Thursday, December 6, 2018

Down Working In The Dungeon

Which is what I prefer to call the basement. Now that I have the temperature of all three rooms 'down there' stabilized at 70*, it doesn't feel nearly as creepy down there as it used to. There were times before when I felt just a general "strangeness" down there, and in 67 orbits of the Sun I've learned to take those feelings somewhat seriously.

ANYWHOO.......I set up two cheep wood doors from Home Depot on four cheep plastic saw horses from Harbor Freight so I could have some work area to sort, clean, and pack things going out the door during The Great Patriotic eBay Purge.

I also wanted a place to unroll an anti-static mat and set up my soldering and desoldering stations so I could work on some projects down there when it's too cold in the garage.

So this is what we've got.....


Most of those cardboard boxes are empty and waiting to be dragged upstairs, cut down, and recycled. The corrugated cardboard and aluminum can business pays for all the other recycling programs in Fort Collins, so I have no problem taking "#1, Grade A Clean" corrugated cardboard directly to the nearby recycling place so they get it in good, saleable condition.

Some recycling makes perfect sense to me, and some not so much. I'll go along with this because "it works".

SO......my soldering iron turned up a few days ago, a week after I ordered a new replacement of the exact same type. The old one goes on Garage Duty, and the new one is set up with my vacuum solder sucker.



And my beloved PK-900 Packet Radio Modem with DSP showed up. It was in a box of spare parts for my Drake TR-270 VHF/UHF Transceiver, quite literally the last place I looked.



This is the bedroom of the downstairs suite, being used as storage. The PK-900 was in the very last unopened box of "Jim's Stuff" we brought with us which was stored here, under a dead printer.

Well over half of what was in here has been removed.



I'm even using the "egress window" sill to store things.


My little plastic cabinets took some serious hits on the move out here, so I'll be replacing them. I'm also going to buy some stackable bins to store the fiftyPLUS pounds of coaxial connectors and adapters I own. I quite literally have a "lifetime supply" of silver/teflon PL-259 connectors, along with the silver plated adapters to properly use them with RG-58 and RG-59/RG-8X coax.

That's going to be a big project by itself, but at least I now have 95% of my connectors in one set of cardboard boxes, all in the same area.

And I've been sorting cables. I have THREE of the "large" size U-Haul boxes full of cables. I went through one last night, and separated the cables into power, audio/video, USB, data, and networking piles. They'll get reboxed and stored later.

These are the power cords fro one of the big boxes.



And I'm finishing up a project on the "workbench". I'm rebuilding a Drake MS-4 speaker, with a new speaker, cable, and the correct the mounting feet.



When that's done, I'll mount this freshly rebuilt Drake AC-4 power supply into the cabinet.



This supply has an upgrade kit with current technology rectifiers, capacitors, and resistors on a printed circuit board in it, and should be good for another 50 years.

Then it can go back on the "Drake Shelf" while I take on the one sitting there and give it the same treatment.


And I'm doing some repair in the "wife's bathroom" upstairs. See the two holes in the wall under the pictures?



She'd been complaining the towel rack mounted there kept coming loose, and when I took it down to replace the drywall anchors, Previous Owner Syndrome showed up again.


BOTH of the places where the towel rack anchors were "attached" to wall were almost 100% Spackle, with some fragments of drywall left from the three or four other attempted repairs. Both chunks fell out, and into the wall, as soon as I tried to grab them.

So I bought a nice finished oak board, and I'm going to anchor it to the studs, covering the holes in the wall, and mount the towel rack to the pretty oak board.

11 comments:

  1. Your new place is a castle, and you have a LOT more room than you had at the old house - which must be filled with stuff.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We went from 1169sqft to 3400sqft.

      And I'm *finally* getting all my stuff sorted out.

      Delete
  2. We've been in this house for almost thirty five years, and with a trace of pink cheeked blushing I admit that some of the things we fixed over the years were done by me.

    If only I knew then what I know now!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've done some "quick fixes", too, but some of the things the previous owners did are downright slipshod.

      Delete
  3. So the 'fun' is continuing... LOL

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, and I still have THREE boxes of wall warts to sort through!

      Delete
  4. drjim, I ran into the same fixup issue in my previous house. There were things there that were totally scary such as multiple wire splices hidden inside walls. I am glad I didn't find all of the "fixes" as I probably would have had a literal heart attack.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. At least all the 'infrastructure' stuff is properly done. It's all the little trim and finish items that they screwed up.

      The previous owner's were fixing the house up so they could rent it. Their daughter was going to live here, along with three other students at CSU. That violates zoning laws, so it took the wind out of their sails, and they just "bubba'd" all the little items like towel racks, light bulbs, door stops, etc.

      Delete
  5. Have to echo LL -- wish I had that room. Nice.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's a crazy big house for two people. It only really 'comes alive' when the little ones and all the in-laws are here.

      Delete
    2. I love that, rare for me though because the kids are in Canada. Anyway, we soldier on.

      Delete

Keep it civil, please....

Gloomy, Gritty, Grey Day

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