David Linnard - Disaster Mansion

08/04/201813/04/2018

Trying out a new camera for time lapse

The idea behind the time lapse was to chart progress at DM. I’d been using a few Brinno TLC200 Pro cameras which are designed for time lapse. The Brinno’s battery life can be stretched to months, which is great as you can place them anywhere and not have to worry about a power source. That said the quality isn’t as great as I’d like so I thought I’d try something different.

There is a lot of cameras out there to choose from, the obvious choice being the GoPro. Ideally, I want a few cameras but with GoPros costing around $300, the GoPro was out. I saw the Sony AS50 on eBay and was so impressed by other peoples’ time lapses that I bought one. I’m quite happy with the quality and the fisheye effect can be lost if I film in HD and not 4k. Battery life is only about two hours so I will have to come up with some hack as this camera can’t be used when plugged into USB power supply (seems a bit of dumb design decision).

The first part of the video here was fixing up a plywood covering over one of the broken windows. Dave put a hinge on it so we could open it up and get some sunlight in there now and then 🙂 The bit where we vanish is us popping down to HomeDepot. The last section is us starting to clear away part of the rear deck which had been covered in roofing tar, kitchen cabinets and a lot of drywall. The heap must have been there for years as it had decayed into one big lump.

The actual deck supports had been placed directly on the soil so were mostly crumbling away with rot. Why do people have to do such poor work and did the people who paid for it know how bad a job it was? Even a few concrete support blocks would have made a big difference to its longevity.

Aimee: I was shell-shocked after last weekend’s poison ivy and the weather has been crummy. It was hard not to get a little down this week with all of the itching and scratching, but this week the Poison Ivy Patrol will come and hopefully we can get rid of the shack in the back, along with the nasty back stairwell soon. There is a big hole in the back of the yard where we think the pooper lives, but we haven’t seen any evidence in weeks.

08/04/201808/04/2018

How fast things grow

It’s amazing how fast trees grow. From the google street view photo from 2013 it looks like it’s not higher than 7-8′ with a trunk diameter less than your wrist. Skip a few years and it’s taller than the house. The rings became unclear towards the center so I may have under estimated the age.

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04/04/201804/04/2018

Calling in the Poison Ivy Patrol

Aimee has got so bad that a Doctors appointment is needed. I have it a bit but it’s manageable. A couple of people told us about the Poison Ivy Patrol so we have a consultation next week at the property. It’s nice that after the consultation you’re armed with enough knowledge to safely remove the ivy yourself if you wish.

It’s harder to identify this time of the year as the leaves aren’t out, that said it may be safer to remove in this leafless state.

29/03/2018

Street View Circa 2012

Taken from Google street view, may or may not have had tenants then.

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28/03/2018

The Good Parts. Roof View

It was a cold winter day when these were taken so will be much nicer in the summer. One day we hope to move the cupola (the little house that sits on the roof) so it’s in the center of the house, making it slightly larger and adding more windows etc.

If you don’t know what a cupula is or it’s purpose then this is a nice little article.

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28/03/201828/03/2018

The Bad Parts. Back Deck and Stairs

It will be nice when we have removed up all this stuff, the junk, the rotting deck and the staircase. The staircase isn’t original and was probably added when they split the place into apartments. Yes, they are cement asbestos tiles but we will remove them carefully (with correct dust masks etc) and dispose of it in a proper fashion. We will keep the upper deck until the time comes to replace it.

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28/03/201828/03/2018

The Bad Parts. The Roof

No denying it is pretty bad. Looks like work was just abandoned…. very Mary Celeste of the roof. Nice views from the top though.

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26/03/201811/12/2019

Clearing out the Garden

According to the neighbours the garden had been unattended for about a decade. In that time many hundreds of saplings (they looked like ash) have taken root. The small ones could be pulled out by hand but most needed digging out. Not hard but when you have hundreds it can get tiring. Spend two weekends on it so far and probably have half the garden cleared.

Worse than the trees are the creepers which are thick on the ground and like to put down roots every 6 or so inches which makes pulling them out hard.

The garden is a good space and we will first get accustomed to the levels and how we start to use it before we do anything. Currently we are thinking of some lovely blossoming trees and beautiful blue stone walls. We will visit https://www.opus40.org/ again to give us some inspiration.

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16/02/201828/03/2018

The Good Parts. Door and Bannister

Pretty much everyone, without prompting, notices the good parts, the door, the banister and the decent sized garden. The door looks pretty art deco to me and we may try and recreate this style elsewhere. It’s also nice that the door is so wide.

The banister, while not looking much is black walnut and should come up a treat. There is a chunk missing but that can be fixed in time. Shame I never learnt to use a wood lathe when I was at the Crucible as quite a few of the balusters are missing.

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12/02/201813/06/2018

Left in a hurry

The previous owner(s) seemed to have left in a hurry. They had started ripping out all the lath and plaster and drywall. Shame they hadn’t removed it as it took us a few weekends and two huge dumpsters to remove it all, plus it was hard work, icy and wet. They left furniture, books, credit cards, sex toys etc. Shame nothing was worth keeping.

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