Painting update

Posted on July 3, 2011 by Dom

So with just 2 weeks to go (eek!), I’ve managed to paint a third of the garage. At this rate, I should just have finished when the Westfield goes on the road! Currently looks like I’m 3.57% of the way through the build. Umm… hooray? Spent 20 hours, 369.5 to go!

Now, it’s becoming apparent that using the phone as a camera for this project isn’t really going to cut the mustard. So I’ve been shopping.  The camera was going to spend some time in the garage, in the land rover and in the great outdoors so it had to be reasonably durable. In the end, I opted for the Olympus TG-310.

It's not blurry, you're drunk

The main reason I bought it… being orange it should match the car! Otherwise it takes photos of average quality (its no DSLR), but can survive being dropped 1.5m, submerged to 3m and frozen to -10 degrees. Hopefully, it will be subjected to none of those conditions!

So, this blog can look forward to mildly better photos. Next week should involve fitting a new light to the front of the garage, a bit more painting and building a workbench. The following week should see the painting being finished and then it’s time to start! I can’t see it all being ready in 2 weeks but you never know…

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Who’s idea was it to paint the garage anyway?

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Dom

I feel like I’m perpetually painting these bloody walls. Certainly, opting to paint breeze block was not one of my brightest moments. Still, whilst it’s taking a lot of time, and a lot of paint it has definitely brightened the front end of the garage up, so I’ll persist. The problem I’m having is getting the paint into the deeper holes, I may opt to add some filler to the paint to thicken it up for the back half of the garage.

On the positive side, it was VAT free last week at MachineMart, so I took the opportunity of getting a few tools early. With a saving of 20% it seemed worth it.

Ok, it’s not all for the build, a fair few are for the land rover which will be my only car for the duration.

So, there’s just 3 weekends left before it’s time to start dismantling the Mazda. This week I’m hoping to finish off painting the front half of the garage, fit the light above the door and build a new workbench in the store room. Next week will be painting the back half of the garage and so will the week after. At some point in there I need to weld the landrover up. Seeing as I’ve never welded in my life that should be amusing. I think I now fall in the “all the gear no idea” camp.

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To the man cave…

Posted on May 27, 2011 by Dom

So with seven weeks to go until the project really starts, the project is err… kinda starting. Now, at the start of this week, I was of the mindset that I wasn’t going to bother painting the garage or tarting it up in any way. So of course, on the way home from work on Monday, I stopped into the local Homebase to pick up some gardening bits. I ended up buying painting products, as you do!

There’s a justification to it though, it’s not just because I’m a tart. With the door closed, the front of the garage is far darker than the back. This is largely because there’s an obstruction in the ceiling area essentially partioning off the front, at least light-wise.

Welcome to the dark side...

However, I have a cunning plan. I’ve got a spare strip light which I intend to mount above the garage door. It’ll be completely pointless of course when the door is open, but I won’t let such little things get in the way of the opportunity to play with power tools and sparks. To maximise the spread of light, I’ll have to paint the walls and ceiling white. Whether the floor gets painted is anyone’s guess. I’m not planning on it, but then I wasn’t planning on doing the walls either.

So far all I’ve managed to do is paint sealant on a small section. It’s slow going, but a bank holiday weekend should see the job done.

On other matters, I’ve also been tool shopping. An engine crane came up locally for a bargain price and whilst it was a few weeks early, I couldn’t really say no. The guy selling it had used it to build a Westfield but unfortunately was taken ill before he could get it on the road. When picking it up I could tell he was gutted about it so I hope it’s of some consolation that it’ll be used for the same purpose.

You can just about make out the first coat of sealer on the walls too.

So, this weekend/next week’s task is to take this err… opportunity, and see if we can’t get it resembling a garage again, rather than a tip with a mazda shaped gap at the front.

Clean up... aisle one...

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New dates

Posted on May 7, 2011 by Dom

Going back to the original plan, I was looking at starting to dismantle the MX5 in October. This would allow me time to enjoy the summer in the mazda… However, given the good weather we’ve had recently, I’ve convinced myself to do the sensible thing and take the Mazda off the road when the tax, insurance and MOT runs out in July. There’s £500 saved there!

So my spreadsheet plan is looking a little more geeky complete. I’ve let Westfield know I’ll be expecting the introductory kit in September, with the completion kit being required around Christmas time (boxing day according to the plan, that will need some tweaking!). On the road April 2012. I hope next April is as good as this one just gone, bet it’ll snow now.

Build budget has gone north, currently sat at £12.3k. Does include all the tools, service items like a new clutch, IVA fees, tax and insurance so isn’t as bad as it sounds. That’s what I keep telling myself.

So this is probably it for the waffling on updates then. It’s time to start preparing the garage and workshop, building workbenches and the such. There’s going to be sooo many tip runs!

11 weeks to go!!

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Order placed

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Dom

Went to Stoneleigh today to look at three main things really.

  1. A close look at a Mazda SDV
  2. A look at orange cars
  3. A look at digital dashes

As luck would have it, there were no Mazda SDV Westfields at the show today, I think Sunday is the busiest day. Orange cars were also few and far between as were digital dashes. I wonder if there’s a reason for all this…

Still, I’m not put off and today ordered the introductory kit. A bit early granted, but ordering at Stoneleigh has meant a 10% discount on the kit and all future purchases for the car at Westfield. That’s going to save me something in the region of £1,000 during the course of the build so it’s a bit rude not to!

Thanks for the discount, I might be able to push the build forward a month or two. I’m going to see if it’s possible to set a Stoneleigh 2012 on the road date, that should be a good milestone.

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