarming news that I possibly had a leak somewhere vein network or near the brain and that I was to take it easy and refrain from any exertion.
• The movers continued their disaster by taking a whole week longer than we were originally told. Then, only after we escalated to the CEO and lots pleading, they found a driver to deliver our goods to a storage locker. But the driver was alone. Thank goodness that my brother-in-law and  his son had showed up to help us, because they packed our goods into storage. I was under strict orders to not lift anything.
• We moved in with a cousin of my wife, who has generously let us stay with him until we find a more permanent home. We're repaying him through nice meals and companionship, which I'm sure everyone appreciates during this time of lock-down.
• I got to see another eye specialist in Toronto, who let me know that there was no leak and no clot. Woo hoo! The one downside is that my eye has not changed. But at least I can get new glasses to fix the double vision.
• With the clean bill of health, I started to look for a job by reaching out to a recruiter who had contacted me. In a small world coincidence, he was looking to fill a contract that had been filled by my manager at my previous job. 
• After so many rounds of interviews that stretched the hiring process out to weeks or even months, I got a contract in less than a week starting from when I reached out to the recruiter to signing the contract.

I'm hoping that 2021 continues in this way. Good times are coming, we just have to hold out until they arrive.

Nostalgia: Photos of the Stouffville House

 Having posted about the house we are leaving in Abbotsford, I found the real estate shots of our Stouffville house that me left in 2017. We did hire a staging company for this one but keen observers will note that the stager used a lot of our stuff. To be fair, we used what the stager did as ideas to furnish and decorate in our Abbotsford house such as the paint colour and the glass top tables.

We'll start with the view from the front entrance looking towards the living room at the back of the house.

We originally had a bench seat in the hallway but we replaced that with the less practical but more photogenic glass console table.

And here is the reverse view looking back.

Here is the living room from the kitchen area.

And here is the reverse showing the kitchen from the living room.

Swinging a bit to the left, we have the dining area, which includes sliding doors to go outside to the back yard. The back yard wasn't too much to look at, basically a 40x20 foot area with a small patio and a loud air conditioner.

The landing of the stairs, which you would see the moment you stepped in the doors and looked to your left and then the stairs themselves.

The office, with a view out the front and a faked daybed. It's really just a bunch of boxes with a bed cover on them. We always intended to have a daybed in there though.

The main bedroom with a view out the back.

The ensuite bathroom, which was double in size over the Abbotsford bathroom, but nowhere near as nice. I much prefer a proper dedicated shower over the tub/shower combo.

Finally, the guest bedroom.

Maybe I'll be able to dig up the Brampton house. If so, I'll post those pix as well.

 

Gaming Stuff Packed

 Here is my miniature life reduced to a few boxes.

One big black box contains most of my Chain of Command 28mm miniatures and terrain. The only bits that it doesn't contain, trees and buildings, are in the grey box with the blue top. The other big black box contains miscellaneous gaming stuff including my lead mountain.

The white shelving unit is my bit box. It used to also contain my paints, which have been replaced by 15mm ECW figures and the forests and buildings of my 2mm board.

The yellow box and Mary Kay bag contain my 6mm figures and terrain, both finished and based and unfinished. The Mary Kay bag is seriously the best thing a miniature gamer could use for traveling to gaming events. It has 4 boxes on trays for miniatures to go in with slide out access. Rules will fit in front of the boxes. The top part (originally meant for lipsticks) can lift out and is where I put all of my trees in. I can put some tall buildings in there as well. The side pouches are nice areas to put gaming equipment in such as dice, measuring tapes, containers of tokens, and so on. The bag has both a nice carry handle and a good strap for carrying on your shoulder. 

And here is my travel boxes with reading material. Because I might not be able to get to the other miniature boxes for 6 months or so as they go into storage, I have some miniature supplies to tide me over. I packed my 15mm tanks in there, a whole bunch of toothpicks, stir sticks, and other bits of wood so that I can do some terrain crafting, especially when we self-isolate after moving. I also put my 15mm Americans in there just in case I feel like painting. Speaking of paints, that's what the tackle box contains.

I'm quite proud of how compact my collection is at the moment.

Photos of the Abbotsford House

 We're into the home stretch of packing to leave, but I thought I would post the real estate pictures of the house. Please ignore the distortions that the photographer uses to make it look bigger and brighter. I do want to point out that we really didn't stage the house too much so it does/did look like this once we finished our renovations. 

Let's start with a video. 

And here is what it looked like through photos:

It is a raised ranch style house with the entrance half way between the levels. This is the view of the upper level after you climb the stairs and look to your left.

I miss our fish but we had to rehome them. Here is the view from the living room looking into the dining area.

Here is the opposite view from the previous one. The stairs are immediately behind the sofa.

Here is the view from in front of the fireplace. You can see the kitchen.

Here is the dining area with the French doors to the deck.

This is the view of the kitchen you get if you go from the top of the stairs and continue forward.

And here is the view looking from deep in the kitchen over the island and into the living room.

Here is the opposite view of the kitchen. This is pretty much as we bought the house with the only real change being replacing the ugly tiles with the vinyl planks.  

The main bedroom.

The ensuite bathroom, which has to be the smallest but nicest bathroom we have ever had. It's not much bigger that what you would find on a cruise ship, but it does have a fantastic shower with bench, much more storage that you would think, and heated flooring.

This is the shower, which we rebuilt completely. Originally, it had a fiberglass shell that led to a 30 inch by 30 inch shower. Getting rid of the shell and moving one wall over by 8 inches (so that it actually conforms to the blueprints!) doubled its size.

The guest bedroom.

The home office.

The main bathroom, where you would hardly notice the 8" it gave up to the ensuite bathroom.

The main room downstairs, which became my hobby room and COVID office.

Behind my hobby area and office was an extra area that we used as a spill-over bedroom.

The view of the deck after stepping out onto it from the dining area.

This is the view of the deck. To the very right are the French doors in the dining area that you use to get onto the deck. The raised area where the red umbrella is is where the pool used to be. We removed the pool because it was a nasty cheap one that had not been properly winterized.

The main seating area, which we used extensively over our three summers in the house. 

The house from the back across the back yard. The deck is massive but there's still plenty of yard. This picture is taken between the pear tree on the right and the plum "tree" on the left.

This is easily the best house we have ever owned and we're a bit sad to leave it much quicker than we had planned.