Digging out the Bunker!

Well – far short of where I wanted to be but still – I’ve found the next 3 years worth of spring clean challenges! And they are actual models!

The table proved to be a mass of part projects of both mine and the kids – Have children! They’ll like the same stuff as you! It’ll be great!…..oh…they like the same stuff…but they need their own…oh…hang on – was that mine? – Be the proud dad – the creations are awesome – actually better than mine too….accept that those bits you horded for years have gone to a better place…….

After a blitz table sort and reducing the debris field down to a manageable stack of boxes attention has turned to the countertop of opportunity…

There is a long term plan to use this space either for projects or painting boards – the space currently has been turned into a large scale version of Jenga made with board games (including jenga it turns out).   

So these are now across on the main table being sorted through! I’ve located a squadron of ships for black seas and a couple of sets for aeronautica in there that have gone on the projects list as while I knew they were “somewhere” in there I’d never dug this deep before!

Next up will be having a sort through some of the older kids games to see if we still really want them and then re-locating the ones we do!

I really would like to get to a point where all these games are accessible – but that might need some shelf content re-arranging.

As for progress with the stackers of craft chaos – that continues – I’ve enlisted help with that – I’ll continue the updates over the summer cause it’s giving me a little more drive to finish this – it’s been a good couple of months even if progress has been extremely slow!

Well the last couple of weeks have not gone to plan – at all!
Reason A.
Small person had a birthday! He’s officially 3 years older than he is in my head and goes from project to project faster than a .303 bookworm (Pratchett ref for anyone who’s interested) & had a small pile of presents to open which he did in the space I was working in due to –

Reason B.
The plague! Or at least a virus bug that’s swept through the family over the course of the week – we’ve all been very ill which as you might imagine has slowed my rate of being able to get out of bed – never mind tidying the room! Which has this morning lead to a bit of mental self medication in the form of –

Reason C.

Really wanted to paint something and the squat gang I had on the temp painting table wasn’t doing it for me at all – they got relegated to the pile of shame and the Urban mech off the reward stash got bumped up as I’d watched the 3-up bushwacker paint scheme (still on the want list as I spent so many hours in mech warrior 4 & mech commander messing with those!) & really really wanted to paint the little Urby! Being half fried the original thought (love bug scheme) was forgotten & he ended up getting a loosely-based-on-Berlin brigade scheme…

pretty happy with him tho 🙂

I was holding off until I’d got more progress on these but there’s almost a mission in itself here!
When the children were small we started picking up crafty things for them to do, then they started to get crafty presents given to them, then people started giving us crafty bits “to keep them occupied”.
The kids approach to this was about what every parent expects.
They got it all out, spread it round everywhere and then used bits of all of it & when told to tidy up it got scooped up and dumped back into the drawers. We’ve made attempts to defeat the craft drawers of doom before but been bested by the sheer horde of pens, pencils, felt tips, crayons, sticky pads, bits of string, glitter glue tubes, shiny bits of paper, weird foam sheet stuff and stickers that pour out of each drawer when they open!
I really want to get rid of them as an entity (napalm in a household environment being frowned on) so the mission for this week is to take it one drawer at a time and reduce them by means of the bin bag & careful scientific testing to maybe one stacker unit that can be moved elsewhere and free up the space in the room!
I managed one drawer a couple of nights ago – there may be a lifetimes supply of pens and pencils in there if the first drawer is anything to go by!

Well I had a slight diversion over the weekend with Salute – the first time we’ve made it since the children were born.
The show was brilliant – a real familiar feel from years past – I was so glad we went & it’s gone on the list to try and do again next year!
After wandering and enjoying the show almost all day I decided what I really really wanted was to finally make a start with some table top battletech – which I then struggled to find due to having left it all day!
I’d played mechwarrior and mechcommander in times past on PC and really the only reason I hadn’t picked the table top version up was I wasn’t a fan of the old metal minis – but these new ones are ace – I proceeded to grab a few booster boxes off the first stall we located that had any left at all & then as we were heading out tried our luck on another stall and managed to spy out the starter box hidden amongst a rack of boardgames!
Spent far more than I’d meant to but I’ve ended up with a good stack of familiar clan mechs and a solid starter box to boot – I’ve promised myself that they will be my reward for the project – a clean room for a new start!

With a bit of effort I’ve managed to shift things around and chuck some bits of rubbish out – I’ve evicted some of my Son’s junk model projects to his room to be either finished or dismantled, got some of the old toys up for sale (and they’ve sold pretty quick – only one bag left to go!) and managed to put only one box of toys aside for scenic purposes…..

Next up is going through the old drawer unit stackers of craft supplies and stocks of card and getting rid of as much as possible!

As much to make sure I do something and don’t leave this too long!
Spent half an hour doing a little moving of stuff and throwing a few things out – and finding dust. And dog hair. So much dust and dog hair.
You’d almost think a black carpet might show white dog hair a bit….

Further clearing and a run over (repeatedly!) with a vacuum to follow tomorrow if all goes to plan…..

Everything starts somewhere!
This is the start of this challenge….
The desks are just visible in the distance, the table a bare hint on the horizon – but it is best to start at the start so over the next week I’m aiming to dig in and start clearing the floor! (There is one under there…)

If anyone is crazy enough they can try and figure out all the games we’ve collected over the years – I might highlight some as we uncover them!