Couple of pics from our old place, and another milestone reached!

No real reason to post anything today, except I noticed that almost simultaneously the blog has hit 150,000 hits and 100 followers! Thanks everyone, for taking an interest in our house building project, and keeping us on our toes with many relevant comments and questions. We hope that you've enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) our blog, and that you might have picked up any hints and tips along the way, to avoid finding out things the hard way!

Anyway, I've been doing a lot of cleaning out of my junk in the last few weeks, selling things on ebay and various specialist forums. It stems from a video article I saw on NHK TV - dansharii.

"断捨離 (danshari) means to throw away unnecessary stuff. It's one of the keywords of the recent years in Japan.

"断" (dan) - to cut out unnecessary stuff. ex) receipts, shopping bags, coupons, etc...
"捨" (sha) - to throw away junk. ex) clothes, books, toys, etc...
"離" (ri) - to step away from your obsessions. ex) souvenirs, anniversary gifts, etc..."

The last thing I got rid of was my projector screen from the old house. Ahhh, memories - this is the first house we lived in, bought in 2005 in leafy Mitcham. Kinda wished we'd kept it instead of sold it, but we wouldn't be able to afford our current dream house if we did. Made many beginner's mistakes when buying this first house, including the following:

• Didn't check the windows opened - the last bloke painted them shut.
  
• Had two aircon split systems - one didn't work.
• Didn't confirm there was a double carport - more like 1.6 carport!
• Somehow managed to ignore or downplay the fact it was on a busy road, next to a petrol station, with a bus stop right out the front and a school 100m away. Let's just say it wasn't exactly the quiet life!

However, still have very fond memories of the place, made good resale and now it's an osteopath practice.

Back to the screen - here's a pic of it in our old house. The layout of the house was OK for living but terrible for home theatre, which is why I have a floorstanding speaker placed conveniently in front of a sliding door. The screen is mounted about 2ft from the wall, so when it drops down, it drops in front of the TV - that way, you don't have to move any of the speakers. This was a Brightvision 120" (305cm) screen, white glass bead with matt frame and with in-line and IR remotes. I got an electrician friend to wire up a ceiling powerpoint so the power cable could be hidden. Not a bad screen for the price (around $200 in 2005), but not suitable for our current house - too small, and 4:3 format instead of 16:9 or Cinemascope which is my ultimate desire. Plus now I've got a full wall neutral grey projection screen (just google it for more information), I don't think I could go back to a full glass-bead white screen!


What I loved about the house is that despite being small, it had very clever storage. On the left of the pic you can see built-in bookshelves, perfect size for books, dvds, cds, toys etc. I imagine you could retrofit these builtins to most houses with plaster stud wall construction - cut out plaster, remove and relocate noggins, install builtins, perhaps repaint walls. Maybe a project to undertake in many years if/when we run out of storage in our new place!

Final picture, screen down at night. BTW, anyone considering a game console, don't buy an xbox360, they're still rubbish, noisy, overheating pieces of cr@p that'll break down 1 minute after the "Warranty" expires. Google red ring of death, then go buy a Sony PS3.


So if you buy an xbox360, more likely than not it'll be part of your next dansharii very soon!

T&T