Saturday, February 26, 2011

Shelves

The last post about the lamps, made me realise I have an older project, which I think was successfull, but never made it into here, so here it goes!

We have a small niche in one corner of the living room, and that had some shelves when we moved in, but they were not great, and besides, we had to completely renew the walls and so we took them out.


Original shelves (and wall color)


During the renovation process

We wanted some thick shelves, and thought of multiplex, 3 or 4 cm thick, so we went to the shop, and found a nice thick kitchen counter. We had it cut into the proper sizes, to the surprise of the operator there, that asked 3 times if we knew that that was a kitchen top.

I then routed a groove on the sides of the shelves, attached a small guide to the wall and sliped the shelves in. I am too lazy to take pictures while making it, so sorry for the lack of those.
This is the result.




That angled piece of wood is a bottle holder, also my own creation, very very simple. I might make a post about it soon! In the first picture you can see it with 3 bottles!

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Ikea lamp

I still didn't manage to install the RFID door lock - still cold around here - so I have to do stuff inside the house!
Last year we redid the bathroom and toilets, and that included the corridor upstairs, which got a place for 3 wall lamps, instead of the hanging lamp that did not illuminate much.
So we spent lots of time looking for lamps (more than 6 months) and never found anything we liked. Even the painter, with whom we have a subscription (he should pass by every month to fix this and that), complains with us that we still did not get lamps...

To put an end to that, during a visit to Ikea, my wife had an Idea(TM - ideas from Ikea) for making a lamp...using a fruit bowl.

So we got one, and I started devising a way of installing it in the very small junction box. The final solution was a very simple 2 long M4x40 screws, on which the lamp then hangs. I installed a white lamp holder, and here is the result:


You can see the two screws on the top - I want to dip them in tippex or white paint to make them white... - there is actually just one place of all the flowers where it is possible to secure it like that.
You can also see the black hole of the junction box - that is to be covered with a piece of white rigid plastic.
What you can also see, are the 3 little rubber feet of the fruit bowl...I did not take them out as I am afraid the paint will come out...but they will have to come out sooner or later.

As for the effect when the lights are on:


It is difficult to photograph the real effect, but I can assure you that it looks very nice!
I must get some weaker lamps though...I have now 7W CFLs and with 3 of them it is a lot for such a small corridor...