The end.

Saturday, October 28th 2017.

Well, here I am editing my last blog post. It's been exactly 10 years since I started. The main reason being that I emigrated from Amsterdam (The Netherlands) to Adelaide (Australia) and I wanted to keep my family and friends up-to-date about how I was doing on the other side of the world.

Writing this post forces me to think of the past 10 years of my life and it's actually pretty confronting because so much happened; emigration, relationships, different employers, being depressed and in need of a shrink (twice), buying and selling my appartment, buying my Mustang and recently a garage.

When I started my blog I was 34 and weighed over 135 kilos. Now I'm 44 and I weigh almost 85 kilos.

Look at me then and now:

It's been 10 crazy years when I think about all the things that happened but also 10 I wouldn't want to have missed. All the new experiences I got, the people I met, the jobs I got and finding out that indeed, the grass is ALWAYS greener on the other side.

So why am I quitting? Quite simply, it's started to feel like an obligation. More and more I have the feeling I want to spent my time differently doing other things. Less digital and online. This feeling ain't new, it started a year ago already but I really wanted to get to 10 years.

So, since this is a photo-blog I won't write too much.

I'd like to say thank you to everyone who contributed to my blog in one way or another and also thanks to all the people who followed me for all or some of those 10 years.

I'll leave you with one more blog from today. As of tomorrow, if you wanna know what's going on with me, you'll simply have to call or text me and schedule a night out with me :-)

Byebye, thanks, auf wiedersehen, mazzel, au revoir and ciao!

With love,
Vincent.

It's garage-weekend again and I started with some painting. Now the lower back walls are done. It will be lighter there when the floor is in. I think I'll do the rest of the walls later.

I hung up the tool board in its definite spot. My future workbench will be in that corner under the stairs.

I also wanted to practice welding today but I didn't get around to it, that's for tomorrow, but there won't be anything about it on this blog because, the blog ends here :-)

The humidity

I went to my garage for a few hours. This was the humidity when I arrived.

And this was after the door had been open for an hour or so. Ventilation is key indeed!

I did a bit of painting again.

The roof vent / The red sun

I was at my garage around 6:15 this morning because I was having a roof vent installed. This will hopefully improve the humidity inside. The guy who was doing the work helped me push the Mustang outside and carry a few things out of the way, very kind of him. Then he drove in his lift and started.

This is the vent pipe that's gonna be installed.

It fits a 150-160mm pipe if I ever hook that up. First we'll see how it does without a fan.

While the guy was working on the roof I painted the inside of my my cupboard with anti-mold paint.

There's the hole that was cut from the inside. Next up was cutting from the outside and mounting the pipe.

By the time everything on the roof was done I had also finished painting. Looks nice. Let's hope the mold will stay away, too.

Back at work I learned about a natural phenomena that was happening outside. I thought it was cloudy but it was not, it was dusty! The tropical storm that hit Ireland brought along lots of red dust from Africa which was spread even across The Netherlands!

It coloured the sun a bit red which was something you don't see very often here!

The little locomotive

I spotted this old locomotive 2 days ago. I've always wanted to create models of it semi-professionally and sell them but since they're not in use anymore they are hard to find to get measurements of. And of course I never had my own workspace to produce anything at all.

But I do have my own workspace now and maybe this is a sign that I should get started ;-)

And then I painted a bit more. Also I found more mold on certain pieces of wood / shelves. I'm so not pleased about the mold and I can't wait for my roof-vent to be installed...

In the afternoon Simone and I went looking at furniture. On the way back we passed my office.

When we got home, Silver was bossing or playin with some other cats. He was happy to come to me though and let me carry him home...

Checking out a hood

This morning I went to check out a standard Mustang hood that was for sale for 150 euros. I was hoping it would be good but unfortunately it was not :-(

Rust all around the edges where the inner and outer metal is welded together. I wouldn't know how to fix that...

And inside there was rust as well. No way you can spray stuff like rustoleum in every corner so it's really a lost cause, sadly...

So I went back to my garage without the hood but also not having spend money on something worthless.

I hung up my Guinness mirror.

I also replaced more molded shelves with new ones (that will probably also get moldy as long as the humidity doesn't go down...)

I started marking spots where the metal poles for my first floor have to be. At least that felt like progress...

The painting

I went to my garage tonight and painted a bit more. It's a lot brighter than before. The humidity is pretty bad. It hit 84% while I was there. I really need proper ventilation.

The painting.

Today marks the start of my last blogging month. I'm quitting at exactly 10 years of blogging. I'm sure I'll explain more when that times comes in a few weeks...

For now: enjoy the last few weeks :-)

So, already at 9AM I continued where I left yesterday: making coffee in my garage again :-)
I planned a BIG day there today to finally get some stuff done.

I started painting the side walls. I have to go quite high (3,75 metres) and thankfully my neighbour "bottle cap"Fred let me use his ladder.

I took advantage of this by painting the whole 5th slab. I can do the lower ones using my own little ladder.

Here's a pic of my little oak tree. I'm wondering if I should turn it into a bonsai or something...

The re-arrange

I went to my garage this evening and re-arranged the mess at the back, it looks a lot better now.

On the way back home, around 9:30PM, I ended up in a traffic jam that made me stand still for about 40 minutes.

When I got home little boy Silver was asleep.

The back of my garage.

I did a few little things in my garage, nothing major. I'm thinking of putting a big car lift in the back so that I have the option of storing (and working on) a second car. That would mean that the floor above can only go as low as 5 wall pieces (375 cm). That would not leave room for a second floor in the back though...

I made a selfie with Silver, he didn't notice ;-)

Going to my garage! :-)

After dinner I went to my garage. There was a door missing.

But not anymore :-)

For reference I made some photos of the electronics board.

The main switch.

Also a reference picture of my tire's pressure descriptions.

The crack, or not?

I went to my garage early this morning to get more stuff done. But I was so early the DIY store was still closed. Since the weather was great I took the car out for a little spin :-)

I did notice something that worries me. There's something that looks like a crack in front of the driver's side cylinder head...

I'm not sure if it's a crack of some leftover from the casting process...

I put up another shelve under the sink and did some other little things. Even cleaning up and organising is fun. The little garage-area at the front is nearly done now.

Me happy!

Simone finished work early and we went to have dinner at the beach again. I ate healthier food than usual but still a few things my diet doesn't allow like bread, pesto and cheese. It was delicious though.
Oh, and I had 1 little cookie with my coffee... oops.

The tiles

I spent most of the day at my garage. It felt like being on vacation because it's so peaceful and quiet (except for the airplanes). I made sure I ate every two hours.

The breaks were nice.

I did a bit of tiling which was my first time ever but went very well.

Phase 1, which is making the space usable as a garage, is going well!