I finished my office refresh

[Certificate of Excellence]

I finally finished my downstairs office refresh. I painted, tore out the old 70s carpet LOL installed a laminate floor and installed a gang box for and hung my tv on the wall.

Now I have to reinstall my shelving and put everything back in there which is not easy because I have a lot of junk LOL. But I am both relieved that it is done and happy with how it turned out.

Next on the honey list; do the same thing to the guest bedroom across the hall. Oh well, at least I have enough paint and three cases of laminate pergo flooring to get started with.
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I may install a ceiling fan in that room at some point. It would be pretty easy running 110 from the tv gang box to a cfr box. I’d only have to go through one joist I think. Oh well, a project for another day

 

[Froggy814]

I like the cabinet of NES cartridges!

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

LOL it was the one thing I opted to keep attached to the wall and paint around lol but yeah, there’s my entire childhood NES, SNES, Genesis, Atari2600, Wii, n64 and some c64 carts in there as well as random winbox, apple software.

If anyone took it off, there would be a big square of the old dingy color lol. No worries though as I still have 3gallons of a 5gal bucket of candlelight beige left that I used+ the paint code so anyone can make it should a future purchaser need it (I have made a bible of sorts of all the weird idiosyncrasies that this old house has + color choices/codes etc. the electric panel box that was NOT labeled grrr . What a pain remapping what all those dang switches did - that was a sucky job especially in an old split level with three sets of stairs - just woof. Anyways, future owner will benefit from this bible ( who’s kidding - me & my musho brain too lol).

That TV is 66 pounds which is so heavy! I had to buy an extra heavy duty two stud tv mount because I need all that I/o in the back to connect all my retro gaming boxes. The i/o is pretty awesome with stuff modern flatscreens just don’t have. This old thick boy Phillips has rca/composite/coax/usb/hdmi/s-video/digital audio, etc. and lots of it both rear facing and side facing. I’d have replaced it years ago if it weren’t for the wonderful and convenient I/o situation it has going on. I bought it in 2009 and have been lugging it around since. I don’t think they make them like that anymore sadly. As an example, my big fancy schmancy Samsung 65" smart tv I bought a few years back already has an entire line of failed pixels top to bottom. Juxtapose that to this old Phillips that is just a tank and has all kinds of awesome i/o and has lasted two moves in 17 years.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Put in a cable routing pass through. I may double it with a second as I have 9 different consoles & a mini I connect to it so that’s a lot of cables for a single gang pass through.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Reinstalled my shelving and desk that I had to disassemble to get out of my room.

Starting to recognize my office

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Got my music gear/amps etc back in and some more of the bones in place. Changed it up a bit and I’m happy with the new placement of my stereos and a few of my amplifier&cabinets.

This is the fun part I guess lol. It’s curriculum night for my kiddos so I have to stop for now and will pick up this evening. Oh yeah, can’t forget the Super Mega Ultra Fudgy brownies I have in the oven. Wife requested them yesterday so can’t forget about those lol.

 

[This Does Not Compute]

Looks like you went with Pergo for the flooring, how's the quality? I'm looking into options for laminate and haven't seen that name in a long time.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Looks like you went with Pergo for the flooring, how's the quality? I'm looking into options for laminate and haven't seen that name in a long time.

I’ve really liked it for a number of reasons. The quality of the material has been fantastic - Of all the floating floors I’ve done, this pressed composite material has been the sturdiest. It also cut very cleanly with zero chipping on my circular table saw with appropriate toothed blade. It has the pad material built into it which is really handy. Having to lay pad and then try and build a floor over that flopping around is an huge PITA. All you have to be aware of is potentially adding a vapor barrier if you are below grade for radon gas -or mold/moisture. The joints come together quite cleanly - this part takes the most getting used to but when it comes together, it snaps together very tightly. I definitely recommend buying a high quality pull bar. My pull bar Ive had for about 15 years now started to bend under the stress of my hammer. It did the job but a nicer maybe a bit longer (2ft long) would have made things a bit easier. Lastly the look is excellent - I love the wider board and the coloration+texture makes this look like actual wood floor. It’s an impressive manufactured flooring material system.

Pergo is on the higher side per sqft in my neck of the woods but this one was on sale for only a $1.99sqft at my Lowe’s which I thought was a bargain price so bought in. I initially picked up 10 boxes for a little over $500 bucks but I have 3.5 boxes left to start on my guest bedroom after I get all my junk back into my office, so between some fresh paint and this new floor, per room I think I’m probably in about $275-300 bucks not including my own labor of course. After using this stuff, I am a fan of Pergo flooring. That is for sure.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Having the Herculean task of puting everything back has given me a great opportunity to create a “free pile” . Essentially stuff I will be giving away at the free tables for the upcoming September retro computer fest in my town. I wanted to open up my office with less clutter so this is going a long way to doing just that. I tested a couple Quicksilvers I had rescued and got them ready.

This one I had in parts so I put it back together and noticed one of the latches broke off so took 5 minutes to steel resin epoxy it back on.

I also have a MDD that I’ll put on the free pile. It is all there except it had a capacitor knocked off the logic board that will need to be soldered back on so it is clearly labeled PROJECT lol

To Free up even more room I am pushing all my windows boxes to my garage bench that is mostly winboxes anyways and I have the room there so it workes out. Likely a few winboxes will make it to the free table as well lol. Anyways, as of right now my free pile looks like this.

There’s some doodads in that bag too like a laptop cooler, a fw400 external hdd enclosure, some duplicate software CDs etc. but I am hoping these machines will get picked up.

OH YEAh, the speaker wire terminal on my 90s Cambridge sound surround sound system for my main MX25 gaming box broke off which was a big bummer so I have that thing in parts in the other room while I source new connectors and solder on some handy new leads so I can get that back up and running - I really miss its sound. Anyways, there’s always some collateral damaged when moving/reconnecting my setup.

 

[Froggy814]

Mactober fest?

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Conversely, I guess I can offer those up here too but I assume everyone here already has all the retro Mac they can handle lol. S&H might be a bit steep but I’d box one up good n tight (take the legs off, lots of foam etc.) if anyone is looking for a QS in cont US.

I’ve pretty much got most of my stuff back in at this point BUT I still have to connect everything via cables etc. but I figure I can do that piece-meal as I recommence putzing.