My Single Dutch Delight

[Hostyle]

At least you won't be bored!

If you want a nice deadline for the Honda, on the 25th of September is the Distinguished Gentleman's Ride Eindhoven. We're going for a small ride, from Nuenen (Ducati Moto Puro) to Geldrop (cafe In de Gammele Geit) and then on to Eindhoven (Javaans Eetcafe at De Kleine Berg). Your bike will fit right in!

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

That sounds like a nice ride indeed. However I'm afraid I'll be hung up somewhere else that weekend:

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El Chorro, Spain!

 

[Hostyle]

F*ckin' hell... That's awesome! To bad my climbing skills and fitness are ****. I tried wall climbing last year at an indoor center. After 3 12m wall my arms were burning, my back was killing me and I was dead tired. But that looks like a killer wall to climb!

 

[95riosnake]

I look forward to seeing continued progress from your projects, you do very nice, deliberate work. That drill press looks like it should fire artillery instead of drill holes, I absolutely love it. That little trap door on the front is such a cool little detail also. That should be an amazing machine when finished.

 

[Craptain]

That looks like some Awesome climbing. Sadly I am no longer able to do that level of climb, or almost any level really.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Thanks guys! I'm sure I'll have a lot of fun trying to climb the walls in Spain. It sure is a full body work out and you need to be in good shape to get to some level of climbing. I'm quite into it but only practice indoors once a week. I've been doing that for about two years now and am able to climb 6B+. That's about 5.10d or 5.11a for you americans .

I cleaned the carb in an ultrasonic bath yesterday and got it back together with new gaskets. I also polished the runner and mounted it on the engine. Now I have a problem because it looks so good I need to do the rest of the bike. The first thing at hand was the exhaust. It needs some work to get mounted properly and it needs a good clean and polish. I started with the latter and was surprised how well it cleaned up. I'll try to get a parts list compiled and start working on it. I think it's my best and quickest option to get motorized transport again without buying something new.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

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I just love working on things in an organized environment.

I still had a promise I needed to fullfill, post some pictures of the gift I got a while back:
-Two nice knipex pliers
-Two Nooitgedagt chisels
-JP quality brand chisel
-Peddinghause hammer
-125mm forged Kanca vice with rotating base
-Stanley nr. 78

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And one of the window frames my dad made. I'm painting it now and hopefully we can get it installed in the bath room before we head out to Italy with the family.

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[E12-535iTurbo]

Got back from our family trip to Italy. The area of the Brenta Dolomites is amazing. We sure did some beautifull and long hard hikes. Some were on the border of comfort with the kids on our backs, but well worth it! We sure got a good work out!

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Our kids loved being outdoors this much. Hicking/tracking and climbing with mom and dad!

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I hope to get going again at home or in the garage soon, but we need some time to get the necessary rithm back in our lives.

 

[1/2 Cup]

Just awesome and thank you for sharing..

Regards

 

[HCNDM]

Subbed!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Superbec]

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I keep hearing there's a mountain in Landgraaf...guess it's not in that picture

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

I keep hearing there's a mountain in Landgraaf...guess it's not in that picture

It sure isn't. I'm really motivated to go back to the brenta's and climb these. I haven't got much mounteneering experience so I'm planning to get some. We'll be booking a trip soon for early summer next year to have a go at Mont Blanc and the Grand Paradiso combined with training for glacier crossings. Due to some delays I've been training for over two years now to get into the physical shape to pull this off and enjoy while doing it. So I was happy to notice I had plenty of energy left after a 6,5 hour, 16 kilometer hike with 20 kilograms on my back crossing over 1300 altitude meters. While the previous day I ran half a marathon.

Subbed!

Happy to have you. I hope I can keep it interesting for you.

Just awesome and thank you for sharing..

Regards

Thanks half! I'd love to be able to get to a higher pace in my projects to make it more interesting.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

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We sure had fun!

I've been working on some house projects a few evenings since then but it's hard to find time and energy to really move mountains at home. Then again, I've got most of the window frames done and next week the new glass will finaly go in. All windows will have a rc-value of 1.1. I've also finaly made the descission to drop all ventilation frames like mounted in the old window frames. I'll install a full mechanical balanced ventilation system with heat recouperation. These systems have a heat exchanger to transfer the heat of the out-going air to the incomming air. For the summers there is a by-pass valve. Quite interesting but also again a lot of work.

But for now I'm saving energy. On sunday my goal is to improve my time on the half marathon of Eindhoven.

 

[HCNDM]

It sure isn't. I'm really motivated to go back to the brenta's and climb these. I haven't got much mounteneering experience so I'm planning to get some. We'll be booking a trip soon for early summer next year to have a go at Mont Blanc and the Grand Paradiso combined with training for glacier crossings. Due to some delays I've been training for over two years now to get into the physical shape to pull this off and enjoy while doing it. So I was happy to notice I had plenty of energy left after a 6,5 hour, 16 kilometer hike with 20 kilograms on my back crossing over 1300 altitude meters. While the previous day I ran half a marathon.







Happy to have you. I hope I can keep it interesting for you.







Thanks half! I'd love to be able to get to a higher pace in my projects to make it more interesting.

Not a huge number of us Dutchies in the forum and on top of that we are faced with a Unique challenge compared to other countries... a complete lack of space.

So I'm am sure I'll stay interested !


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[1/2 Cup]

Far out.

Just awesome..

Regards

 

[Hostyle]

Nice climbing shots! Good luck with the marathon coming sunday.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Thanks Hostyle. It was a great day! Ran 1:38.10 and got over 4 minutes below my time of last year. Not bad for my second participation on this distance. Made me happy .

 

[Hostyle]

That's a great result! And I was already tired after doing some work at home, being referee at two games and playing one myself. I would've died halfway the marathon

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

I really needed to check where I’ve left off. There is so much to do and so little time. I’m continuously amazed at how you guys pull off what you pull off. I mean I’m loyally following many of you and on days like today I’m just tipped over the edge of motivation and plunge in to being overwhelmed my all the **** I still need to do. It’s times like these I need to stand still, look around, look back and see what I have, what I’ve accomplished so far and enjoy that. Now let the emotions settle and put priorities in place. Family, Health, Work, House, Play-time.

Ok……

Family, Health, Work: Everything in order.

House: not so much.

Achievements:
-Replace all glass
-Replace all upstairs window frames
-Getting the primer paint ready for the winter

Running projects: Study/ventilation system/bathroom (ARG! This is too much already so outsource bathroom).

So sadly still no time to work on the garage or the car. That really bummed me out today.

You all like pictures so here goes a selection of my sad cell phone pictures which are randomly taken by a fool.

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I love Festool and hated the front fake door that was glued in. Took some effort to not damage the frame.

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Succes!

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Decided we wanted three windows in there so we made some posts and glued nailed etc them in the existing part of the frame.

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I got help with sanding.

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The end result after primer.

I leave it at that concerning the rest of the frames/windows but it took quite some time to get everything done. I still need to get some seals in to get rid of the draft this house suffers and to optimize the functioning of the balance air system.

In a moment of stupidity I completely stripped our future study. And was amazed at what I found. Let's say there are challenges and I'll be learning a lot. Let's start with the floor and continou from there.

The floor construction in the late 60's was not what it is today. There is a wall about 80 cm into the room below the floor. The positive thing is that the floor was level on that 80 centimeters. Then there was a big crack and for the remaining 2.5 meter the floor settled a good inch lower at the far end. That's not going to work with a hard surface laminate floor. So I needed to level this.

Out comes the self leveling pour. That worked out quite ******. Looks great from a mile away but when you walk on it you feel the bumps, dents etc.

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Since I needed a second pour anyway, it was nice practise. My solution was to bolt two reference planes to the walls and make a level board:

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As long as there is enough pour to spead in front of the level board you get no dents and a smooth surface. Dammit it actually worked!

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One challenge down. On to the next but that's for the next episode of this slow adventure which is our house remodel.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

The floor was a succes. It's nice and level now.

Now on to the walls. These are torn/cracked in many different places. The largest cracks are because to the sagging of the floor. Since the floor is not moving anymore I can fix this without concerns for the future. The walls connected to the front facia of the house are partially torn off due to the sagging so this needs to be filled and plastered again.

The second reason for a large crack is that electric power lines are not filled right in the wall.

And the third big no-no is that the plaster is actually comming of the wall very easily. So all walls need to be repaired and plastered again.

Since we need access to the walls for this the radiator needs to be removed. I will completely remove it along with the hot water lines because Those are ugly and we want to disconnect the gas line from our house. So low temperature heating and well insulated. For the study we will move to electric floor heating.

So on to the pictures:

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This will be gone.

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That too. It's in the attic and frees up room to get the air channels in there for the balanced air system I'll be installing next.

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And removed. Always scarry to do at night during the week. We won't have hot water if it's not sealed propperly....

 

[Hostyle]

Great update! That's one of the reasons why I do plumbing work on a Saturday morning, then I've got the rest of the day to correct any of my mistakes

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

I've the bad habbit to get easily enthusiastic and ten to see if I can find my limits. So a few weeks ago I signed up for a 25km trailrun with over 700 altitude meters in Belgium. Since I just ran a new PR on the Eindhoven half-marathon I'd thought it should be nice challenge. Then life came in the way and I didn't train much.

Last weekend was the day:

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It was fun! Since I've never done something like this before I held back a bit and after 2.5 hours I crossed the line. It sure was something different to what I am used to but I felt great at the finish and secondly I finished well before the start of the 10k trail which some friends signed up for. Did I say I have the bad habbit of pushing my limits? So I quickly signed up for the 10k and ran that too. It's Wednessday now and I'll have to admit I still have some sore mussles. Guess that it didn't help that I went climbing Monday evening .

Seeing the progress on the house and garage makes me want to make the promise that I'll focus on the house now and not signup to stuff like this for the next months.

As expected I didn't get much done on the house but I'll update anyhow because it might give me some motivation for the needed focus and it might be fun for the overseas readers to see how stuff was built overhere in 1969. I'm working on the study and go into the beginning of installation of the balance air system. The upper floor bedrooms will all get a forced fresh air vent in the far corners so the fresh flow travels through the complete room. It will exit the room under the door and continou to the bathroom and toilet where the extraction points will be.

For the study I need to install a 125mm air tube in the ceiling. I need to drill a hole bigger than I have equipment for so I'll just do it the hard way and drill a lot of holes and punch the center out.

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Sounds easy. But then I started drilling and discovered that there are air pockets in the flooring.

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The pockets and shape of the filled "bricks" doesn't help with trying to drill straight. Out came the Fein tool to open the ceiling and take a look. I did drill one hole straight through so I can use that for reference and to be able to drill from the attic down now. That should be a lot more comfortable.

Last monday I took delivery of the basics to get a feel of installing the ventilation tubing. I'll try to get the air vent inlet installed during the evenings this week. The next picture shows the inside of the air vent inlet. It has foam to reduce the ventilation noise and is fully adjustable to controll the flow. (sorry for the fuzzy phone picture)

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I also started on preparation of the power supplies but I'll get into that next time. It's way different on our side of the pond so you'll like the next update if you're interested in different construction methods.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

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It's one ugly hole but there is light on the other side and the ventilation pipe fits through it. Small steps but that's how you tick off a project. (It's a miracle that the children just slept through all of this.)

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

I was able to put some work in again last night so let's show you guys how electronics are done over here. We have those cute brick homes. There is some history here to why we built this way. Most of you know a bit about the Netherlands and our fight against water. That's all about location. And that location is also what you will find all through our culture. So when we started building homes people used what's available in their surroundings. Since our country is very flat and is basically a river delta with a lot of mud. That's what we used. The first homes were built of a wooden structure filled with peat bog. Later we started making our own stones with baked river mud.

There sure are made a lot of improvements over the centuries but I believe the double brick walled buildings are a heritage of the availability of materials way back. In modern construction we use a lot better and materials which make more sense. However the point of this short peak into history is that I have to work with the traditional inner wall built with bricks. Which requires a lot of work when you're doing electrical work, or should I say when you're renovating. Since brick walls tend to crack when sagging, expanding, shrinking etc.

That's what happened to the floor: sagging so the wall cracked. Bells should have been ringing when I saw that one of the walls in our future study was dressed with a sheat of board. When stripping the room I found this:

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I guess I can't really blame the previous owners:

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This crack was behind the heating lines in the corner:

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Which became this:

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And there was a long crack in the middle of the wall between the windows. Let's investigate the root cause:

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And in the far corner I've opened up the cracks as well to be able to fortify them before stucco.

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Concerning the electrics: You can see where I drilled holes in the wall (12 of them between the windows). I'll glue in some mounting pots so that the switches will be flush to the walls. Then I'll recess tube into the wall to accept the wiring. This way you'll always be flexible to change the wiring which we do every year here in The Netherlands. (basic construction is so overkill here).

Anyway that's for the next episode of this turtle speed build.

 

[M-technik-3]

I didn't get a lot of time enjoying that. It was real fun though. I found a few drops of fuel below the car and put it in the garage immediately. It turned out that the fuel hard lines were toast. So I tore them off. Then discovered that the brake hard line may have some issues too. So I took that off as well. But to get that out I need to ditch the fuel tank. That has rust too, so needs to be replaced. To get the tank out I needed to remove the rear axle.

Then I started looking at the body and that's toast. So I took the seats and carpet out. Everything that I had replaced 10 years ago by a 'professional' needs to be cut out and replaced again. So this is becoming a horror story.

I talked to my wife and some friends about it and I walked in the garage about a dozen times. Sat down stared at it, tried to get to work to fix it in a temporary way like everybody was telling me to do but I just can't. I placed a large order for replacement parts at the dealer and will be doing this the only way it should be done, the right way.

So I'm in for a steep leaning curve for handling sheet metal. Let's mimic one of my heroes here: MP&C.

I guess putting pictures here of large rusted piles of **** won't do much good until I really get going.
!

Too many projects - I know that feeling.

Looking forward to photos of the E30. Keep up the good work!

Gregor

Sad to hear, my Hartge H26 and my M-tech I rusted out while I was stationed in Bitburg, Kept a bunch of parts but they gave life to US cars, now my E30 languishes in the garage too awaiting an engine swap.

My e30 M3 sits in the storage.

Oh ps if you are not aware there is an e30 site called www.r3vlimited.com that is pretty good.

 

[polexican23]

holy can of worms.

Yup, i would burn it down. damn, its brick. carelessly stored TNT

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Sad to hear, my Hartge H26 and my M-tech I rusted out while I was stationed in Bitburg, Kept a bunch of parts but they gave life to US cars, now my E30 languishes in the garage too awaiting an engine swap.

My e30 M3 sits in the storage.

Oh ps if you are not aware there is an e30 site called www.r3vlimited.com that is pretty good.

M-technik-3, I was a regular at E30tech like you were but Chris killed that website. Since I'm no longer really focussed at the E30 and almost everything that can be done to an E30 is already done by someone and published on the net, I'm not really motivated to post my efforts. Perhaps when I will really dive into it again I'll make an account on r3v. But mostlikely I'll just update here on the garagejournal. It should be quite the project.

If you happen to find a good M-tech one front spoiler let me know. I have one but it is all torn-up and I rather start fresh. The car is an original Mtech one and everything is there except the front spoiler.

holy can of worms.

Yup, i would burn it down. damn, its brick. carelessly stored TNT

Yeah that little room really is a can of worms. I hope to have it done in a couple of weeks. Then it's on to the next project, (I need to get that balanced air ventilation system going!).

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Well the worms didn't stop moving just yet.

I wanted to have a direct UTP-link to the home network so we will have a faster then with wifi. So I planned a direct cable tube from the room down to the first floor. Should have taken me 30 minutes top. Drill a hole, cut the ditch in the bricks, put the tube in and you're done. Unless you hit a power cable.... Well that can happen, so new location new try. BAM! All lights go out again! I hit another cable....

How big is the chance to have this happen again??

Apparently really big because I hit one again with the third hole I drilled. So now I have three cables 15cm deep in the concrete that are exposed and I need to fill this with wet concrete. And the wires are exposed....


So **** out comes the hammer and chisel:

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Yeah now I understand.

When looking closely. The guy that welded the gasline didn't care much about the electricity. The heat he created fried the electricity line/tubes that are next to it.

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But any way everything is in just in time for the stucco guy.

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But hell, this isn't over yet. The stucco guy gave me a call that the old plaster doesn't hold so everything needs to come off. A job is not worth doing if you ain't doing it right. So let get that **** off.....

See you in a couple days....

 

[Hostyle]

Thanks... Now I'm really looking forward to our planned renovation of our living room/kitchen. Not

Our house has been built out in 1974. I guess that was the time of many bodges like your newspaper isolation. I'm seriously tempted to rip a lot/most of it out and start fresh.

Good luck on the further carefull demolition.

 

[polexican23]

worms? worms? this is full on Giant Gippsland earthworms

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Thanks... Now I'm really looking forward to our planned renovation of our living room/kitchen. Not

Our house has been built out in 1974. I guess that was the time of many bodges like your newspaper isolation. I'm seriously tempted to rip a lot/most of it out and start fresh.

Good luck on the further carefull demolition.

Thanks. I think you have the right approach: rip it all out and start over. We're doing that too. After the study we'll continue in the bath room. It'll be completely torn down and rebuild.

There's actually a date on the newpaper I took out: 1989

worms? worms? this is full on Giant Gippsland earthworms

I googled them Gippslanders and I think you made a good comparison there.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Ok, that took a while but it's done. The Gipplanders roared their heads one more time when I first saw the room in day light and I discovered some splatters on the stucco.

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I called the guy and he came back the same day to fix the screw-up. Good service.

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In the mean time I've been working on the ventilation system. It'll be installed in the attic so i order to reach the first floor I'll need to run some tubes through one of the build in cabinets.

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Learning from my mistakes I first started breaking into the floor by hand to make sure I didn't damage any electrical lines. It was a good workout and I got the job done.

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On to the next update, to bring this old house into the next century. Making it CO2 neutral.

 

[Fast914]

Wonderful thread so thank you for putting all of your efforts in...particularly when you are as busy as you are with family / work.....1:38 in the Half....I don't know how old you are but congratulations....my last half was a 1:46 and I was a heck of a lot younger than I am now!!!

 

[Dave_Car_Guy]

Wow, you are one dedicated and talented handyman! After seeing all that concrete and brick you've had to work though, I'll never again complain about having to pull some new wires behind a little basic drywall!

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Wonderful thread so thank you for putting all of your efforts in...particularly when you are as busy as you are with family / work.....1:38 in the Half....I don't know how old you are but congratulations....my last half was a 1:46 and I was a heck of a lot younger than I am now!!!

I think 'busy' is mostly a relative term. Which is especially true when you read through some of the guys work here on the Journal (MC&P, Sakurama, ERodz). But as long as you're not wasting time watching television and spend your awake hours doing things that matter to you. You're on the right track. When that's the baseline the rest is a matter of priorities: family, work, hobby's. If you get the balance right, life is a lot of fun and you can get a lot done. The only thing that can stress me out is when that balance is threatened eventhough it might be by new well ment oppertunities. Like the offer I recently got to become the department manager in a year. It would mean a nice raise and challenge but will also push the envelope again. The question is what would the new equilibrium look like and will we be content with it as a family?

Sorry for the rambings... It feels like "a dear diary" story. It's really keeping me busy.

To answer your question: I'm 34. And 1:46 sure isn't bad either! I'm thinking I should give the half marathon another shot somewhere around april/may. I've booked a guided trip to climb Mont Blanc in June. So I'm currently hard into training for that. To set a mark I've enlisted myself to the full marathon in Rotterdam in April. I've ran it earlier in 2014 and I'm determined to beat my previous time by an hour . So I'm thinking that around april/june I'll be in the best physical shape I've ever been.

Wow, you are one dedicated and talented handyman! After seeing all that concrete and brick you've had to work though, I'll never again complain about having to pull some new wires behind a little basic drywall!

I'm honored to have you guys here. I read both of your garage builds and have to say that both of you have an inspiring story to tell! Thanks for sharing.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

Progress is slow like you guys are used to, but there is help underway for a near future project. (Yes, that's a cliff hanger...)

In the mean time the study stucco is still drying so no movement there. I turned my focus to the ventilation system and mainly the built-in cabinet in one of the childrens room. I was lucky to be able to spend some hours on it without the kids around so I could make some progress.

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It looks like I only hang both air ducts and that's true. But to my defense I had to open the holes in the floor a lot more because I hit some rebar 15mm in diameter. That was a bit too much to my liking to cut out. The I needed to re-route the drain of the central heating. And lasty I needed to align the vents in 3d because of their connection to the ventilation at the study and to the other side. But it's all spot on so although it looks like I achieved very little I'm feeling good about it!

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The open pipe at the T-split facing forward is to be able to service (clean) the inner ducts later on.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

I'm hoping to pick-up the pace a bit. I just got approval to my aplication to work a day less. I won't be able to spend it fully on the house because I'll be baby-sitting my youngest but I'm planning to do some father-son projects, or do some work around the house so I can make better use of the evenings. Also, you can't start early enough to use your hands right?

Also I've finaly accepted the loooooong time schedule to get the BMW finished. I just can't cope with outsourcing the work since it requires so many skills I want to master. So I've been thinking about and test driving all kind of cars for the past months. Last weekend I made the choice and bought a nice little (read: cheap road-tax) Peugeot 206 RC or GTi180 as it's called in other countries. It's not as fun or fast as the E30 but it will spice my cravings and feed my hunger just enough hopefully. So it won't be a replacement but is just good enough for a temperarily stand-in. I'll see if I can post a pic if you guys want to. It needs a bit of attention but I'm happy to have the garage do that for me now since I'm not emotionally attached to it (yet).

 

[xtremek]

WOW. I thought my driveway was rough. You got me beat...... and that's saying something.

 

[E12-535iTurbo]

WOW. I thought my driveway was rough. You got me beat...... and that's saying something.

Sorry xtremek, I don't really understand what you mean here? I guess because English is not my native language.



This is above the built in cabinet from a few posts back. The vertical pipes are going through the floor into that cabinet. It's in the attic behind the storage cabinets. I'm thinking to make that storage cabinet (with the blue mat) into a hut for the childeren. Put some comics, a light and some pillows in there and it will be an awsome hide-away.

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You can see where I had to remove a part of the wall between the front and rear attic. I've seccured the beam in place by connecting it with a threaded rod to the beam above it.

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This is looking the other way. It connects the study and the attic:

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[E12-535iTurbo]

After reading the progress some of you guys make I again feel inadequate and my experiment to post on a ragular base to see if it would boost my progress doesn't seem to work. So I'll post one baby step again and then only report back if I actually made some decent progress again.

I mostly finished the storage for holiday stuff. The ventilation pipes to the study are running behind the card board:

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Hopefully I'll get something significant done before Mont Blanc or Rotterdam but we'll see.