Narfi's Life after EU: The Prequel

Over the last two years I have not played much Entropia. I still log in every month or so, and still try to keep in touch with some of the people I know (though I am terrible at such things)

After having dedicated so much of my time for so many years the transition for me has been somewhat difficult but I feel that I am on a surge again with direction and enjoying new challenges and accomplishments.

Since Entropia was my first big obsession and I grew close with the community here, I thought I would share some of what I have been doing in a similar manner to how Jamiria has been doing with his 3d printing projects. I find it interesting to see what people around the world are doing as hobbies and projects so figured I would share as well. Worst case scenario is no one reads, best case is someone somewhere has something interesting to read while on the toilet.....

Goals and plans:
1. Get the basement finished as a stand alone apartment with separate entrance to be rented out for more income.
2. Build a boat with my son.
3. Build an airplane with my son before he is old enough to start learning to fly.

I have kept my skills, and gear in Entropia and a handful of CLDs, but have sold most of my property type 'assets' and withdrawn those funds to help fund these new projects. (in part.... I don't want anyone thinking I was able to withdraw enough to accomplish all of this :P )

The CLDs should be able to fund any casual playing I want to do up to an hour or two of hunting a week at the same level I had grown accustomed to grinding in the past. (tier 7 Stingury amped and full of dmg enhancers, roughly 1k cycled per hour if on the right mobs and density usually closer to 700ish casually grinding)

Not sure the best way to organize all of this, but I would like it somewhat organized. To start out I will be going back in time a few months pulling pictures from my phone as well as the boat building forum I am a member of to recreate what I have done so far. Then going forward will try to keep updating in a log/blog/diary type format. Probably with each 'chapter' of it becoming its own thread and using my signature block as the index.

Will see how that turns out..... Id welcome feedback on an cleaner way to present it though I will probably take the feedback and just do what I want anyways :P

 

Good points Jamira and aligned with my thoughts.
A few years ago I would have loved exploring new blogging software and pursuing a few cents worth of google adds and trying to get as many 'followers' as I could for some simi/half done website/blog. Now I have little interest in such things as they would just distract my from my current goals....
I should have been more clear on my intent. The intent is to make a 'builders log' for each project. Just a record with pictures and a few words describing each step towards a goal in the current project whatever it may be. This is common on both homebuilt aircraft and boat forums, and all I need is a forum account and the ability to post a thread. I have already been doing this on the boating forum, and until I catch up to current time, I will be pulling my images and comments from there (and editing to address the audience I would expect here vs. there)
Next post will have more on the basement apartment.

 

I purchased my house about 15 years ago. At the time I couldn't afford a house, but with the rarity of land here I couldn't afford not to buy it when it became available.
It is a 'bush' built house with a main floor a full basement and a 2nd floor upstairs with the walls about 4' tall where the roof meets them on the edges.
The second floor consists of 2 bedrooms, and office, and an open living area.
The main floor is open with living area, dining area, kitchen and a huge bathroom with laundry.
The basement was unfinished.

When I bought it I got several room mates and split the mortgage with everyone. We your young, and single and it wasn't any problem, each guy got a room and I slept in the unfinished basement. Then I got married and moved the roomates out. It was a huge house for just my wife and I, and even with our son, the top two floors are plenty for us. (the only issue is that there is zero storage built in the place, no closets or anything which makes it harder to keep clean)

Anyways fast forward another 10-11 years to current times, and housing is even more scarce in our village, and so we decided it was a good opportunity to make some extra monthly income if we could finish the basement as a stand alone apartment with separate entrance.

I have no construction experience at all but being 'cheap' I let my wife pressure me into starting with a bathroom in the basement. I got started on it but never finished it as lack of experience and confidence (and time and energy) kept me from going much further than the raised floor (needs to be raised so that the poop (and shower) can flow down hill....) and the studs for the walls.

Last summer my wife sat down and really thought it and talked it out and decided to seriously commit to finishing it. We hired a guy here with good experience, it ended up not costing me much more than what I make overtime so it was certainly worth it to have someone with the knowledge and experience doing it all. He was able to higher local young guys for cheap to help reduce the cost even more for the manual labor parts. My wife and I really enjoyed working with him and he made it easy for us to make decisions and didn't make us feel 'stupid' for not knowing how stuff was done. He was also really good at knowing how to manage the problems of doing everything in a remote location like where we live. (there are no lumberyards or hardware stores, any stores at all where we live, everything has to be flown out to us in small aircraft roughly 150 miles through glacier passes)

The layout was to be a two bedroom apartment with a bathroom with shower and laundry, a full kitchen and an arctic entryway. I wanted lots of storage, and lots of LED lighting, just because of how much I've hated living without storage or good lighting upstairs.

The bedroom walls went up quick.
I didnt get any good before pictures, but there were a few ugly walls roughly up around in the basement, so they were torn down.
The bathroom floor platform I had built a couple years ago with the water heater in the corner. It was an ok height for me at 5'10, but the guy doing the work for us is 6'2" and with him standing in there my wife realized it wasnt enough room, so he tore it all out and lowered it so that he could stand in the shower.
We had toyed with the idea of putting the laundry under the stairs, but ended up using it as a huge closet/storage area.
A false wall was put up to the left there to hide all the plumbing against that wall coming from upstairs.
Closet or pantry right as you enter the apartment, we decided it will be best as pantry to encourage people to use the arctic entry as the mud room and coat room.
Landon loved asking questions and getting involved in any way possible. We had to work to keep him out of Jordan's hair while he was working.
Steps up to the bathroom. While the bathroom and kitchen are separated only by a wall, the entrance to the bathroom is down the hall at the opposite end. I really don't like bathroom entrances being close to the kitchen.
The stairs upstairs are on the left there, and has doors top and bottom to separate anyone living there, but is still available in the future if say Landon wants to move down there as a teen or something.
You can see the false wall there allowed to build some shelves into the wall where there weren't any pipes. (the speakers are sitting on one of them)
The back corner of the bathroom has a built in closet for the water heater and pressure tank, its now boxed in and trimmed so looks pretty clean.

Looking down the hall from the bathroom. Two bedrooms on the left, living room at the end. The heater about where the camera is blowing into the entire living area. Kitchen on the left, hall and bedrooms on the right, closet under stairs in the middle. My wife and I argued about how to finish this small wall here. I thought it would make a great accent wall with slate tiles, but she wanted it just mudded and texture painted like the rest. (of course she gets her way in all design choices :P )
We brought in a guy that mudded and textured and painted everything.

even with paper down, it was a huge mess everywhere.
The windows are about 1/2 under ground, but needed for safety in case of fire. (more pictures on that later)
Each bedroom has a closet with its own LED light. Jordan boxed in the combustion air and exhaust pipes from the heater and it ended up looking much cleaner that way.


On to the next post.... Looks like only 20 pictures allowed per post.....

 

Entrance just out of site to the left, kitchen straight ahead.
Dining on the left, entrance ahead, pantry right of center, and kitchen on the right. Kitchen with pantry on the left.
Started digging out the window wells, but the ground was still frozen, thats as far as I could go at that time.
I bought some extra dirt and had it placed where the 'Boat Factory' would be located. My thinking was that if I had to move the dirt before putting up the factory, it would motivate me to do the hard work first. I filled in an old well house, and lots of tree stump holes around the yard as well as wanted to slope dirt up against the house to encourage rain water to drain away from the basement instead of toward it.

The idea was to get Landon to get all the rocks out of the dirt...... I think you can guess how far that idea made it :P

More digging out of the window wells as the frost thawed.
Starting to trim the closets..... Also look at the floor.....
The basement concrete looked like it had been poured in small ~5'x5' sections and not finished smooth, each section a slightly different height than those adjacent to it. Jordan Ground them down pretty well with a diamond grinder and while not perfect made a pretty decent surface that at least you wouldn't trip on. He repaired all the cracks and seams as well. My wife really wanted 'Acid Stained' floors since she had seen so many very nice and artisticly done ones online. We did some samples and found a color she liked and it turned out to be a huge failure :/
The way acid staining works is a chemical reaction with the lime in the concrete. Everywhere that had been ground had a large surface area of rocks showing (finished concrete has smooth concrete floated to the surface and very little rock showing) and the patched areas were obviously high concentrations of lime. The end result was a super patchy and ugly floor that was nothing like what my wife had envisioned. (more on the solution later)
Bathroom starting to get finished, you can see the water heater and pressure tank is boxed in to the right, but not trimmed yet.
First time the basement has seen daylight since I bought the place some 15 years ago! its amazing how bright it got inside just from one window! (the living/dining room got 2 windows and each bedroom got 1)

Here you can see where the old rickaty porch and cellar entrance to the basement was, and is nearly torn off. This is where the two story insulated arctic entry will be.
While working with the dirt I came across many rocks like this, was a lot of work moving them.
More dug out where the window wells will go.

 

Remember the issues with the floor? Well I did some research and decided on a solution. Rustolium brand RockSolid epoxy garage floor kits.
The clear epoxy comes in 'burst pouches' that you roll up and burst the center seam which allows the two parts to mix in the pouch. You shake it for a while then pour it into two separate buckets where you then mix in two separate colors.

Using a split paint tray, and a special roller that is split in the middle, you first brush the edges, then roll the floor in alternating Ms, Z,s and Ws to get a chaotic mix of the two colors while covering the entire floor.

The finished look is an intentional mix of the colors that is glossy, durable, easy to clean, no worries about damage if there is flooding, and hides the multitude of imperfections in the floor making them look like an intentional part of the 'look'. Once trimmed and the more we see it, the happier we are with it, I would highly recommend it to anyone looking for such a product. The only down side is you have to use a minimum of 150% as much as they claim, so make sure to order extra of the already expensive product.

The shower ended up being a roomy rain shower with slate tiles and a built in shelf which will have a tempered glass shelf in the middle.

 

Samsung 43" smart TV mounted on the wall to the closet under the stairs.
Bits and peices to finish everywhere, but mostly finished......
The Bathroom sink. Toilet and storage cabinet, towel rack on the left and shower off camera far left. I am very happy with the bathroom, lots of small apartments have bathrooms that feel very cramped, this has plenty of room even with the laundry and boxed in water heater/water tank in it.
Trimmed closet, queen size bed. You can see how much light comes in through the window.
We rented it out for 1/2 of July to someone my wife works with, they knew it wasnt finished and were ok with us finishing it while they were there. Worked out well for both of us.

Bedroom window. You can see the built in USB chargers in the outlets, each bedroom, and the kitchen got one of those and two in the livingroom/dining area. Lots of light in the kitchen. Everywhere really... The kitchen, Living/Dining area, the hallway, and both bedrooms have smart, dimmable LED lights that can be controlled with the wall mounted dimmer switches or through your favorite smart home apps.
Not a huge kitchen, but certainly functional and cozy for an apartment this size.
Stuffed Arm Chair and sofa in the living area facing the TV in the center.

All within a 5 minute walk of this view :P

 

There was a posting for the need of a turnkey apartment aug-december and we won the bid on it. So did all the little extra stuff getting it ready.

Two bedrooms, 3 beds with bedding.
Dining table set.
Dishes and cookware (pots, pans, spatulas, pizza pan etc...)
Kitchen and bathroom linens.
Dedicated Internet package and wifi router.
Top 200 TV channels.
Heat, Stove and Dryer propane, water, garbage disposal, etc... all included
Cleaning supplies, broom, mop, vacuum, cleaners, brushes, etc....
They just move in with their food and clothes.

The Arctic Entry is framed in and the roof has tin on it, but it wont get finished till this fall. It is 'just' an entry though, so is quite usable 'as is'

 

A location of the property? Or a floor plan?
I am not sure what you are looking for :)

 

Internet is not great here and all my pictures were taken on my phone at an unnecessarily large size.
I found a program for easily resizing batches of pictures or one at a time if needed to more reasonable sizes.
It seems to work well for windows 10, and integrates with the normal file browser, just right click on a file or group of selected files and 'resize pictures' is now part of the menu.
That made it a lot easier to upload so many pictures here quickly.
Once I am caught up and only posting a couple pictures a day it wont be as big a deal, and I will probably do that directly from my phone.

 

Yes Alaska :)

 

I have it setup like I originaly intended when I started this 'blogish' project.... You can see in my signature the links to each chapter which in turn are each their own thread, quite simple here for something as simple as I am doing.

I have used wordpress before, and it is as simple or complex as you need it to be, and has lots of various plugins to do whatever you may want to do with it. It has been several years, but I would recommend that as a starting point if you are wanting to get into blogging.

I forget exactly how it works, but they have two options, their first option is they host and run it for you which is very simple and how they make their money, the second is their blogging software is free and you can use it to host your blog on your own servers with much more control over it, if that is what you wish.

They have been around a while, have a good track record as far as I know, and lots of people use their software.... so Like I said, that would be a good starting point, and if you don't like it, then you will know what part you didn't like to expand your search more specifically.

Part of it depends on what your goals are..... a blog can server many purposes
1. An actual personal log or diary - you can go back later and see a timeline of events and pictures and thoughts on a specific project. Some projects you will need this as a legal requirement for proof of something. (for example to register an amature built aircraft in the US, you have to have proof that you actually built x% of it yourself, and didn't just take a bunch of pre-existing airplane parts and bolt them together)

2. An educational aid, to show others how you did something so they can copy you or learn from your mistakes.
3. Social arrogance.... all online social media is about promoting ones self, blogs are a great way of doing this.
4. Social 'community' - to an extent social interaction through online media can be a good thing, and promote communities of like minded people working together and sharing ideas and thoughts.
5. Profit - I think this would be difficult for 99% of people actually trying to do this, you would need to build a huge following and be dedicated to the grind of self promotion (a game in and of itself)

You could claim that my intent here has some % of each of those in it, though some defiantly play a larger piece of the pie than others :P

Anyways, I have caught up all my back logs, and am now caught up, posted, and current with what I have accomplished so far.
It will proceed at a slower (one day at a time) and hopefully more interactive pace from here on out.

George: I and probably others, would be interested in whatever "Game of Life" you may be playing, so feel free to share your ideas so we can interact and offer feedback as well.