Oh yes, I didn't mean that you'd have a serious problem. Just that it'll be hard work to keep them looking shiny and new.
I'm sure some of you were wondering if this project was dead, but it's not. In fact, I'm living in it now! How many people can say that about their mods? There was a lot of work that needed to be done before I could move in and most of it just wasn't very interesting. Gas piping, vent piping for the toilet vault, installing the chimney, stuff like that. All of it necessary, but none of it photogenic. I got moved in a couple of weeks ago and since then have been working on various projects. Let's start, as most of my projects do, with parts. I found this nifty toilet part at an architectural salvage place in Astoria OR on the way back from California. Obviously it was cool, obvoiusly I needed to have it, but what to use it for? Why, to hold toilet paper, of course! This bathroom isn't particularly man friendly since in order to change the roll you have to actually unscrew a nut. The paper also has to go on a certain way or else the rotating roll will unscrew said nut. First world problems. Staying with the bathroom for a moment, here is the finished towel rack and stuff holder. The components are part electrical, part plumbing, and all from the Re-Store. I have a couple more of those vertical pieces with the flanges and I'm tempted to make another one of these and take to the Re-store for them to sell. And finally, what steampunk bathroom would be complete without a shower curtain? This was on my eBay watch list for months before I was finally ready to order and install it. Moving into the living room, we have a new control panel. The light switches are actually light switches, the rotary switch turns the heater on and off, and the meter tells how much light there is in the room. There will eventually be a thermostat in the empty space on the left side, but I haven't found one that is quite what I want. For now I'm happy with "turn switch, make fire". I'm going to get a plate made for the rotary switch that indicates what each setting is, but that involves spending money and so has to wait. I've actually been using this cabinet for a while, but it's only been in the last week that I've finally gotten it put together the way I've been planning on. Bathroom cabinet digivolves into... Server rack! From top to bottom we have... Slide out KVM Patch panel (not really hooked up yet) Baytech RPC-3 remotely controlled power strip 8 port Gigabit switch File server And at the bottom a little 1u server that's not connected to anything. The doors are eventually going to get replaced with two full height curved, louvered doors, but I need a router table to build those, so again something that has to wait. The RPC-3 is an interesting beast. I got it from the same guy I bought the file server case from on Craigslist in California. I thought it was just a power strip, but it turns out that you can turn the outlets on and off remotely over the network and it has built-in true RMS monitoring on each circuit. That's the good news. The bad news is that it has to be configured using a serial terminal which is attached using a proprietary serial to RJ-45 connector. I found the wiring diagram online, but it means buying a USB to DB-9 serial cable, then building the DB-9 to RJ-45 piece in order to set the thing up. According to the manual, once it's set up it can be controlled over ethernet. It should make for an interesting little project, and in the meantime, half the outlets work and that's all I need for now. Here it is with the KVM open, I've had this thing for quite a while and I'm thrilled to have it finally installed and working. This was the big project for this weekend. Up until now the upper desktop had just been sitting on blocks and while it was stable enough, I always planned to do more with it. Last night I got busy cutting and bending sheet metal and this afternoon I finished up with this. That is three pieces of galvanized sheet metal across the front with decorative heat register grills riveted to them. There will be speakers mounted behind the grills and controls for the computer in the inner portions. The plan is to put a 2.1 channel amplifier in the left inner section, a 7" LCD screen along with the power and reset buttons for the computer in the center, and the optical drive, card reader, and a drive bay in the right Originally the drives and the amp were supposed to be reversed, but the grills I ended up using are fairly wide and there is slightly more room on the right so they need to go there. Here is an overview of the desk area. As you can see the tabletop jas been extended to the right and when finished will actually tie into the nightstand. I can't really explain how that's going to work so you'll just have to wait for that to appear in a future update. The bookshelves started out as a package of particleboard strips I got at the Re-Store for $4.50. After a little cutting, gluing and screwing they turned into some nice built-in storage. Since I'm trying to live in only 650 square feet, I plan to do a lot more of this sort of thing. The countertop is going to continue along this entire wall and about 3 feet to the left around the corner where it will tie into the server rack. There will be another desk in the left corner for my sewing machine and upper cabinets to the left of the window. The space below the window has built-in cabinets and these are going to get doors with pierced stainless mesh. I got the mesh scraps while I was in California, but still need to cut them to size and build the doors. I calculated that I would need to buy two sheets of melamine at about $30 a sheet to build this cabinet, but ended up buying zero sheets because I was able to get enough scrap pieces. The colors may not always match, but cheap is good. The wooden thing on the bottom left is my benchtop metal lathe which has a slide out shelf it lives on to make moving and storing it easier. So, that's where it is now. The next step is building the nightstands and overbed cabinet assembly. Unfortunately, that project involved buying plywood and a lot of waiting for stain to dry, so it's taking a while. In the meantime, I need to make a new drive cage and fit it to the desk front. Until next time...
The last of the cables finally came in today and so stage 1 of the "Desk as a Peripheral" (DaaP) project is operating. As you can see, the power and reset buttons are built into the desk, as are the optical drive, 2 SATA bays and the card reader. The original plan was to put the computer itself in the cabinet to my lest, but even with 2 meter cables that proved not to be feasible and so it's sitting under the desk at my feet. There are speakers behind the grilles at either side of the desk and the amp / subwoofer is located behind the monitor. The next step, when I can afford it, is to add a 7" screen to the center panel to read out system status information.
OK, I almost had a stroke when I read that. A few things bug me. -More than the plumbing being outside the walls. -Hot water pipes behind the toilet so you can burn your back. -the outlet lower than the sink raising your chances of electrocution. -surrounding said outlet with (grounded?) plumbing raising chances of electrocution even more. Sorry, It's just your landlord will have to gut that and start over from scratch if you move. some tips: You shouldn't cut the tile around outlets/fixtures. Instead tile closely around the holes and move the covers/outlets forward with longer screws. Hardware stores make a sliding door finger inset that fits knob holes. If the hole passes the door facing when fully open you might want to skip it. -otherwise I can see using the inset pulls breaking fingers. Like these
My landlord is also my best friend and not only approved of everything I did, but helped me build it. This is not a commercial rental, but rather a former rec room that wasn't being used anymore and if I move out it will probably get used as a guest room, but not as the sort of rental you advertise in the paper. The hot water is from a tankless system and so the pipes are only hot when a faucet is actively running hot water. Most of the time the pipes are at ambient temperature. Even if I were to be sitting on the pot when the water was running the heater output is set to 122 degrees F and so while it could eventually scald you, it wouldn't be an immediate thing. The outlets are GFCI protected and the plumbing actually isn't grounded, though I should probably fix that last part. The supply side is connected to the rest of the building with PEX and the drain side is ABS. The vent fan switch that is recessed into the wooden board is actually a waterproof assembly, but you're right, I should have mounted the cover outside the board. File it under lessons learned. I've got a welded handle on the inside which covers the hole and am working on a handle for the outside. It's a fairly low priority since I seldom close the bathroom door, and never from the outside. There will also be a lock mechanism for the door someday, but since I don't exactly have a lot of visitors it's not a high priority. Now for the progress! The... canopy, I guess... over the bed is in place. I did have to buy a sheet of plywood for the headboard, but the rest of it is salvaged wood and metal. The gaps between the metal pieces and he headboard are annoying, but I have a plan to fix them. Figuring out the precise shape of the curves pieces turned out to be much harder than anticipated. And here it is in action. There are also red LED light strips mounted under the nightstands to illuminate the floor for those 3 am trips to the bathroom where you don't want to turn on the room lights and wake yourself up. There is one of these fixtures recessed into the underside of each side of the overhead cabinet. I've got several other things planned for he overhead including a big analog thermometer, a switch for the propane heater, and eventually a fan in the cabinet itself which blows down onto the head of the bed. The idea is that on those really cold mornings I can see how cold it is in the room and turn the heat on before I ever crawl out from under the blankets. I have a 17 or 19" flat panel monitor I could mount into the bottom of the cabinet, but I'm not yet sure if that is a good idea. On the desk itself, the biggest change is that most of the stuff now works. The card reader, drive bays, optical drive, USB ports, speakers and power and reset buttons are all functional. The center panel has gotten some upgrades though. That's a 7" TFT display with a collection of SPST pushbutton switches around it. The switches are going to be hooked up to an Arundio Leonardo I/O board and the whole assembly will display system parameters while the main screen is in use. I also have a wrist mounted recording pulse oximiter that I got for working out, but which can be connected to the computer by USB and so I can set the secondary screen to display my pulse and blood oxygen content while gaming. Absolutly no good reason to do that, but it's theoretically possible.
