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Thanks. By my notes, I started all this on April 17. It started with pulling baseboard, carpet, padding, tack strips and a million staples. Then paint. Then floor leveling. And then the flooring. I have a 16 foot wall that needs baseboard first. Once that is on, I can slide the TV stand out on plastic sliders. Will need help from my neighbor to pull TV out of back room and mount it. I have pads for everything. Couch is almost 300 lbs. I have a lever gadget to hold it up while I slip the pads under. I might be able to block up the couch on 2x4's to get it high enough to pull the dollies out and get the pads under. Vacuum first though and dust mop. God the sawdust!

Tom I have found sheets/strips of ply underlayment are great for dragging fridges, stoves etc over newly laid vinyl. Just put strips all where the legs are going over the area you want to drag something heavy until you get it close to where its going to live. No need to jack anything up to put on 2x4s under. Seen people drag things over newly laid floors with a bit of upside down carpet square. Pity they didn't shake the stones and sandy dust out of the carpet first. Idiot proof my way
 
Thanks. By my notes, I started all this on April 17. It started with pulling baseboard, carpet, padding, tack strips and a million staples. Then paint. Then floor leveling. And then the flooring. I have a 16 foot wall that needs baseboard first. Once that is on, I can slide the TV stand out on plastic sliders. Will need help from my neighbor to pull TV out of back room and mount it. I have pads for everything. Couch is almost 300 lbs. I have a lever gadget to hold it up while I slip the pads under. I might be able to block up the couch on 2x4's to get it high enough to pull the dollies out and get the pads under. Vacuum first though and dust mop. God the sawdust!

Tom I use strips of underlayment placed like railway tracks to drag fridges stoves etc over newly laid vinyl floors
No need to lift heavy things onto bits of 4x2s which could fall off. Idiot proof
 
Started installing baseboard. Driving my dog nuts with air nailer. Poor buddy.
 

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Tom I use strips of underlayment placed like railway tracks to drag fridges stoves etc over newly laid vinyl floors
No need to lift heavy things onto bits of 4x2s which could fall off. Idiot proof

The couch is on a pair of dollies. I need to lift the couch to get them out and drop the 8 legs onto pads. And the frame is 3 inches above the floor.
 

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I do that too, Jon. 1/8 inch Masonite/Hardboard makes for great tracks.
I buy a 4 by 8 sheet and have the yard cut them into three 16" pieces. I always have another 16" piece from a prior purchase. (ya need four to make tracks) ;)
 
I got the couch on the floor safely and slipped felt pads under all 8 feet. Also slid the tv stand in. I have 3 pieces of baseboard to cut for area to right of fireplace. Then 2 closets and I’m done with baseboard.

Trim: I have 3 pieces of baby threshold to install at bedrooms. And then the surrounding baby threshold around fireplace. Bought 3 more tubes of PL Premium. Will need it for stairs.

I’m thinking 3 more weeks.

Just in time for my 26th annual trip to the Berkshires. Summer Star Party in Plainfield, Ma. I bring a 9x12 Kelty Parthenon 8 tent. Sleeps 1!
 
9x12, .........................sleeps one. I like that kind of tent. :D
Here's an early party for ya. This was an August image from 1996.
 

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I looked up optical illusion rugs on Amazon and discovered that most of these are not rug size. More like placemats. They have one that looks like stairs going down into oblivion. Was going to put it under another rug and show people I have a secret room.
 
Wowza! Very nice. That would not have been possible with a tent built for two.
I'll check you out.
I have a couple more up my sleeve.
Mine are on Kodachrome and without a telescope. I was never able to get that far.................. yup, ..............that old Kodachrome.
They took my Kodachrome away, o-yeah....
the day .........the music .........died. .......and my photography too. I loved that stuff. :)
I'll dig up a couple of my once in a lifetimes. Not because I'm all that good....... but because the stars were aligned. .........well not actually stars.
 
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Your knowledge of the skies scares me to death. Very impressive photos and info.
This is/was my tracker. Still have all of the parts. It was a non computer controlled (100% manual) motor driven tracker with only one object in mind. I wanted Hale Bopp. I wanted it bad. Them things don't come around often. Took me a year to learn how a crappy telescope tripod functions, then many months more time to modify the drive from a manual hand driven, to a variable motor driven drive.
The motor to drive the telescope tripod gear is what I call early Flintstone. It's composed of two Skill "twist" electric screwdrivers with the planetary gear drives coupled together.
The heads in those old cordless screwdrivers are made up of two sets of planetary gears. Four planetary gear sets stacked one on top of another together at about 4 volts, gave me about 2 RPM.
Now that 2 RPM speed was coupled to an old cordless drill head via a 36" Dremel tool flex/extension shaft.
All of that gear reduction twisted the gear on the telescope gears at about the right speed to take some photos.
Once I figured out the ideal tracking speed through trail and error, I was able to get 3 good shots of Hale Bopp with different lenses.
.................. my life was now complete. ;)

The stress of my self diagnosed OCD just about did me in. I just had to get photos of this comet. 3200 speed film was not in my plan. Anyone could do that. I wanted 200 speed film and it required 16 minute exposures with my F4lenses
While waiting a year and a half for Hale Bopp to arrive, I nabbed Hyakutake as I was fine tuning my contraption.
In 96 and 97, computer controlled motor drives and tracking systems were just arriving on the scene.
...and they were expensive.
...and I'm cheap.
...and I did it.
............my way. :D
 

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Everyone else here has seen these before either here or on a different site.
Waiting for Hale Bop, Hyakutake came around before I had the motor drive idea figured out. I think this was about a 4 minute exposure with a 50mm lens and I turned the tracker by hand at about 2 rpm using a stopwatch as my guide.
 

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Everyone else here has seen these before either here or on a different site.
Waiting for Hale Bop, Hyakutake came around before I had the motor drive idea figured out. I think this was about a 4 minute exposure with a 50mm lens and I turned the tracker by hand at about 2 rpm using a stopwatch as my guide.

Nice shots. I remember both of them. Nothing like them since.
 
This is what I was after. It stayed in the sky for weeks, so I had a lot of time to get my rickety tracker figured out. I kept getting streaks instead of dots for the stars. I finally got it figured out 2 days before my last chance to take these images. The weather changed to cloudy for the next two weeks and I wouldn't have had another chance at it because it went below the horizon. These are 16 minute exposures with a 70-210 and a 300mm lens.
A few days earlier, I could have had Andromeda in the image.......... dang.
 

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