Home Improvement # 2

OK, after my last post, here's the next set of photos of the bedroom renovations. In here, the skirting has primer on it, likewise most of the window frames [just waiting for the weather to improve to complete this].

The walls have their colour on them. I've decided that painting concrete block walls is not much fun :-) although a couple of walls have both top coats on now. Just waiting for a couple or 3 hours to put the 2nd coat on the remaining walls.

Once this is done I'll be able to put the top coats on the skirting boards, the door, then finish off the window frames.

 

Home improvement

I'm not sure how many of you remember the 1990's sitcom Home Improvement, but I'm been trying to finish off some improvements to my own place. The last room to do [and the first one I am doing mostly by myself...!] is the bedroom. I'll try to not destroy the room as often happened in Home Improvement, although there are times where more power and an enhanced tool or 2 would be nice!

After trying to get motivated for some time, I completed the sanding a few days ago, and today I put some paster on the bits of the wall that needed it [small holes...], put some Selley's No-More-Gaps in a gap [obviously] and put a primer coat of paint on the door.

I'll probably need to leave the plaster until late tomorrow to dry [some of it is a bit thick], then tidy it up. I might get to put the primer coat onto the window frames tomorrow and if things go really well with the plaster, I might get to put the primer on the skirting boards. We shall see!

Anyway, here's a couple of photos of the work in progress. You can just see the wet plaster in the first photo below the left-hand side of the window.

Visit to Auckland

I spent last weekend in Auckland. Mostly this was so I could catch up with some friends visiting from Canada, but was also an opportunity to catch up with people at Mountainside Lutheran Church, Auckland Aero Club and to have a quick look around the city.

Photos this time are as follows:

Photo of Andrew, Anita and baby Tahi [a big Kia Ora to Anita's colleagues and students - be nice to your teacher :-)]
Auckland's iconic sight, Rangitoto Island
Auckland CBD from Mount Wellington
3 x pictures of/ from One Tree Hill

Ronnie Corbett and Harry Enfield in this incredibly funny and fruity sketch!!

Christmas Holiday in Whanganui: post 2

After the visit to the Durie Hill Tower, another "must" is Virginia Lake. Virginia Lake used to be the main water supply for Whanganui [many years ago], but nowadays is a renowned small lake with ducks, geese, pukekos and various other wildlife present, as well as an aviary, gardens and more. The ducks and geese all look healthy - I'm not sure that my comments of "that would be nice for dinner tonight" were appreciated though... :-)

The following pictures are from around the lake, and then some of the birds in residence. Most of the birds were really friendly, and happy to pose for a photo or two!

Christmas Holiday in Whanganui

This year I went up to Whanganui to visit my folks for a few days. It was nice relaxing time, with a bit of "geek" stuff to do [setting up a secure wifi router], and a good chance to catch up with a number of other rellies.

Amazingly, the weather was very good all bit one day - that "one day" was windy and wet... much like Wellington is on a regular basis!! :-)

We did get out the see some of the sights. In this first post, there are pictures of, and from, the Durie Hill Tower. it's around 30 meters [100 feet] above the ground level. You'll see from the pictures that it is also a great vantage point to see over Whanganui.

Photos are of the Durie Hill Tower and of Whanganui, starting from the river mouth. Enjoy!

Sunset photo

I have recently been playing with stitching photos using the free Canon software. Here's one of the images. Obviously I have a lot to learn about getting the photos right in the first place - while I was using mostly manual settings, it looks like I left the auto-focus on... doh! Oh well, more practice over the next week or so might produce a better image!

Remember to click on the image to get a much larger version!

Scenery at Masterton

During this last weekend I have been at Masterton for the Flying New Zealand regional flying competitions. While most of the photos were of aircraft and the people, I did get some evening scenic pictures.

A side effect of taking these photos was to get a better understanding of how my Canon EOS 450D works... basically, as soon as I turn on one of the picture modes [such as Landscape], I lose the ability to capture the RAW images... hmmm, oh well, one lesson learnt!

Any, I hope you like the photos! Remember to click on the images for a larger view.

Fireworks

It's the day after Guy Fawkes and the fireworks are still going off. Here are a few pictures from this evening. Unfortunately they were a bit of a rush job, and I didn't have a tripod, but I think they still came out OK.

Auckland visit

I spent last weekend in Auckland visiting friends, airports and a couple of other places.

Here are a couple of scenic type photos. The first three are Pukekos... scavenging around Auckland International Airport and desperately trying to avoid Maria, her gun and her desire to rid the world of these lovely birds :-)

Following this are three pictures from Mt Wellington - the crater [look closely, there are at least 10 fat and happy looking bunnies in there if you're hungry!!!], a tree, then an "iconic" picture of Auckland looking across to Rangitoto Island.

Enjoy!