Workmen @ home

My mum has hired some workmen to redo the lounge in our house.  On Thursday, they pulled down the celine Plaster boards, exposing the beams.  This enable the electrician to get in and put new wires in for the new lights, as well as allow me to run a network cable from the understairs cupboard to the opposite wall.  This will be for the planned media center PC I'll be putting in.  Buy some 7.1 surround speakers from Creative for that, and rewire the existing speakers for that.

The Workmen have made a new wall so that all of this can happen, as well as sinking the TV into the wall.  (42" plasma TV).  The satellite cable is going to be hidden behind the wall, and a box put on the wall to allow the SKY box to be fitted.  My idea that was. Should make it neater there.  (Should of taken pics).  The sky box during the summer will be reconnected to a media center shuttle that I'll reconfigure from my brothers old PC, and connect that up to the surround system and stuff.  Program a new Media center remote to operate the Plasma, and configure Media Center to use the Sky frequency to control the sky box.  lol.  We'll have to think about that one tho, because my parents might want to stick to the sky guide compared too the MCE guide.

The shuttle will be configured to run Vista (32 bit unfortunately) Ultimate edition.  It will be gigabit networked to the server.  The MCE PC will have a 250gb HDD, split 20gb for vista, 220gb for MCE recorded TV. lol.  I'll hopefully be able to get a really good PCI TV card, that uses composite input, (or component).

The lights in the lounge will be in 3 rows off 4.  The 4 corners on 1 dimmer, the middle row on another, and then the left over 4 on the 3rd, with 2 cabinet lights on the 4th.  This dimmer switch will have a remote control for it too, so you can control them via that without having to get up.

The dinning room (Joined to the Lounge) is behind done too, no new wall in here tho, but new lights.  I circuit is a diamond, linking the 4 mid points of the 3 rows of 3.  Then the rest, including them middle on the 2nd,  This will enable customization.

My mum is also planning on using LED lights instead of halogen, to a) save power usage, and b) look nicer.

All that should take about 1 more week, and should be pretty much done when I go back on Sunday to put the network modules and face plates on.

On Wednesday (day I got home) I moved the PAL TV aerial from my old room, to my sisters room.  Was quite funny just doing that.  Wired that up.  Since my old room has a Sky Box in, the aerial was pointless.

So when I go back on Easter Saturday,  I'll wire up the network sockets, and check everything.

I'm sure I'll be getting a phone call this week off the electrician about where and what I want doing. lol

It's all go at home.

Any I've finally secured somewhere to live for next year.  I'll be staying exactly where I am now, yes, the same room, same house.   Which will make my life alot easier, won't have to play about with Virgin media about getting the cable installed.

That's all for this post.