I'm back! Sandblasted and all....

Hi guys, I'm back. Holiday wasn't that great, 1 proper beach day with the kids, only a few more sunny days in which we got sandblasted off  the beach, and I now have traumatised kids due to repeated and painful sand in the eyes.. Ho hum. Rainy days for the rest. Better luck next time I guess?

In the evenings Kim and I had a few talks and I've done a ton of soulsearching, numbercrunching and talking to myself, makes about 20 pages of notes, plans and ideas in the process. I have come to the following conclusions:

• I've gone a wee bit over the deep end with trading and swapping, as a result of this I've ended up with a rather large stash of kits and many IOU's from people whom I have sent stuff to in trade to be resolved at a later date when and if they would find/get the kit I need.

1. Starting Monday 7th of August, I'm cutting myself back to 10 euros a week spending money, to be deposited in my spare savings account (current interest rate is 0,05% on it so it's pretty useless). If I want to buy something, it has to come out of that pot of limited gold. 
2. Everything I sell from now on goes straight into my bank account. No if, buts or whatever you use in this expression, it goes straight to the bank. As soon as I'm out of the red numbers we'll see if we can change that.
3. During my holiday, every person with a outstanding IOU has been contacted and asked to ship the promised goods, a replacement or cash. Of the 29 persons, all have replied by now and 14 have already sent the goods/money and another 3 wil do so this week. Others have asked for more time, some disagreed they actually had a agreement with me, one even said he assumed I had sent him a 20 euro kit plus shipping as a token of friendship....and promptly sold it and what I had wanted in trade online. Yeah.....Of the stuff that has arrived sofar, about 20% has issiues. Minor things like missing instructions, missing bits of decal or the decals completely missing, and one chap sent me a completely different kit even.....Some of these have now sent me refunds to compensate for that. Some golden nuggets in there as well, like a built O-2 Skymaster that will be very easy to dissasemble and rebuild for my needs. 

• Speaking of needs......I don't need as much as I have now. Not by a long shot. For that I have the following plans:

1. Gaslands and Battlegroup now share top priority. 
2. Gaming is more important then spending money on stuff for possible projects.
3. Gaming with painted stuff is the norm, not the exception - get them done!
4. Erik, Ferry and Sjors all share an interest in Battlegroup with me. Sadly for me, they have all chosen completely different periods and armies.....lol. Erik is doing DAK so I have to start 8th Army with what I currently have (mostly vehicles). Sjors wants Normandy Brits and Ferry Kursk Russians, and fortunately I have Germans for both periods, and I can easily expand them with what I have in stock.
5. I want to keep building 3-4 kits a week to a based and ready for basecoat standard, with final details, if neccesary, to be added when I want to paint a set.
6. For now, my focus will be on Germany, Taliban, VC and Gaslands, vehicle, scenery and troops wise.
7. I'm not excluding anything else in 20mm-28mm now, but when I have the choice of working on something 20mm or 28mm, I should go for the 20mm item.

Keeping the Dutch Battlegroup FB page will be important as well. We are currently running a 2 unit Recce build for the month of August, and quite a few have joined up already.

 For now, I've decided to go with a T-40 Light Tank for my (future) Barbarossa Russians and a Staghound for my (future) Normandy and beyond Brits. Might toss in some more units if I feel like it, and ignore the L3/33, it is destined for my German anti-partisan force and not part of the build.

Not sure what next months challenge will be.....maybe Transport Trucks or a Defence or Artilery piece.

Oh, during the holiday I made these:

2x PLO T-34/85 who now have no priority, a 7Tp for the German police and the T-40. The PLO tanks need brass barrels (not in stock right now) and the 7Tp needs a pin for a barrel if they want to survive.

As I have 2 more weeks till my internship starts, I'm using my time by sorting as much stuff in the attic as possible, sorting stuff in Pappis boxes and labelling them and sorting more stuff for sale. To speed up things I have removed my old, big whiteboard.

 So we now have a big gaping wide space.I'm replacing the 40cm wide short Billy with a tall (202cm) 40cm wide Billy. I've been looking for one locally for quite a while now and some pop up, but usually in combo with other assorted Billy's. As I want to get get on with it, I've decided to part with some spare cash and just buy one on friday at Ikea plus another dozen or so Pappis boxes. They are super useful. Next week I will move the PC and table out of the way so I can drill the wall to mount the rails in the open space, and when that is done cut to size some shelving for it. If all goes well I can then use the space to store all my battlemats, 6 more Pappis boxes, my Printer and supplies, and 2 more Moppe storage boxes. After that I only have to add a single shelf above the dooway for a additional 8 Pappis boxes worth of space. With all of that storage space I can focus of keeping better tabs on the for sale stuff and get that out of the house ASAP.

The only thing I need to solve now is how to use the wasted space on the left of my hobby desk as my Moppes don't reach to the big wall....I want to move them against that wall and create something custom for the space between the Moppe and the Cabinet that appears on my left. It's a good 20+ cm's width of space from my table upwards for about 2 metres of usuable storage space. The Ikea 2nd hand stuff I have for that is too wide sadly. But my plastic storage cubes are less then that so they could fit the bill, sadly the ones I've seen sofar are either very shallow and/or expensive per cube.

I'll find some sort of a solution, no worries :)