Stewart Priest

House Update #1

// July 12th, 2010 // No Comments » // DIY

As you may have read, we’ve got the keys to our house and the DIY/decoration/remodelling is now well underway. Tonight is one of the rare nights where I’ve been able to finish early and actually come home and be able to relax and put together a blog post. The subject of this update is the master bedroom.

So far, the wallpaper has been stripped, walls have been sanded, the woodchip wallpaper is off the ceiling, and we’ve started sticking up a false wall. Jen (SWMBO) managed to get stuck up a set of ladders whilst stripping the woodchip off the ceiling. Being the good husband-to-be that I am, I helped her down… didn’t I? Apparently not:

Well, that’ll be me in the bad books. Anyway, moving on from that.. We stripped the wallpaper and started prepping the walls for paint. I say ‘we’ – in reality it was SWMBO and her dad. Here she is in her sanding get-up:

For me though, the most interesting part of the work is being carried out on the opposite wall. This is the wall where the tech is going. My 32″ Sony Bravia will be going here. Along with some coax cable, Cat5e and power. Click on the thumbnails to get a view of how the wall is progressing:

Hopefully tomorrow night I’ll be able to get the remainder of the plasterboard up with Robert’s help and we’ll then be able to get it plastered and painted. After that, we can start moving in – and get started on the living room.

I’m pretty pleased with the way things are working out – it’s taking just a little bit longer than expected, but once it’s done, I’ll be a happy man. A tired, but happy, man.

Oh, I almost forgot – here’s a video look at the bedroom as of yesterday:

We’re In

// July 6th, 2010 // No Comments » // DIY

Those of you who are following the progress of our new home may be interested to know that we now have the keys. We’re not quite moved in, but SWMBO has decreed that we MUST be in by 17 July as she ‘has people coming to stay’. Nothing quick like piling on the pressure, is there?

Anyway, we got the keys on 30 June, and we’ve already demolished the living room. At this point I have to thank a few people; Gael, Robert, Craig, Andrew, Gordon, Jen: THANK YOU. Without you all, we would still have a crappy concrete/faux marble fireplace & entertainment centre with arches which would put the Vatican to shame. Thanks to you, we had a nice bomb site:

(that’s Robert & Gael, in case you were interested)

Well, it was a bomb site until Gael, Jen and I got all the rubble into bags and Robert and I got it all to the dump. Thanks for getting the van, Robert! Things look a whole lot better now the rubble has vanished, and Jen got to use her new Dyson DC24. The carpet is now spotless:

Now all I’ve got to do is get the new wood frame up, the cables run, get a couple of spurs from my sockets, get the plasterboard up, get it plastered, change the carpet, paint, get the curtains up, get the furniture in and we’ll be laughing. Easy enough? *sigh*

HDMI over Cat5e

// June 28th, 2010 // No Comments » // DIY, Tech

As you may have read, I’ll be moving into my own place very soon, and this will give me the opportunity to ‘Pimp My House’. She Who Must Be Obeyed (SWMBO) has largely given me free reign to do whatever I like so long as “there aren’t cables running all over the house”. Well, there will, but none you’ll see.

The key element of any smart home is structured cabling – in my case Cat5e. I was planning on running HDMI to a couple of different rooms, but in lengths greater than 10 metres, its unreliable and expensive. So, how do I plan to get the HDMI signal from my V+ box in the loft, to my TV in the living room? By using a pair of HDMI baluns, of course! By using a pair of these boxes, I can use my structured cabling to send the HDMI signal from the V+ box to my TV. Simples! In case you’re wondering what these baluns look like, here they are:

Quite small and unobtrusive, I think you’ll agree. It’d be easy enough to cable-tie one of these bad boys to the wall mount or the VESA fitting at the back of the TV, or just to hide away with the rest of the cables, so SWMBO will be happy, and this leads to a quiet life for me. Its really a win-win situation. SWMBO is happy, I don’t have to spend loads of money on long HDMI cables and these boxes are £30 on Amazon. In fact, you can buy them here.

I’ll post a review when I put them to use, but all in all, these look great!

New House, New Project

// May 9th, 2010 // No Comments » // DIY, Tech, Windows 7

Those of you who follow my Twitter feed may already be aware of this, but for those of you who don’t, Jen and I have bought a house. It’s all very exciting, for a number of reasons. One of which is that I’ve been allowed to put all the tech I want into it! I suspect that Michelle will be very jealous.

I’ve been a fan of home automation for a long time, and whilst still living at home with the parents, I’ve been able to experiment with X10 with great success. Thankfully, the house is all on one level, with loft access. So far, it’s been decided that I’ll be running Cat5 cable to every room – maybe not the bathroom, but there’s still potential for that if I can justify it – along with speaker cable and possibly two or three HDMI cables.

I’ll have an automation server running Homeseer as a backend to the house, which will pull together pretty much all the tech in the house. My main media server will run Windows Home Server, serving up audio and video to Windows 7 PCs which run Windows Media Center.

Broadcast media will arrive in the house in a variety of different ways: 2 Virgin Media boxes will provide cable TV to either the TVs directly, or to the Windows 7 boxes to be played out via WMC; at least one Freesat box (there’s already a satellite dish feeding into the house); and regular old council telly – Freeview.

My studio equipment will live in its own room, herein referred to as my studio. The studio PC will live in the loft along with the servers so I can reduce the equipment noise in the studio itself. Monitor and keyboard/mouse will arrive in the room via an Adder standalone KVM box.

I’m sure there will be all kinds of pitfalls along the way, but with the help of the folks over at Automated Home, I’m sure things will go pretty well! Stay tuned for more news on the tech house. I can’t wait!

My Bad (Ikea experience)

// April 2nd, 2010 // 2 Comments » // DIY, Twitter

After a slight bedroom mishap on Sunday, I had the need for a replacement bed. Not the mattress, just the bed. Jen and I hunted around and looked at a number of different places, but we decided on Ikea. I’d coped with a half-broken bed for four nights now, and it was time to bite the bullet and buy the bed. So off to Ikea Braehead.

We wandered around the upstairs one-way system for a while before we found the bedroom section. They’ve changed the layout, don’t you know? We had a look at a few different beds, toyed with the idea of getting at mattress too, but eventually picked the bed we wanted. We picked the Heimdal bed frame. We really liked the look of this bed, and we REALLY liked the look of the price. £55 for the full kit. I took a note of the aisles and locations of the various components of the kit and proceeded to collect everything. It turns out that Ikea sometimes don’t put things where they tell you. The slats for this bed, specifically. However, I eventually found them and moved on to the checkout. Ikea are more efficient and taking your money than they are at putting things in the right place, it would seem. Now, off to the car park.

Rather than trying to get the (very large) trolley over to the car, I left Jen at the pickup point with everything until I went to fetch the car. No problem. The car’s all parked up, the back seats are folder down and the boot is open. Now, in with the kit. Oh. Wait. Hang on, I need to tweet about this:

Shit. Do I await the advice of the Twitterverse, or do I come up with a plan of my own? Well, knowing some of the people I follow (Alan Ogden), I’m expecting less than helpful replies, so I need to come up with my own solution to this. It’s time to phone my sister. Her fiance Robert has a bigger car than me, and access to a van if required. Great. He’s on his way. While I wait for him to arrive, I get the smaller stuff in the car and check what delights Twitter has offered up in reply to my problem:

Great. Alan’s replied. In a fashion which was expected. Not to worry though, the cavalry has arrived. Robert’s here! We get the oversized bed part into the back of the car and head home. That reminds me, I’d better get Robert some beer for digging me out of this hole. We manage to unload everything into the house and Robert heads home.

After that, it was just a simple case of chucking out the old bed and building the new one. A relatively simple process, and one which didn’t take too long! We had the bed built and ready for use in half an hour! Buying the bed and getting it home took longer than actually putting it together.

Maybe Ikea should consider giving the measurements of the packaging as well as the items within. It could save a lot of heartache in the long run.

Finally!

// July 14th, 2009 // No Comments » // DIY, Web 2.0

Yes! I’ve finally managed to get a new pair of monitor speakers. The JBL Control 1s, to be precise.

It’s been a bit of a journey to get them, to be honest. I had to wait A-G-E-S to get served in the shop, so I whinged about it on Twitter, and immediately got a follow from Richer Sounds. They’ve offered me a tenner for my trouble, but I can’t imagine what else I’d buy out of there.. I’m poor AND I’m getting married!

Moving on from that, I decided to mount them on the wall yesterday, and the first speaker went up fine. The second speaker however, did not. It lasted all of two minutes before all 1.4kg of it started to come away from the wall. There was nothing else I could do but curse myself for making four bloody big holes in my nice, newly decorated wall.

Fast forward to today, and a chat with one of my colleagues, Brian. He’s an Active Directory wizard now, but he’s a joiner to trade. He suggested larger rawl plugs, so off I went to B&Q after work, and I bought the next two sizes of rawl plugs. I got home, tried them out, and BINGO! I now have a pair of speakers on the wall, not just one lonely speaker. I was on a roll, so I got my nice glass shelves from Ikea – which have been sitting in their boxes for weeks – and stuck them up on the wall. Now I think I’m a DIY god!

I’ve christened my speakers by playing The Jam Song, and I’m now load-testing the shelves! Woo!

Oh, and before I forget, check out ‘AutoTune The News’ on YouTube! It’s excellent!