Author Topic: My collection boxed up and home construction photos  (Read 50720 times)

Offline Morgbug

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Re: Deconstructing a collection.
« Reply #15 on: January 31, 2005, 10:09 AM »
OK, stupid question time: what have you got stored in those tubs?  Do you bother keeping anything carded, or are you purley an opener?  There's no particular reason I ask, just snoopy.   ;)

Not at all a stupid question, what else could I possibly own.  I'm stealing my own pictures from the snowtroopers.ca collection section:















Those pics at snowtroopers were taken probably 2 years ago, so everything I've acquired since then is not in the pics - more cinema scenes, more vehicles (I think I have 6-7 Tie Fighters now), generally more crap.  The nicer figures have since moved into star cases so that adds quite a bit of space as well.  Lightsabers, boxed beasts, some boxed 12" figs, more basic figures, empty boxes as well.  Some McFarlane stuff, Marvel Legends, just too much crap. 

Lots of the single carded figures have since been opened, but I can't bring myself to open the orange carded POTF2 stuff.  Yeah, it's fairly hideous in a he-man sense, but it's my "vintage" stuff, that got me hooked on this stupid habit anyway. 
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Offline Morgbug

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Re: Deconstructing this collection - pics added
« Reply #16 on: January 31, 2005, 01:03 PM »
Most of my Simpsons stuff, at work ;)
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Offline JesseVader08

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Re: Deconstructing a collection.
« Reply #17 on: January 31, 2005, 05:07 PM »
Lots of the single carded figures have since been opened, but I can't bring myself to open the orange carded POTF2 stuff.  Yeah, it's fairly hideous in a he-man sense, but it's my "vintage" stuff, that got me hooked on this stupid habit anyway. 

You know, the orange carded figures are some of my favourites.  Certainly not because of their accurate sculpts, but simply because they re-ignited the collecting passion that I had as a kid.  As well, I think their He-Man likeness adds a certain uniqueness that I just can't get enough of.  Even though I keep everything carded, one of these days I'm going to track down a second collection of these figures to open and show off their buffness!   :)

Offline Morgbug

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Re: Deconstructing this collection - pics added
« Reply #18 on: January 31, 2005, 11:53 PM »
I think we're going to eventually reach a point where we all have at least two or three versions of the modern stuff: He-Man from the orange/green/holo/FF collection; quasi-modern with cruddy poses (Ep I, Saga) and post-modern from OTC on including VOTC. 
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Offline Morgbug

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Re: Deconstructing this collection - pics added
« Reply #19 on: June 29, 2005, 05:14 PM »
OK, I've pretty much lost track of everything and anything I own now.  The stuff on display still (being packed up slowly) is ok, but carded stuff is just a smozzle. 

Going through some cabinets here at work I've just got so much stuff.  There's a couple of the ****** silver Vaders here.  Would have thought I'd taken one home already, but why two here??  Extra Clone wars figures, POTF2 etc.  I have a bin with trade stuff, but jeez, there's so much lying around elsewhere it's just disheartening.  I may just unload all the crap in my office and find out after we move whether I actually still need it ::)

BTW, we are indeed moving.  We'll be building a house over the summer and fall and move in, depending on delays, sometime between November and January.  I don't think I'll have any display space for over a year, so that's going to be fairly disturbing during that time frame.  Collecting just to put it away won't be much fun :-\
Minivans: a sign of the apocalypse.

Offline JesseVader08

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Re: Deconstructing this collection - pics added
« Reply #20 on: June 29, 2005, 05:44 PM »
I don't think I'll have any display space for over a year, so that's going to be fairly disturbing during that time frame.  Collecting just to put it away won't be much fun :-\

Over a year.  Ouch.  I've been without display space for a couple of months and that's been killing me.  Everything ROTS has gone straight into boxes - I hate it!  But knowing that there's an eventual end to it and scheming up ways to display my stuff keeps me going.  So hopefully that'll keep you going too. 

What kind of house will you be building?  Any ideas as to how much space you might have for display when it's done?

Offline Morgbug

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Re: Deconstructing this collection - pics added
« Reply #21 on: June 30, 2005, 11:36 AM »
Jesse, Here's the basic homeplan.  We're doing a few modifications to it: fourth bedroom rather than loft; heritage pillars in the dining room and the abysmally small garage >:( will be made larger.

The two upper floors will be a total of 2400 ft2 and a  full basement (which may be finished during construction, depending on cost) so a total of 3600 ft2.  My room will be in the basement and should roughly correspond to the size and location of the living room on the main floor.  The TV area we'll build in the basement will run under the dining room and family room.  My plan is to have the tv and speakers set such that I can access the back of them from my SW room for ease of wiring.  I'm hoping to have a swinging panel as a wall in the SW room that can just open up, make any adjustments to the wires, then swing the wall closed again.  I'm not positive how to make that work and don't want to give up useable wall space for display, so we'll see.  I may just build a closet opposite any shelving for AV equipment that may better suit the access needs.  Seriously contemplating a projector for the basement rather than a DLP/Plasma/whatever since the wall should largely be flat and the room sufficiently dark to make a projector show well. 

I guess that means the room will be about the same size as I currently have, maybe a bit larger.  Around 12x13 +/- a bit here or there. 
« Last Edit: July 1, 2005, 11:45 PM by Morgbug »
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Offline JesseVader08

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Re: Deconstructing this collection - pics added
« Reply #22 on: July 1, 2005, 02:26 AM »
Looks like it'll be a beautiful house!  The projector is a great idea - a dark room in the basement should make for a nice setting for a quality picture.  And 12' x 13' should be a nice amount of space for your goodies.

But why wait for a year to complete the toy room?  Surely your wife will be gungho to finish that room first.   :P

Offline Morgbug

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Re: Deconstructing this collection - pics added
« Reply #23 on: July 1, 2005, 11:53 PM »
Well, I think it's going to take long enough to do it that it will amount to a year :-\  Like I said, we may finish the basement while the house is under construction, but we'll see.  We kind of like doing stuff ourselves and it saves cash too.  Some walls and drywall plus electrical isn't all that hard. 

Plus we'll be moving sometime around Christmas, either before or after, so we have to pack up here, unpack there, plus going to Vancouver for Christmas.  Crazy busy. 

Summer may interfere because we're fairly likely to put a pool in again.  We love the one we currently have, so I doubt we can survive summers without one (though if you've seen the flooding here lately, we could probably just swim down teh street. :o)

I'm dying to have that room though.  I've been muttering about moving for well over a year now and haven't really put much new out.  I tend to get stuff and box up  90% of what I have anyway.  It's kind of depressing really.  It will be fantastic to be able to put out all the GG, MR and Kubrick stuff.  Having more than just half my Marvel Legends stuff will be mighty satisfying.  Just so much crap aching to see the light of day. 

I've seen some really nice LCD TV's lately and really, do you need something larger than 62"?  If a projector can give me a larger screen with the same resolution though, that could be mighty cool 8)
Minivans: a sign of the apocalypse.

Offline Morgbug

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Re: Deconstructing this collection - pics added
« Reply #24 on: July 27, 2005, 12:11 AM »
We finalized the purchase of the home we're building just this evening.  Dropped another $9000 for the remainder of the deposit and made our final selections on a lot of things like the bigger garage, additional bedroom, etc. 

Sadly both the builder and the people doing our hardwood floors have suggested not finishing the basement for about a year after construction so that all the moisture can come out of the basement (not sure if this is a load of crap or not).  So it looks like it will be about 18 months from now before I see the bulk of my collection again. 

I packed up the good stuff - Riddell, Gentle Giant, vintage, Kubrick, Tomy and about half the marvel legends.  I still have 200-300 modern figs, another half the ML stuff plus unleashed and some miscellaneous crap to box up. 

Moving is stupid :-\
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Offline Morgbug

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Re: Deconstructing this collection - pics added
« Reply #25 on: February 8, 2006, 09:07 PM »
LOL, boy, this process is going slow.  I thought I'd pop in some pics from the construction of the house since I've had a couple of requests for them. 

You can see some of the crap I had out previously, though it was never all.  That's been reduced to the following:





And nine rubbermaid tubs residing in the crawl space.  Those are the 28 gallon size.  There's also some stuff that didn't make it into those tubs and are in some smaller tubs (15 gallon) plus a couple of cabinets that aren't packed up.  Not much left unpacked really and I should probably sell off whatever is left.



Anyway if you're married and you decide to build a house, you're about to find out just how much stress you can handle.  I can't tell you anything about building elsewhere, but builders here are idiots.  They are represented by real estate agents and (apologies if necessary) they are on about the same level as pond scum in my view.  They try to get you to sign bull**** forms that up prices and make you pay for **** you already paid for.  I'll spare you the gory details unless you ask. 

From the post preceding this, I see we signed the papers on July 27.  Our initial possession date was November first.  Suffice to say we missed that :P

Construction actually began on November 29 with the digging of the hole in the ground.  The foundation was poured on November 30th with snow already on the ground.


The foundation remained tarped and with heat blowing in to help the concrete set properly until December 07.


Not too much happened for about a week either but we reached this point on the 23rd of December.  At this point they were telling us are possession date would be February 28th. 



The above picture is the same date, December 23rd.  Just going to use that shot, taken from the living room looking up the stairs from different dates to give you some idea of the progress that can be made.  Take into consideration it's winter here, so progress is a wee tad slower than down south. 

Four days later they had the walls up for the second floor, on December 27th, much to my surprise, but it really wasn't THAT much work.


By the 31st of December they had the roof on, though no shingles at that point.


I can tell you this much, before the drywall goes up, the house looks absolutely massive inside, largely because you can see "through walls" to other rooms.  It's probably not a good idea to go in at this stage because once the drywall goes up, you wish your house was bigger.  It's still plenty big (2400 sq ft not including basement) but it feels small.

Here's that stairway photo again.


By January 16 the windows and doors are on (not the garage door though, that concrete for the floor and driveway have yet to be poured).  These pictures are taken in the dark because by the time I get back into the city from work at about 5:30 or so it's already dark at this time of year.  Kind of sucks but we get it back in the summer when the sun stays up until about 10:00.



On the same date they'd started the drywall around the stairway and into the foyer which is two stories high. 


By the 20th of January most of the house had been drywalled.  The homeplan is linked above and the following photos are of the kitchen (you can see the pantry in the left corner) and then the family room which are adjoining.  In the kitchen shot you can see the stairways to the basement, another 1200 sq ft of space.




For the rest of the main floor there's a den, bathroom, foyer, laundry area, living room and dining room which are beside each other.  My wife really wanted some fancy shmancy design features in the dining room and we got them.  The living room has a nice bay window as well, as does the bedroom immediately above it.

Dining room:


Living room:


Not too much has changed since then, largely because there was no hydroelectricity on the site and generators were limited for what they can do.  The house isn't yet heated, but once the hydro is in it will be and they can progress with a bunch of work that requires the house to be heated (drywall taping, painting, pouring the concrete in the basement and insulating those walls, etc.).  But that's only being put in now.  Remember that February 28th possession date?  Yeah, not happening.  We received a letter indicating we are delayed until somewhere May 15th and June 30th.   ::)  Thanks for being so specific.  I was on site today and the hydro is progressing pretty darn quick, so I think our possession date will move again, probably mid to late April.  Sadly we can't specify that date, we're sort of at their mercy (if they had any and they don't).  As soon as they're done, it's ours.  So we have to try and estimate the possession date of our house as well as we can so we don't get left out on the street.  Whee!

As of today a little happened.  There's been some detail work to the outside, the furnace is in (not yet working) and there's a massive trench out front where the hydro lines are going in.  Pretty cool actually.  The only other work that has gone on is some construction and drywalling for the fireplace.  Those pictures are below.





The guys working on the house from the plumbers to the electricians to the drywall dudes to the site supervisor have been great.  Answering tons of questions and being super nice and super  informative.  Without those dudes this would have been straight from hell.  The site supervisor is the guy whose answers I believe and he gave me a different possession date than the letter, more close to the April date I listed.  I have a feeling he'll be right, but we'll see. 

I'll bore you to tears more later.  I can't begin to explain the frustration of buying toys only to box them up though :'(  I leave them out for a couple of days after opening them to look at them, then into a ziplock baggie and away they go.  The Kubricks were horrible.  I popped the blue Kubrick out for about five minutes to look at him and now he's in a box.  Somewhere :-\  Fun stuff.
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Offline JesseVader08

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Re: My collection boxed up and home construction photos
« Reply #26 on: February 9, 2006, 02:09 AM »
Those are some great pics Brent.  I think you'll be really glad to have those in the future to see how everything progressed.

With our move to Kelowna, we've decided building a home is a stress we're not willing to deal with (the move to a different province and different jobs is enough for now  ;)), so I'll be quite content to buy an existing house.  Maybe someday we'll build, but not for now.

I don't envy having to box up your goodies right after getting them.  Not fun.  :'(

Offline Mikey D

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Re: My collection boxed up and home construction photos
« Reply #27 on: February 12, 2006, 01:01 PM »
It's not standard practice to Tyvek the entire house and just do the openings, Brent?  Around here, the entire house gets wrapped.  I thought the codes in Canada were a bit stricter with regards to air and vapor barriers.  Within the last couple of years, Massachusetts went to a stricter Energy code and I believe it was taken and modified from what the Canada codes say.  Of course, the commercial and residential codes are completely separate animals, but seeing a house without an entire Tyvek wrap looks weird to me.
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Offline Morgbug

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Re: My collection boxed up and home construction photos
« Reply #28 on: February 16, 2006, 10:50 PM »
You are right, the entire house will get Tyvek, they just haven't done so on our house yet.  A few of the houses in the area have it, but most do not yet.  To me it looks like they just laid the Tyvek in before doing some of the detail work to the outside.  I'd have thought it would be easier to do it all, but apparently not.  Considering with the windchill it's -44, they darn well better get it on there. 

Talked to the site supervisor today, Hydro is in, though not hooked up to the main grid yet, may be in a week.  Need to have the natural gas hooked up as well, then they'll be moving again.  His guess is we'll get possession around the end of April now, perhaps a little sooner.  I think he has way more of a clue than the main office. 

Now I just try to nail down a date that's convenient for us to move.  Later April is fine, mid-April is not. 
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Offline JesseVader08

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Re: My collection boxed up and home construction photos
« Reply #29 on: February 17, 2006, 12:37 AM »
Keep the pics coming when you can - I'll have to live vicariously through you and get excited for you as your house nears completion.  ;)