About six months ago (best man) Scott gave me an LCD projector that he had spare.  It’s a 3M MP8640 – a big, heavy office projector that originally cost about £3,500 when it was made back in early 2000.   Ten years on it still does a pretty good job, so I was determined to do something decent with it.

I didn’t think Tara would be too impressed with me setting up a cinema in our living room, so I decided to install it out in the summer house.  With our wee baby Ewan arriving just a few weeks ago, I didn’t want to spend much on the setup.  It worked out pretty well, in the end costing me less than £20.

First step was to choose a screen.  Tara’s dad let me try out their old slide projector screen.  It produced a nice clear picture, but it didn’t quite give me the size I was after.  Also, I thought it would be pretty difficult to mount on the wall as it was designed as a floor stander.

In the end I decided to go for an IKEA Tupplur blind, which I had read good things about on some AV forums.  In 180cm width it cost just £18.99 and gives a 16:9 picture of approx 82″.  Here’s how it looks with the lights on (just to show the size and positioning)…

The projector is quite noisy, so I thought it would be best to put it in the garage side with a wee projection window allowing the light through to the summer house side.  For the projection window, I used a 6×4″ photo frame which was perfect for the job.  The only problem was that it was directly above my dart board, so I added another hinged 7×5″ frame over the top with the glass replaced with wood, just in case any stray darts go directly though the projector lens.

The only remaining problem was keystoning.  The projector has fixed keystone correction and was designed to be desk mounted, so when mounting it from the ceiling the picture was heavily skewed.   I fixed that by mounting the projector upside down and then rotating the picture 180 degrees.   At some point I still need to build a wooden frame to mount the projector at the correct angle, but for now it’s resting quite happily on my DIY book.

Here’s the finished results in the dark (excuse the visible WMP controls at the top and bottom – it obviously looks much better with those hidden)…

And finally, here’s how the whole summer house is looking these days (click for larger version)…

With winter on the way, one thing I really had to sort out was heating for the garage, especially on the summer house side.  The insulation in the walls and ceiling is working well, but with outdoor temperatures dropping to single digits I really needed something to raise the temperature in the winter evenings.

I had looked at various wee fan heaters and oil heaters but nothing seemed quite right for the project.  Then I happened to find a nice glass panel heater in the B&Q sale.   It seemed to tick all of the boxes: not too thirsty (max 1kW); compact; wall mounted; silent… and best of all it’s digital!

It’s ideal for the summer house, just turn it on and it quickly heats the room to the chosen temperature — 12c to 19c takes about ten minutes — then it just maintains that temperature for as long as you’re out there.  The loft insulation seems to be doing it’s job, as the heating element only comes on very occasionally once the room is up to temperature.

And now for the missing link… high-speed internet access!

Even though the garage is only a few meters from the house and approx 15m from the wi-fi antenna in the loft, the metal foil insulation used throughout the garage prevents a decent wi-fi signal from getting through.   I’d occasionally manage to get a connection from my laptop, but it was flaky.   And a connection from my iPhone… forget it!

I didn’t want to run a hard-wired Ethernet connection from the house, so I decided to set up a wi-fi repeater instead, taking the signal from outside the metallic cage and repeating it inside.   I’m already running the dd-wrt custom firmware on my main router and had read good things about its Repeater Bridge mode for this kind of task.   So, I decided to look for the cheapest dd-wrt compatible router I could find to act as the repeater.

I found an ex-display Buffalo AirStation WHR-G125 on ebuyer for £15 which was perfect for the task.  Once it arrived I used tftp to flash it with the latest dd-wrt Mini Generic firmware from the dd-wrt site, then followed this tutorial to set it up in Repeater Bridge mode.

All that was left was to give it a permanent mounting place in the garage.  The WHR-G125 doesn’t have any mounting holes as standard and I was reluctant to spend extra on the official wall mount, so I ended up strapping it onto the roof joists with a couple of zip ties.  The result: the garage now has it’s own SSID which broadcasts a nice strong signal to any devices out there and gives me reliable wi-fi in the garage and elsewhere in the garden.  £15 well spent I think.

I took a few photos of the garage last night.  All the photos below are clickable to a larger high-res version.

The summer house side

View from the sofa

The garage side

As you can see, organising everything on the garage side is still an ongoing project, but at least everything is now undercover in a dry, warm garage.

It’s been a while since the last update, but a lot has happened in that time.   We now have power, insulation, flooring and even some guttering.

Picking up from where I was last time, the electrician came out and fitted a consumer unit to power the ring main and lighting circuits.  I read in my DIY book that “people usually fit too few sockets and regret it later”.  I don’t think I’ll have that problem, but on reflection I think I might have gone too far the other way — I’ve got 22 sockets. (more…)

Today is erection day! 

The site for the garage was cleared just over a week ago and today - bang on schedule - the new garage turned up on the back of a flatbed truck.  

The company brought a team of five guys to nail it together and by noon they had finished the job…

First impressions are very good.  Everything feels sturdy and it was impressive to see two guys standing on the roof at the same time whilst nailing down the felt.  I wouldn’t like to try leaning heavily against my shed roof, nevermind standing on it!   The windows are good too — all toughened glass rather than the perspex my shed came with.

Next step: The electrical consumer unit is going in tomorrow evening, then it’ll be on to wiring the sockets and lighting.   Then I’ll need to decide what type of insulation and cladding to go for on the inside… decisions, decisions!

I’m hoping to get stuck into some of those jobs over the next few days so it’s ready as a potential venue for the next poker night on July 10.   More to follow…

When we bought our house back in 2003 it had a fairly typical wood & concrete garage.   It was old and shabby, but we put in some shelving and worktop to make it more useful.  Then, in the Winter of 2007/08, it finally started to give in to the elements — the roof was leaking badly and the wooden front started to fall to bits.   It was time for a replacement.  However, we decided to make do until the other work was completed on the garden, driveway and house interior.

Now that the house is pretty much finished, it’s garage time!

I’ve decided to go for a wooden garage this time.  I’m using wood for a number of reasons: flexibily of design, warmth, ease of installing insulation and attractiveness to name just a few.   And since I don’t need the garage to store my car (who could be bothered with the fuss?) I’ve decided to build a garage with an internal partition, giving me a ‘garage’ side for my scooter and a summer house side for hanging out in.  Here’s the design I’ve come up with…

Read on after the jump for more pics and details…

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