Archive for March, 2010

Master Bathroom Update!

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

I have made quite a lot of progress these past few weeks, (mostly why I haven’t been posting too often) and I have pictures to show.

First thing I did was stiffen up the floor with 3/4″ plywood where the Shower and tub are to be installed.

plywood and tub

Here I have the tub in place for testing, plywood is in place underneath it.

 
framing

Start of framing wall to bring it out 2 inches


More framing

More framing and another test for fitting for the bathtub.

 
I had to lower the ceiling over the tub and shower to incorporate the star field that I created in and earlier post. I dropped the ceiling by 4″ and recessed the star field about an inch to help it stand out a little. I also lowered the shower column where the rain head will go another 1 1/2″ which will later be tiled.

Start of framing in the ceiling

 

Location for star field in bathroom ceiling.



Rough in for shower valves

Rough in for shower valves also framing for shower which extends onto the roof for a rain shower head.

 
In this picture you can see my attempts at dampening the sound from the blower motor, I have place one inch foam on the floor, insulation around the tub and am using sound proofing insulation in the tub frame. Hopefully that will do something, at least I can say I tried.
week 4

I believe this is my 4th week. This is where I am now.



So That about sums up to where I am at now. It is a slow process, mostly because I’m only working on it a couple of hours at a time after work but also because I really don’t know what I am doing most of the time and am just winging it, but lets keep that a secret.
If you have any questions or comments please post them below.

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Posted in Home Improvements, Masterbath |

Star Field (Complete)

Friday, March 19th, 2010

In my first post I kind of explained how I made the star field, in this one I’ll show the results.

Location for star field in bathroom ceiling.

In our bathroom I lowered the ceiling 4″ over the tub and made a recessed area of where the light panel was going to be placed. everything was taped, mudded, primed and painted prior to the star field install. (unfortunately I never took a picture of this).

After we got the star field in place I patched all the holes and placed a trim around the edges. The end result is shown below, however I still have to cover the access to the CoolSky LED light box and receptacle. I also created a video, but I have to remake it as I filmed it in total darkness and the camera kept going out of focus, it was also a 200M file so it would take quite some time to download. I’ll try to make a better (smaller) video over the weekend.

Completed star field ceiling, well I still need to cover the hatch where the LED module is hiding on the left hand side.


Lit 1

View standing outside of tub (long exposure)


Lit 2

View looking up from the tub. (How many constellations can you find?)



Video of CoolSky LED functions will be coming soon.

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Posted in Star Field |

Star Field (post 1)

Friday, March 19th, 2010

I have finally started the star field that will be ending up in my master bathroom ceiling (you can follow that story here).

Star Plot

Star map for ceiling star field. (Click to enlarge)

First off I created an actual star map using wikisky.org then plotted four different star sizes overlaying the map using photo shop. My result is shown on the left, it was scaled down to fit on a 8 X 10 sheet of paper. It worked out so that there are about 170 stars or so in a 3′ X 5′ area.

 

Me plotting

Me plotting stars and measuring for the middle support braces.

 
primed and covering

3 x 5 sheet primed and I'm starting to cover it with construction paper.

Next I primed and painted a 3′ X 5′ sheet of MDF (which I hope was a good material to use, time will tell See Update at bottom of post). I then covered it with construction paper and drew the a scaled grid on it. Then using the printed 8″ X 10″ paper I plotted each star to the best of my abilities and marked it size with different colors. After all the plotting was done and I was satisfied with where the stars where, I drilled each hole one by one using three different sized drill bits (3/64, 1/16, 3/32). I then flipped the board over, remarked what size each star was, and Jen (my wife) and I pushed through the number of fibers I needed for each hole until all 200 of them were completed. Once the fibers where in place, Jen glued them in place with clear silicon.

Installing the fibers

Arranging the fibers


 

Pushing fibers through the board



Update: Well using the sheet of MDF may have not been the greatest idea for a bathroom. Since I had the shower glassed in, the steam from the shower has cause the MDF around each fiber to expand slightly creating a small bump where each fiber is. Though this doesn’t affect the light passing through the fiber it doesn’t look overly appealing to the eye in the daylight. I’m thinking of redoing this project (starfield 2.0) using a John Hardy Cement board or something more moisture resistant. I imagine if i had built this in any other room than the bathroom, MDF would have been fine. Keep checking back for the 2.0 version of the starfield, of course with the twins, basement, laundry room, garage, and wine room… who really knows when that will actually happen.

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Posted in Star Field |

Wow, I did it!

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Well actually, Jen and I did it… not that! We finished the star-field last night! It is ready to install! So far it looks pretty good, we should get it in place on the ceiling tonight, then all I have to do is add trim and patch 5 holes, cut the fibers to the same length and done! I should have pics and a video up sometime next week!

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Posted in Masterbath, Star Field |

New Vacation Movie

Friday, March 5th, 2010

I liked those old vacation movies from the 80′ with Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo, I thought it was the end of the series until I stumbled across this mini movie this morning. It is really an advertisement for HomeAway.com but I got a few cheap laughs out of it. Anyway it comes in two parts, so check it out!

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Posted in Video |

McDonald’s vs Tim Hortons Breakfast Sandwiches

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Tim's VS McD's

Tim's VS McD's

Almost two weeks ago I got together with some co-workers for coffee and we decided to do a taste test between the McDonald’s Egg McMuffin (McD’s) and Tim Horton’s breakfast sandwich on an english muffin (Tim’s). We tested both the bacon and sausage sandwiches cut them up into quarters and split them up between the four of us. Now as far as I know none of us are food connoisseurs so we graded them on yumminess factor (we all voted on which one we liked best).

McD’s:

What we liked:

  • Real whole egg
  • lots of grease on the egg
  • Tasty well seasons sausage
  • Greasy well seasoned sausage
  • Real egg, with grease
  • Overall sausage McMuffin was moist and tasty
  • Though cheese was processed it was tasty

What we didn’t like:

  • Sausage was not for those who don’t like greasy meat
  • Found bacon dry and minimal
  • Processed cheese

Bacon yumminess factor: 2 / 4
Sausage yumminess factor: 4 / 4

Tim’s:

What we liked:

  • Egg patty thing was seasoned
  • More bacon than McD’s
  • Sausage was seasoned

What we didn’t like:

  • Egg seemed fake being formed into a patty type thing
  • Bacon Seemed dry
  • Sausage though greasy, not a moist as McD’s
  • Processed cheese, and not as tasty as McD’s
  • English muffin seemed to lack flavor? or maybe it was the whole combination.

Bacon yumminess factor: 2 / 4
Sausage yumminess factor: 3 / 4

Before we started I really believed that Tim Horton’s would have one this one, but in our test it was unanimous that the McD’s Sausage McMuffin was the big winner here. Now all the sandwiches were great but we found that the McDonald’s Sausage McMuffin had the best ratio of grease, salt and egg. Who can resist that salty grease!
As you can see we didn’t test all the option, I myself like the Tim’s biscuit over the english muffin, and McDonald’s has that McGriddle, which I have tried and was disappointed in the omelet egg thing and the overall salty but super sweet flavor of it, our intention was to compare just the english muffin versions. I think you can get your breakfast sandwich on a bagel at Tim’s as well… maybe another time hen I starve myself and have a longer coffee break we can test them all and maybe come up with a grading sheet of some sort, though that seems like a lot of effort.

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Posted in Coffee |