Its been a while since my last post, but I have been very busy with the studio refurbishment!

My studio is a bit of a mess, it’s awful to work in due to it being such a state.

And after insulation gate and the fact we need to repaint, why not refurb the place and make it better.

Now we rent this place so I am limited in what I can do, so it’s limited to better furniture, better storage, better cable management etc

Painting

This has taken place over a few times, but we had two slanted walls on the roof to paint plus a patch on the ceiling and the feature wall

I started off by painting the ceiling at the same time as we did mine and Lindsay’s bedroom as that was super simple to do

I did the two sloped ceilings on my own in two stages so that it was fine and ready for the feature wall, which was gonna be the big one!

For the feature wall the first thing we had to do was remove my desk and some of my storage and basically take everything off the walls!

We had some bits that were filled in and then sanded down to give a smooth finish, more than I liked.

After that we painted it a slightly darker grey than had been on there because we couldn’t colour match what was there.

Networking

Right now in the studio, we have a Powerline brining in a connection from the modem downstairs, when we started this project, it exclusively provides a connection for the server

We also have a TP-Link Deco S7 Mesh access point which most other stuff connects to, which provides a faster connection than the Powerline.

But the server, for some reason doesn’t like working through the Mesh.

Regardless, the connection to the server desk started out on the floor, crossing over it and creating a major trip hazard.

To provide power, I had to route an extension cord around the room, and that’s what we did with the network cable.

I got a 20m Cat 8 cable, and just wrapped it up with the power cable using zip ties and then took it around the room, and into a new switch under the desk.

It still needs clipping to the door frame to the eave, but I am doing that tomorrow

But alas, Lindsay decided to move out of the studio and as a result the switch is now no longer required, but I guess better to have, than have not

We also added a Wi-Fi card to Megan’s PC, not so much for the Wi-Fi, but more for the Bluetooth capabilities, that way she can use a wireless controller.

Yeah I know a USB dongle would have been cheaper and easier, but I have always found their performance to be so so.

And this kind of gives them another option for connecting their PC to the network.

Power

It might sound silly, but phone charging has always been a bit haphazard, I normally just plug the phone into the PC, but look I want convenience.

So I grabbed a cheap MagSafe charger, I did have a Qi charger, but I have found Qi to be annoying as it’s just a chew in to perfectly align the coils and it’s slower, and quite inefficient.

MagSafe solves that issue, thankfully! And you know what’s cool, Qi2 is basically MagSafe and should start being common very soon!

I also upgraded the plug socket, well, not so much upgraded as just added an extra two sockets removing the need for as many extension cords.

I get no more power from it, but I feel more comfortable with the load spread across 4 sockets than 2.

Paint Storage

We were using a deep set of drawers to store paint, that I have been using for the better part of a decade.

But we decided to move to paint racks/shelves from TT Combat, because we wanted get more desk space back for Megan.

So we bought two paint shelves to store 72 Citadel paints each for a total of 216 pots, plus a 72 dropper bottle rack, as I expand into ranges such as Two Thin Coats, Army Painter and TT Combat.

And my wonderful friend Paul gave me this shelf he had and was no longer using to give me 3 in total!

3D Printing,

We replaced my cheap Monoprice Mini, with a Saturn 4 Ultra, which takes up quite a bit more room.

So this now lives where the old printer, cure chamber and PS5 used to go.

We also grabbed a few accessories to help with this, we grabbed a funnel for popping resin back into a bottle, plus a few things like scrappers and a restock of nitrile gloves!

Mounting Hardware

One thing we decided pretty early on, is a desire for dual monitor arms for both mine and Lindsay’s setup

We started off with Lindsay’s setup straight away, cause she needed it for work.

But of course she moved downstairs, so this moved with her, and I have this same one on my desk

I had purchased some time ago a bunch of Elgato Wallmounts and was only using one of them, but with the 3D Printer and paint racks, I now needed to use these for real.

So now these hold both my Keylight Airs, my Overhead camera for the painting table and my FaceCam for use when painting

Other

We also got an Ultrasonic Cleaner to put in the studio to do a mix of things, partly for cleaning my airbrush, Megan & Lindsay’s jewellery, our glasses and resin models etc

In order to accommodate the 3D Printer, we wall mounted the PS5 with this

It allows me to take the PS5 off the desk, and also charges two of the controllers too, meaning I no longer need the controller charging station sat on the desk

What Next

So what’s the plan for the future, well I need a new Besta unit to store more board games as a good chunk of those have now moved to the studio where Lindsay’s desk used to be.

And I need to sort out a lot of cable management, for my PC setup and Megan’s, but that’s probably a job for the winter.

The rest of it is just gonna be sorting out what’s in the room and how I can better organise the storage.

What I Am Modelling

I started off with a couple of squads of Assault Intercessors for the Dark Angels.

And followed that up with the gangs from The Carnevale, Escape from San Canciano mini starter box, starting with the Rashaar.

Then followed up with the Guild

After that I painted a Domicile Shell for Age of Sigmar

So whats next up on the desk?

  1. Genestealers x 20 & Broodlord
  2. Ultramarines Infernus Squad x 5
  3. Squig Hoppers x 10
  4. Guilliman x 2
  5. Barbgaunts x 5
  6. Blood Angels Land Speeders
  7. Calgar x 2
  8. Mega Boss on Maw-Krusha
  9. Paragon Warsuits with Mult-Meltas x 3
  10. Domicile Shell x 2

What Tabletop Games I Am Playing

Played a board game after a long gap, with Ticket to Ride: Berlin with Lindsay and Megan

I love the mini Ticket to Ride games and this one is a really good one, the subway mechanic is really fun!

I had a game of Warhammer 40K with my Necrons vs a combined force of Space Wolves which won!

And a game of Heresy against Graham to try out a new mission he wrote for an event we were running

What Video Games I Am Playing

Continued playing Assassin’s Creed: Rogue Remastered on Stream

What I Am Winning

A few weeks ago I won a bottle of resin from Elegoo on Twitter and that got delivered this week, a nice bottle of 8k water washable space grey, perfect for the Saturn 4 Ultra when it arrives in a few weeks hopefully!

I also won a copy of Chorlton and the Wheelies on DVD from HeyYouGuys

And a book, but no idea from whom this is from

What I Am Spending

Grabbed a couple of issues of Stormbringer 73 to add two units of Ardboyz to my Ironjawz, and along with the issue coming with my Subscription will give me an awesome three units of them to form a nice core of the Orruk Warclans army.

I won a voucher from a competition for Amazon, which allowed me to purchase a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth PCIe card for Megans PC, mostly for the Bluetooth for her to be able to use a wireless controller.

Yes I know I could have gotten a cheap USB dongle, but I think the extra reliability of the card is better, plus Wi-Fi is a nice backup to have.

Initially we bought a cheap Chinese one, but the card was a dud, the chipset wasn’t the MediaTek one described and was a far inferior RealTek one, plus the driver site appeared to be filled with malware, so that got sent back to Amazon.

And yeah replaced it with the far more trusted TP-Link!

And we got the next paint rack from TTCombat, this time for my dropper bottle paints, which consist of some Vallejo, TTCombat, Turbo Dork and Army Painter, plus a single Two Thin Coats bottle

The reason we have gone for this, despite only having around 30 dropper bottles, is that I have decided for many basic colours, I am shifting to Army Painter Fanatics, with some select Two Thin Coats plus a few others from various other ranges.

Also got myself a couple more Elgato Wall Mounts, which will be used to mount my Keylight Airs, given the desk space currently used for the stands will be taken up by the paint racks, and the new 3D printer.

Then came the last paint rack and some ships for Dropfleet Commander

And another Stormbringer issue, this time 76 for some extra Stormdrake Guard!