Random Thoughts

This is one of those long posts… because I didn’t quite know what to do here, so this took me months and months.

Join me on a journey… of… something totally trivial: Adding a front to that red box up there, which has the keyboard to my stereo system on top, and some vinyl thingies and CDs inside. (Or skip to the end to see the stunning result.)

In there I’ve got like — a 7″ “holey” adaptor, a clamp for unruly records and a brush. And then some CD box sets — when I buy new albums, I always rip them and listen via flac, and then read the liner notes when I listen to the album the first time. But with box sets, I usually “swap them in” over several months, so I need somewhere accessible to store them until I’ve listened to all the albums in the set.

Makes sense, eh?

Oh, and there’s a couple of hinges… as one has.

Oh! And a totally functional pick-up. Oops! Well, I can throw that away, anyway…

But ever since I bought the box (about ten years ago), I’ve wanted to add either a door, or a drawer to the box — because it just looks so untidy the way it is.

A drawer would be natural… but a door would be simpler to do. I mean, a whole lot less wood to cut. And besides, the box is pretty small, and I don’t want to make it even smaller, which a drawer would make it.

So: A door.

If I’m adding a door, what kind of hinge should I use? Let’s take a tour of different kinds of hinges…

This is a hidden hinge — they require cutting a groove into the door and they take up quite a bit of space inside the box.

And then there’s these…

See? Also requires cutting a deep groove, and the walls in the box here just aren’t wide enough.

And then there’s these… but how do they work?

Have you ever looked at how many kinds of hinges exist?

Have you done your hingology classes in school?

That’s an Ikea hidden hinge, and also requires a lot of groove cutting.

Look at this hinge! What is that even!

And this one?

Well, or perhaps… I dunno. But there seems to be two kinds in general: Hidden hinges (that require cutting a groove in the door) or normal hinges that have the round hingey part visibly sticking out. I think I have to use the latter.

Anyway, while cutting material for the alarm clock I built, I also cut this piece of wood and painted it black.

And I found this in a box in the attic.

I bought it on Etsy more than a decade ago, and it’s supposed to be a hook to hang on the wall. But the person who made it didn’t know what they were doing, because it’s filled with so much concrete that the hanging bit doesn’t allow a screw to fit into the groove up there. So it’s useless. But I’m thinking I can use it as a door pull! Reuse before throwing away!

So my idea is that I can put a screw into the cavity, and then fill it with epoxy, and then drill a hole through the door.

See? The screw should be long enough.

Epoxy!

Is it straight? I think it is!

Oops! I didn’t mix the epoxy sufficiently, so it never actually set. It’s been a while since I did any epoxying.

OK, redo… and this time around, I mix the epoxy thoroughly. And it feels rock solid.

But how does the bit of wood I cut months ago fit? Pretty well — but it’s about a couple of millimetres too long and a bit too tall at one end.

And remember all those hinges up there? I decided to go with one of these kinds of hinges — the hinge sticks out in the front, and that should give me a 270-degree swing or something.

And a couple of weeks ago I bought this vice — I’ve never had one before, but I’ve always wanted one. And a plane! A proper one! It’s a dream come true.

So mount the door in the vice…

And this li’l plane is nice, too.

I’ve got a lamp! With a looking glass! So that I can actually see what I’m doing when I’m adjusting the plane!

Measure once, cut twice…

So I used two pieces of wood to protect the door from the vice…

… but that left marks. *sigh*

I need these.

But OK, the door now fits perfectly.

And then check whether the concrete pull is gonna work…

It does!

OK, after sanding the door down again a bit…

… it’s time to give it a final coat of paint.

There! Such blackness.

Back to the “door pull”… I see that it’s not completely flush? Whut?

Oh, the epoxy has crept up the shaft of the screw at the bottom there. Gngng.

OK, I can use a larger drill and then just drill out a millimetre down…

There! Flush as a toilet. (I’m sure that’s a saying.)

While pondering all of this, I was wondering whether it would be easier to hinge the door at the top/bottom or left/right. Top/bottom has the advantage that there’s less torque applied on the hinge when the door is open, but screwing the screws into the top/bottom would be impossible with a normal screwdriver.

So I bought the above gadget that allows screwing in 80-degree angles. Fun gadget. But since I decided to hinge the door at the left, I don’t need it. Oh well.

Yeah, looks like the screws I have are the correct length — won’t poke out on the other side of the wall.

The MDF used in this box has a very hard lacquer, so I think I’ll use a drill to get started.

Oops! I put the hinge too far up. And the hinge is wider than I thought — I have to plane off a couple more millimetres!

Fortunately I only used one screw to test first…

Yay! It fits!

So now I have to fasten the pull… and I just bought all these lug nut bits because I’ve never had any of those before. The one from Makita seems pretty useless.

But the ones from Bosch are perfect. I ❤️ Bosch.

There! Heh heh. It’s original at least — I can guarantee that this is the only thing in the world that looks like this.

But I need something to avoid jamming the door too far into the box by accident — and I had this gold-painted wood cube from a previous project, so perhaps just wood-glue it in there? Huh, seems to work… and that gold/red is a nice combo.

And then a quick roll-over with some black paint on the side I did the final emergency planing, and then it just needs to dry again and I’m done? WHAT! This project started in May, and it’s now October, so that took *counts on fingers* FOREVER!

See? Much tidier now.

Heh heh, that whopping huge concrete thing used as a door pull makes me laugh. So stupid!

And such smooth action… *clomp*

OK, I’ll tidy up tomorrow. FOREVER AND A DAY.

I didn’t use to have curtains in my living room — the apt. is er south-east facing, so it has sun in the mornings and afternoons when I’m at work. But after I started working more from home, it got to be ridiculous — I had to move around all day to avoid having the sun shining in my face. (Especially in winter when the sun is lower in the sky.)

So five years ago I wandered into a curtain store and said “I need some curtains”, and the expeditress said “like, what colour? style? look?”. Never having considered curtain design before in my life, the question was rather sudden and I said “er… something light? and abstract, perhaps” and then she pulled out a fabric sample of this:

And I said sure, and a few months later I got them… and… er…

I did not like the curtains. At all! What was I thinking! Wut! Gngng. But I just hung them up and lived with my mistake.

But we were chatting about curtains on irc one day (as one does) and somebody mentioned Svenskt tenn, a Swedish company that had lots of oldee tymey Swedish designs, like Green birds.

Tada! But I thought that this time I would be more cautious and only buy enough fabric for one window, and then I could live with it for a while, and then decide whether to do the other four windows.

And this means that I should probably do the first window myself — hiring somebody to do just one window seemed like more bother than it’s worth. How hard can it be to do something like this?! I mean!? Like!??! LITERALLY!

Reader, it’s harder than it looks.

First of all, how much fabric to buy? The curtains should be 285cm high, and then with 10cm extra for top/bottom hemming. And then the pattern repeats every 92cm, and you want all the curtains to match up vertically, so that means that for two curtains I have to buy OH I GIVE UP

And — snip the vertical borders or fold them in?

I guess that’s the colours this has been printed with… Six different colours, I guess?

Yeah, snipping time. But how do you get a line straight on a fabric like this? I tried following a thread, but…

And… Hey, that kinda lines up in two ways? I definitely bought enough fabric if I line them up on the half match like this…

But I’ve got 10cm too little if I want to do the “real” match up. Oops! I guess I mathed it wrong… OK, looks good the other way around so I’ll just do that.

OK, I’ve got a sewing machine, but I’ve never used it and I don’t know how. But there’s something new-fangled called “hemming tape”, and it’s a tape with a plastic backing that you iron onto the fabric, remove the backing, and then iron on the fabric on the other side.

It’s this meshey plastic stuff that melts into the fabric.

See?

So while this is easier than sewing, it’s still so much wooork. The curtains are 305cm tall, and you fold in the fabric twice:

So you get a nice and even hem — but that means that each curtain has about 18 metres of hemming tape applied that has to be ironed on: Took me, like, three hours per curtain.

One done! Almost kinda straight! But it would be nice if it was totally straight… I mean, just because…

OK, I had a brilliant idea — what if I just peel off threads at the bottom until there are no loose threads? So I did that and you see the result above — I was 3cm off. Snip snip, and then it’s straight at the bottom.

I did the same on the side that had been cut at the factory, and that bit wasn’t straight either! *gasp* It was straighter than my cut, but they’re professionals! I have never!

And I ran out of the hemming tape in the middle because I miscalculated how much I needed (there’s that maths again), so I got some stuff from a different shop… AND IT SUCKS! The first one was from Kid and went on like a dream, and then I got the stuff from Jysk, and it’s a nightmare. When removing the backing paper, the paper frayed all the time, meaning that I had to sit there picking and picking at it. Took me hours extra. Boo, Jysk!

Anyway:

It is finished!

*phew*

Now that’s something I’m never ever doing again. I’ll live with these curtains for a week or so, and if I still don’t hate them, I’m ordering enough fabric for the other four windows, but then I’m going to outsource the cutting and hemming to professionals.

I know my limitations. Now.

*who doesn’t sew.