Complete Lounge Makeover

Tags: #<Tag:0x00007fa498d21358>
#21

Hahahaha hahahaha. Ha.

Got the TV wall finished today (apart from the top rail which will be the very last thing).

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The door slides very nicely behind the TV, with soft close action and a home-made self closing mechanism involving bike brake cable, pulleys and a lead weight in a bit of drainpipe. On to the wall on the right next!

Should have the whole room done before the heat death of the universe.

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Wooden modular/box shelves
#22

In Makerspace time you are still doing well!!

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#23

Hi Tom,

There’s quite a few questions to get through to extend that socket, so my first suggestion would be to have a spark come do it.

But if your preferring to do it yourself:

  • Any idea what the length of the existing loop is your extending? Unlikely to be crossing the threshold here but there is a maximum length for loops before you need to increase cable size.
  • What fuse is the existing ring main on? Assuming that your adding sockets, might want to consider it otherwise when everything is plugged in it might start tripping.
  • If cables are to surface mounted inside your new creation it wouldn’t hurt to put the cables in conduit rather than leaving them loose/pinned.
  • Have you considered running power also up to those speaker locations?

Hope some of that helps.

#24

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the advice, although it’s all been wired up for over a year now with no complaints!

It’s all running as a 13A spur (you can see the socket with the grey cable bottom left). The sockets in the furniture are all single gang, and it’s a tree+branches topology something like:

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Total load is no more than you’d expect running on a power strip behind a TV stand. All the cables are neatly routed and pinned, and all junctions are wago clips in boxes. There’s no power to the speaker shelves, although there are speaker wire terminals there. There’s power to the top left shelf for a VR sensor.

In the final condition I’m planning to replace the socket with a fused spur (with the junction box being accessible in the same location as the socket is now).

#25

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Phase two complete! It was a real backbreaker of a day cutting up all the MDF for this one, and somewhere along the line the table saw fence or stop block must have slipped because the widths of the carcassing ended up being +/- 3mm out in places. Something I only realised after I’d already glued the first row of boxes down and was stacking the second. >_<

To correct my mistake, I used the ash trim as a guide. Each horizontal piece is the same length so I used the chop saw to make them all identical. Then I could use clamps on all the vertical pieces to stretch/squash the box edges back into line. I nailed through the ash with panel pins to hold things in place, used a punch to push the nail head under the surface, then glued little slivers of wood back in on top. I managed to match the grain almost everywhere.

I found some acrylic paint in the kids craft box with an excellent colour match so did the whole “paint the crack and sand it while wet” trick to hide the joins. I’m leaving a final sanding and oiling till the whole room’s done, to get a consistent finish.

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Either of the options for the next phase will include some steaming for the rounded corners of a corner table or computer desk, but that’s for another time…

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