The In-Progress Thread to start all other In-Progress Threads

[ChernayaAkula]

or: Seeing the Good in the Bad

13th of November 2010 starts off as any other Saturday in central Germany in fall usually does: It rains sheets!   Only this time, it rained more. Not just a bit, but A HELLUVA LOT MORE. While it had rained all night through and the soil was already very soggy, but the rainstorm that came in the morning was too much for the drainage system. Within minutes, the drainage ditch behind our house was filled to capacity and spilled over the little dam. Usually, the creek just trickles along and empties into a storm drain, but apparently the storm drain was blocked. Probably broken twigs, dead leaves and the likes. With nowhere else to go, the creek spilled over into our garden.

This is the creek. Usually, it's just a couple of centimetres deep and drains some small creeks coming out of the forests into the Weser river. In the pic, it's about three feet deep.



Behind this little gate lies the drainage ditch. You can see the water flowing through the garden.





The water went for the garage (white building), but diverted to the right and flowed down a ramp into our cellar. Luckily, we could get the door closed before too much water ran into the house.



Here's the ramp, with members of the fire department busy setting up a pump. The fire department guys also set up a small sand bag barrier to keep the water from entering our compound.



As you can see, that's where we store the cut-up fire wood. We could only get the door shut after the cellar was flooded. The water stood 10cm deep throughout the complete cellar. Once we did get the door shut, it held up pretty well. Next to no further water entered the house, but built up to about waist depth outside. You can see the waterline pretty clearly.





Here's another pic of the storm drainage ditch a couple of hours after the event. The storm drain is around four feet deep, but usually only has a bit of water in the rock catch in front of the grille (which has a height of around three feet) .



As I said, the water was only about ankle-deep, but managed to mess up things pretty well. Wooden furniture and doors soaked up the water and will have to be swapped out. Hundreds of books were destroyed. Moving boxes storing stuff soaked up water. Most of the cellar is tiled, but the carpet ion one room had to be torn out.

Luckily, my Mum had taken out a storm and tempest insurance just three years ago. Incidentally, we're on the first street in our village to be granted such an insurance. We live close to a major river (about 500m from the Weser), but just about far away enough to get such an insurance at an affordable price. Live on the other side of the street and premiums go up dramatically. Strangely enough, the water didn't come from the Weser, but from the hangs of the Reinhardswald forest on the other side.

Two days after we had swept out most of the water, a building refurbishment team hired by the insurance showed up and packed up all the stuff that could be salvaged and tore out all that couldn't be saved. Then they installed drying machines. Luckily, the floor screed in our house is a special type that makes drying the cellar much easier (only about a quarter of time it would take to dry a similar house with a normal floor screed) and is germ-resistant.

[ChernayaAkula]

Why this thread is subtitled "Seeing the Good in the Bad":
Now that they have packed up the drying machines, we can start rebuilding the cellar.
One nice side effect of this whole mess is that we can now start from scratch. All the stuff that cluttered up the cellar.... the books you didn't want to throw away (because ya never throw books away!), all the stuff you kept because you thought you might need it again is now neatly packed up. One room, which was used to store all kinds of construction material (lumber, tiles, half-empty colour pots,....) is now free for me top use as a modelling room. And that's why this thread is titled "The In-Progress Thread to start all other In-Progress Threads". I had planned to set up shop there earlier, but getting through all the left-overs always proved to be too much of a hassle.
Well, the storm took care of that. The room is now empty and we can start fitting it out. The room's about 4 by 3.5 metres. First up were lighting and power.



Then comes the drywall. Drywall is a bit like your average short run kit. Measure three times, cut once – and it still won't fit. So you just putty up the huge gaps.




My new best friend: Bosch PSR 14,4 LI
Makes that drywall stuff so much easier. Came pre-charged and went through constructing eight metal shelves and half a room of drywall before needing a short refresher in the recharger. Tears through wood and concrete alike, is quite compact and even comes with a nifty little light that illuminates the work area. Seriously, I need to find a way to assemble models with screws, just to use it a little more often.



Next up:
Finish drywall
Putty gaps
Apply decals (no, wait, wallpaper)
Paint it
Furnish it
BUILD AWAY!!!  

So with any luck, I should be able to start modelling in a dedicated hobby room really soon! Maybe even get something done around Christmas. No, really, with the building refurbishment guys returning the boxes containing our stuff soon, we need to get the construction bits out of the way ASAP.

[anthonyp]

Holy crap!  Have fun with that.  I seem to recall Toad doing up his hobby room a few years back.

I still have to decide on what room I'm going to use as mine...  Loft?  Basement?  One of the upstairs bedrooms?  TV tray in front of the TV?

[ChernayaAkula]

We managed to get most of the drywall business done today.

I still have to decide on what room I'm going to use as mine...  Loft?  Basement?  One of the upstairs bedrooms?  TV tray in front of the TV?

Decisions, decisions....  My next problem will be what desk to go for. I want it to include a general work area, a spray booth and, if possible, a little set-up to take some pics of my builds. I once had a desk that faced right into the corner of the room, which was great because  one could position the computer screen pretty far back. Maybe I'll go for such a design this time as well. General work area facing the corner (with the PC screen in the corner out of the way), spray booth to one side facing the wall, photo set-up facing the other wall.

[royabulgaf]

Well, your drywalling is better than mine.  Regarding the desk:  I don't know what stores are abailable in your area.  In the US there are a couple chains of discount office supply stores.  If there are such chains in Germany, you may want to see what they have in inexpensive computer workstations.

[John Howling Mouse]

Good luck to you on this massive 1:1 job....!   

[lancer]

You got a Bosh to do your PSR work??? Don't you know the rules say ALL PSR is to be done by hand - NO MACHINES!!!! 

Nice green machine BTW..

[bobbo]

Drywall:  Redefining PSR . . . . . .

bobbo

[ChernayaAkula]

Thanks for the encourgament, guys! 

You got a Bosh to do your PSR work??? <...>

Yeah. Got a good chuckle out of that, too. Good thing there weren't too many people at the hardware store that day. Think they'd cast some baffled glances at the big guy laughing at a cordless screwdriver. 

Drywall:  Redefining PSR . . . . . .

No kidding. I'm gonna go broke on Tamyia putty.

[Hobbes]

That looks a whole lot better already. Any thoughts on avoiding another flooding?

[ChernayaAkula]

"Ze Masterplan"

This is how I want it to look when done (not in as gaudy colours, mind you).

That looks a whole lot better already. Any thoughts on avoiding another flooding?

Thanks and yeah, several. The most important plan is to give the municipality a royal bollocking and tell them to get their act together and keep the storm drains free.  Actually, this is not so much kidding as I'd like it to be, as we had to call them up in recent years quite often to mow the weeds there.
Apart from that, the municipality intends to heighten the dam or construct a new one.
We will rearrange some stuff in our garden to better channel any further floods. The biggest thing, which would have saved us this time as well, is to construct a collapsible retaining wall.
The problem was that the ramp (down which the water went) starts about 20 centimetres below the ground level there. There's a step (just about visible in the fourth pic to the right of the wheelie bin) to the garden and a step to the  other side down onto the street... I drew a wobbly picture to help the wobbly explanation:

A = to the garden
B = onto the street
C = down the ramp
D = ground level
E = possible retaining wall
x = around 20cm

Maybe we won't even need a retaining wall, but rather some cut-to-size plastic sheeting and some sandbags. Should do the trick as well.

[Taiidantomcat]

Looks great dude! 

[trekaddict]

Luckily my room is 400 metres above ground. 

[anthonyp]

Wow, you're putting a lot more thought into your room than I am into mine.   

[bobbo]

Where's the Beer Cooler??

bobbo