Canada Day 2005

G’day folks. Well, as you can see by the picture, the first step on our basement renovation is essentially completed! Last night at 10pm, I finished building the media cabinet that is built into the wall in the rec room. A while ago Jody and I decided that this fall / winter would be the time we finally renovate the basement. We spend 80% of our time there, so we figure it will be money well spent. The master plan calls for new paint, new carpet, new couch, built in media centre for home theatre stuff, installation of laminate in bar area, and finally the piece de resistance, my new oak bar!

We’ve got the ball heavily rolling now. We ordered our carpet, ordered our couch, bought the paint, bought the bar materials, and as you can see, I’ve built the cabinet. If you’d like to see other pictures of the project, head on over to our flickr sets and check out the basement renovation shots. I’ll update it as we go along.

Hello out there. as many of you know, I’m curretnly trying to save all my pennies for an extended trip to New Zealand for a biking / racing adventure. As such, I’ve had to seriously curtail my extravagant ways. That’s hard for me to do, since I’m a serious gadget guy. Well, for some unknown reason, this morning I got to thinking about a little gadget of Kev’s, the Squeezebox. Mind you, he does have a slightly older model (not nearly as cool looking ;-), but still equally as cool a little device. Kev got his a while ago, and blogged about it in the past. He even mentioned me, but I never took the bait on it. Basically, this thing can allow me to hook up to my music library on my PC, and play it back through my stereo. That’s where things get a little trickier for me. You see, I’ve already got a whole-house sound system, integrated with my computer. I can currently play music on iTunes, and have it routed to the computer room, the rec room, the living room, the kitchen, and even the outdoor speakers all at once (can you tell I dig music?). This has been great for parties. But my big beef about that is that I have no ability to control the music unless I’m at the computer in the basement, which isn’t fun when you’re entertaining. So essentially, I’m thinking of getting this thing simply as a moveable head-end for the PC-based music. Basically, I could move the unit wherever I wanted (provided there’s a plug), and then use the supplied remote to change music on a whim. The key to making this work is that I’d use a wireless router (dirt cheap at about $70), which can talk to the head end, and then use a 3rd party application known as SoftSqueeze, which allows synchronizing the PC playback to the Squeezebox playback (not to mention the ability to stream my library over the web and such if I’m at a party elsewhere and wanted to call up a tune I own!)

Yup, thar she be folks! The La-Z-Boy couch has arrived and is all set up in the basement. With that behemoth set up, I guess we’re done phase 6 in the basement renovation. We’re rounding the final corner (ha ha, did you get the pun there?). All that remains is to build the bar, and put in a new coffee table I guess. Unfortunately, that bar is going to be no easy task. I’ve been doing my research, and going over the plans in detail, and all I can say is that it’s a pretty major first wood-working project to be undertaking. I mean, I really want this thing to look good, and I’m worried I might not have the mad skills for it! However, rest assured, I’ll take my anal time with it, and make sure it turns out something special 🙂 I’ve even bought yet another tool to do so, a new plunge router! But enough about the bar. How about that couch? It’s a sectional, the smallest you can get, but it still manages to look like a giant in that room, and unfortunately, dwarfs our current 32″ TV. So what does Jody say? ” I guess we need a new TV”. Those are dangerous words to say to a big ticket shop-a-holic! However, we really can’t afford that right now, so I’ll just have to start dreaming about my 45″ LCD HD Widescreen TV (the Sony Bravia looks nice!). My guess is that after Christmas, in the winter doldrums, prices will [yet again] drop probably my 25-40% on TVs. Mark my words. Then.. look out world, here comes Stevey. At least that’ll give me time to properly research what ‘I need’. Till then, I’ll just have to curl up on this fancy couch, and play Xbox on my wee 32 incher. Ha ha. That’s it for now.