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So on Monday night I had the urge to go find these deck tiles. Back up a day, on Sunday, I had the urge to go find these deck tiles. Sam and I went to go find these snap-together deck tiles at the Canadian Tire on Major Mac (website said they had stock) but couldn’t find them in store, we left and I was kind of disappointed.

On Monday after work, we were supposed to go grocery shopping but I decided to quickly check the CT on Highway 7 (also had stock) but we found nothing there either. We asked the guy to check the computer and while he said there were 2 in stock (we needed 9 packs of 4 tiles each), he found a few other stores with stock. Now quite driven in the hunt, we ended up at CT at Yonge + Steeles and finally found a stack of the tiles. We debated on them for a little while, and eventually were on our way home, extremely hungry, with no groceries, and a trunk full of plastic deck tiles.

I started installing them at around 7:30pm and the first 31 tiles went down in about 20 minutes. The last 5 took about 2 1/2 hours, after a dinner break. We had to cut them with a handsaw and also used a dremel to cut the plastic underneath which is used to keep the tiles off the ground to allow for drainage.

By around 11pm I was pretty cranky at these tiles and all the little things which cropped up, like the side of the building at the edge of the balcony required extra modification, and then the drain comes in about a half inch so I needed to cut a little slit in one tile to allow for that. Eventually I jammed the last tile in (it could probably use 1-2mm clearance) and was done with it. After all was said and done, I vowed the first thing I buy if and when we get a house, is a table saw. It would have cut down the whole install into under an hour for sure.

Anyway, fairly happy with the end result, makes it walkable and a little more pleasant. A good, fairly cheap investment which upgrades the balcony from “tiny concrete-slab-write-off” to “tiny-balcony-garden”.

It was also actually fun to pick up a camera again.

Just watching the US-Canada hockey game, and managed to hook up a laptop to the TV properly. Decided to take a photo to post and decided to post a few more photos with the latest changes to the condo* All photos taken with in auto mode with the LX3 (except the TV shot is manual). I know my condo is dark in general, but I found the LX3 to underexpose by about 2/3 of a stop in auto mode. Photos were imported into LR and bumped up a bit and exported right out.

*haha.. sign of a geek, my first inclination was to write “latest condo mods”

Hooking up Sam’s laptop with a mini-DVI to HDMI adapter, then an HDMI cable straight to the TV, I was pleasantly surprised when OSX provided the above option of 720p. This means that I don’t have to worry about my cheapo TV which has rectangular pixels (1024×768 resolution, but 16:9 aspect ratio)

A basket we got at IKEA to put the doggy toys in.

Something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, finally picked up a decent looking holder and installed it (all in the same day!)

Another on the list of “things to do”, pretty minor, but it was the one shelf that was leaning forward and so now all the shelves are fairly sturdy. The other shelves are just attached to each other, so if you really pulled, those would come down.

Picked up a few weeks ago in Guelph, Burton’s crate. I do need to block off more than half of it for when he first gets here so he can’t pee in one corner and sleep in the other.

Just to show the crate’s scale in relation to the rest of the place.

Tonight is paint, I don’t think its going to be perfect, the lower speaker wire was too close to the baseboard to get a real nice feather. But there’ll be stuff along the wall eventually anyway. I’m also too lazy to keep plastering/sanding it. The dust is driving me crazy, and with no proper vacuum.. it’s a real pain to clean up. I need to call the blinds people for final confirmation on some measuring correctly, then I’ll order shades tonight. Really hoping the living room is done before Christmas.. but who knows when the shades will make it here.

Here’s a (dark) photo of where it stands now, after about 3 coats of plaster and sanding. SO much dust. My house is the new dustbowl.

I also installed the Powerbridge.. and ran into problems flushmounting the speakers, so I ended up sticking a bit of wood about 3mm thick on one edge of the existing speaker mounts, so at least they’ll mount a lot less angled than before (should be almost completely flat).

It’s now 1:11am, I’ve spent the past roughly 6 hours doing:

final sanding
wiping down the walls
taping off all the outlets, trim, ceiling, plasma mount
painting the whole living room (edging, then rolling)
waiting for it to dry
removing all tape
reinstalling outlet covers, speaker mounts
mounting tv and speakers
sweeping, mopping, swiffing and now Roomba is doing the final pass

And here we are (both photos taken with the 35f2 on the 5D (notice the lens distortion in the second):

I’m so tired, but will hook everything up (not the rears.. still contemplating how to convert the wire in a less ghetto fashion) just to sit there and be able to see.. cable-less theatre!

Alright, here are some pics of my place…well…pics of the interesting parts..my home theatre set.
And a little review of the roomba.

Here’s my TV and all the front speakers, see my sub on that little nice ikea shelf.
I know…but this is the best setup I can get with the oddly shaped room.

This my my new PC built to do all my media stuff, everything in it costed me around $550. There’s the trusty WRT54GL at the back with extended antenna.

Receiver and ps3. I didn’t buy that GT5 Prologue..my brother bought it thinking it was a bargain…until I told him what prologue means…

Here’s one of my back speaker with the roomba. It’s pretty stable (the stand), just as long as no one like pushes on it or anything. Have yet to think of a way to secure it more.

Here’s the rest of the living room stuff, the sofa and the other speaker.

This is actually day two of roomba, some how it ripped my antenna off which was laying against the window behind it. Antenna’s used for HDTV OTA.

And more mischief..pulled the small rug off that’s covering the cables running across. I’m going to put down some cable concealer bar thing across, so the carpet’s temp.

The roomba actually did alright this time around…did got back home, after limiting it to do living room and hallway. The day one of roomba, it got lost in the master washroom. Another thing I found is that it uses its bumper more than I thought it would. I find the bumper all dirtied up after a run. Hope it’s not doing any damage…

More to come when I have more time…….not anytime soon haha..