Christmas Party Bankwest Style

The bankwest christmas party was held last Friday. It was inthe convention centre in Perth and there were thousands of people there. The theme was a Winter Wonderland. On the way in the door, it was snowing, with a photographer catching all the reactions. Oh, and the Santa hats are orange to match the Bankwest logo.

There were 2 rooms for the party. One had a giant chocolate fondu area, loads of food and drink, and a stage with live bands playing all night. The bands were all brilliant.

Then in the other room there were old school arcade games, wii consoles. air hockey tables, lots of things like that. And on stage they had fire jugglers. They were awesome! They started with little fire things and progressed to bigger and bigger flaming accessories and finished with one of the girls coming out with a massive flamethrower. Cool! This is the lead guy a flaming samurai sword. Later in the night he had 2.

And this is my team. We were up near the stage in the first room, taking frequent visits to the fondu. On the top right of the picture you can just about see the ceiling snowflake decorations. They were enormous. Clearly australians don't see snow that often, they were more like spiky weapons than snowflakes.

The Sanding Process

So this is how we sanded the floor in the living room. First we got a drum sander in and used a rough sandpaper roll to give the first run. It's about grit 60, which is harsh enough to strip up the old varnish. You can get grade 30 if you need to get old glue off and stuff like that.

The first pass leaves lot of white marks on the floor, where the old varnish is only half taken off. This is what the drum sander looks like. A big lawnmower type thing. It has a button to start it, and a handle for lowering the sandpaper inside to the floor. So you start it with the paper in the air, then lower it very carefully to the ground. Then the machine starts moving itself forwards, so you simply make sure you walk at an even pace, and lift the paper up again before you reach the skirting. It clears around a single floor board with each go. You can see the extra sandpaper rolls in the area we have yet to do here.

Also it's important to cover any open areas with plastic sheets so dust doesn't go all over the house. We also covered the grills of the fireplace and the air conditioner. The place looks like Mars when you're finished with everything covered in red dust.

It is important to hoover carefully after each pass of the sanding machine. This removes the piles of dust and lets you see what is really happening with the floor.

This picture above is after the second pass, with 80 grit paper. It isn't so rough with the floor, but smoothes out the surface a bit. Note still though there are lots of white bits and a few tiny bits of varnish left at the edges of the floorboards. Another pass is needed. Actually, I think we did 2 passes with each grit of paper. It is quite a large room so the paper was getting worn out.

This is the difference between the 80 grit and 120 grit passes. The second picture shows very few white marks. This means it is ready for washing and varnishing. But not at the edge. The belt sander can only reach to within a few inches from the wall, as the sandpaper turns around in the middle of the machine, not the very edge.

This is how close it gets. See there is a foorprint worth of old varnish left. We used an edge sander to clear this up. I got no pictures of it though, so I'll get that when we sand the spare bedroom, which should be pretty soon now!

King's Park

Here is Hugh, lord of Perth. This is on the tree top walk in King's Park. There are great views of the city and river all around. 

There are really nice birds everywhere too. There were a few Kookaburras but they were too high up in the trees to catch any photos.

This is  kangaroo paw plant. I think it looks like a vile spider. Definitely not one for the garden.

The Wizards!

Meet Gandald the White. She is a 5 week old silkie chick. These birds are awesomely cute. They are not fantastic layers, but are totally adorable enough to make up for it. They are littler than other birds, and stay really fluffy all their lives. They even have a big afro of feathers on their heads when fully grown. Gas!

And this is Merlin. She is a silkie too but is a mix of black, grey and ginger. These two girls are the smallest of our chickens by far.

This is Dumbledore. She is an araucana chick. Also 5 weeks old. Araucana's aren't the best looking birds, but they are good layers, and they lay a turquoise coloured egg - cool! Dumbledore is the tamest of our new chicks and is quite happy for us to pick her up, unlike the other who scatter whenever we get near.

And last but not least, this is Zabulon (the lead vampire wizard of the forces of darkness in the Night Watch series). She hates being picked up the most. She is also losing her feathers at the moment so looks a bit rough. I think it's because she's starting to get her adult feathers.

So these are the wizards, and they join the ranks of our priests, Ted Jack and Dougal. We are keeping them separate at the moment. The chicks have the cage, and the biggers birds have the garden. The newcomers are too small to mix yet, as chickens fights pretty brutally whenever a new chicken is introduced. We are hoping to keep them separate for a few weeks until the chicks get bigger and can handle a bit of pecking from the others.

Living Room Almost There!

For the last 2 weeks we have put in loads of work to the living room. We pulled up the carpets, with Deborah's help, we painted it, took off the curtains and blinds, sanded and polished the floor, lots. And now it is very nearly finished. We bought a new suite of couches (well, second hand) and got a tv off a colleague of Hugh's (thanks Sarah!) and this is what it looks like now:

And this is what it used look like.

We still need to fit new blinds and change the light. Also we're not sure what to do with the fire, but we will take out the old electric heater and see what it looks like behind before doing anything drastic. I have some nice pictures of the wooden floor sanding process too to put up soon. It was a lot easier than we thought it would be.