Category: Furniture & room furnishings

Plant shelves

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I have some nice wood boards from an old project that I would like to reuse for 2 projects:

  • Windowsill planters in my bedroom
  • Plant shelf / planter on my office desk

Right now I have my windowsill plants in plastic balcony planters. Needless to say, those planters are not very nice to look at. And my office plants are getting in the way, so they could use some shelves.

Board plans:

  • ~106 cm board: office shelf left
  • ~101 cm board: office shelf right
  • ~101 cm board: office shelf middle + 22 cm (window left) + 15 cm (window right)
  • ~133 cm board: 70 cm (window left) + 63 cm (window right)
  • ~106 cm board: window left
  • ~101 cm board: 15 cm (window right) + 22 cm (window left) + leftover

Office shelf plan has gotten a little bigger (but simpler) than my previous idea: just a board in each window, connected by a diagonal board in the middle, supported by a beam under it.

It’s just resting on the window frames. I measured it well so I could wedge it between the leftmost and rightmost window posts which means it feels solid. :) KISS meant that I actually found the motivation to make & finish it, instead of overthinking but not actually making anything.

Next up: rightmost windowsill planter for my room. It looks simple enough, but getting it to fit on a 14 cm windowsill when the nursery pots are 11 cm square and the wood I want to use is 2.5 cm is a bit of a challenge.

Ventilation & air quality

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I might need to ventilate more, but I would like to keep the heat in.

Some ideas:

  • CO2 sensor & humidity sensor to know when to ventilate. I must still have a breadboarded project somewhere based on Operame
  • Automatic window opener, perhaps based on this project?
  • Heat recovery ventilation. The room I’d like to ventilate would require 25-72 m³/h. Some ideas:
    • Something like a used Stork WHR90 (€100) unit could work, but it’s very large. I could mount the outdoor inlet and exhaust on a panel behind the wooden folding “window” already in the room. Should probably duct one of the indoors connections of the unit to the other side of the room to prevent short circuiting.
    • A smaller heat exchanger with separate fans would likely be sufficient, and would be much smaller and easier to mount. Also, perhaps can be quieter, especially if mounted in an insulated box. However, it would likely be less efficient and probably more expensive.
    • Something along the lines of this project or this one
    • A heat recovery ventilation system using a single vent, with heat recovery material inside, blowing in/out alternately. Sometimes called “recuperator ventilation”. Less efficient, but simplest solution. A new unit can be had for about €150 but should also be the easiest to DIY, because the core doesn’t have to exchange heat through space, only over time. Ventilation (in/out) regime and thermal capacity should be matched carefully for highest efficiency, which means that throttling might not be possible. Commercial units use a ceramic core and roughly 70+70 second cycles. I guess instead of throttling, I could control the amount of cycles it does per hour based on the ventilation requirement. And/or use multiple temperature probes to control cycles? Ceramic cores are available: for instance this hexagonal one, and I wonder if this ceramic catalytic converter core substrate is suitable but might clog up too fast.
    • To keep in mind: outside-to-inside noise reduction by installing a noise filter on the vents? And or acoustic insulation on the wooden window to lower fan-to-outside noise?

So far, the single fan “recuperator” seems the most viable option. Perhaps with a 12V case fan, and the whole thing encased in an insulated box mounted to the wooden window. And some filters. Or perhaps two units together in the box for a low/high flow option. Can even set it to just blow into the room at night on very hot days.

First, get a CO2 sensor working.

Lab stand cart for distillation setup

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I want to build some sort of cart, or something with wheels to put all my distillation things on so I can easily roll it out of the way. It should permanently hold my big lab stand to hold the biomass vial, and under that I would like it to house a 10L jerrycan and a smaller lab stand to hold the heated mantle and boiling flask. Also, somewhere to put the controller/power for the cooling loop pump. Something like this, with caster wheels under the corners:

I want to make it out of leftover pieces of wood. I would need:

  • 4x 44x44x400mm horizontal
  • 4x 44x44x338mm vertical
  • 2x 69x44x362mm horizontal, at the bottom
  • 2x ~12x150x412mm sides
  • 1x 12x312x450 bottom
  • 1x 12×150+x450 backplate

I can get all of that out of scraps, yay! Let’s get building!

Edit: done! I don’t remember the last time I went from conceptualisation to finishing a project in one afternoon. It’s nice to finish something for a change.

Next up: figuring out all the connections on my random collection of glassware that I want to build a distillation setup from.

Headboard finished

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I finished the headboard and I’m happy with how it turned out. :)

Things I learned:

  • Wood glue doesn’t work very well on foam, but regular craft glue is fine. I guess spray glue would’ve been best, though.
  • A blunt bread knife doesn’t work very well for cutting this sort of foam. However, fabric scissors worked really well and I got nice straight cuts.
  • I cut the foam slightly oversized and pressed it into the frame, and didn’t glue it against the backboard. While this worked, I think it would’ve been better to cut it to size and glue it so it can’t bulge or come loose later.
  • Now I’ve got the thing behind my bed, I think it would’ve looked better if it were some 30cm wider, so it continued all the way to the wall. Maybe I will make a small separate piece to fill that gap. I have plenty of felt left. Or maybe I’ll make something out of wood, like a tall corner shelf/night stand.

Two propagation racks

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I salvaged an aluminium drying rack for glass tubes. I already had some salvaged lab glass tubes and long bottles that I wanted to make racks for, and they fit nicely in the holes. However, I didn’t have enough of the bottles to fill it up, and it was too tall for the reaction tubes. So I drilled out the little rivets, sawed one of the plates with holes into two, and made the thing into two racks to fit both the tubes and the bottles.

It was nice to work with rivets again, I don’t have much experience with those. It shows if you look closely – the one in the back has four different sizes of rivets – but I learned in the end.

I’ll use these for propagating plant cuttings. They fit perfectly in the windowsill :)

Headboard foam

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I salvaged some foam from work that I might use to make a headboard for my bed.

It’s four 70x50x3cm pieces of firm foam, and two 70x33x3cm pieces of softer foam. I want a headboard that is at least 140x80cm so I guess I could just use two firm ones on the bottom and two softer ones on top. Then the two remaining firm ones could make a ~120x50cm back pillow for my bean bag sofa. I think I have enough felt material for both projects.

I have zero upholstery experience though, so I guess I should do some research first.

Glassware drying rack

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I want a drying rack for my home chemistry glassware, for drying & storing.

Maybe something modular, so I can expand my glassware collection later?

Perhaps incorporate a drip tray?

I have round wooden rods, I think 13mm and 8mm diameter, that would make nice pegs.

Maybe first find some wall space to hang it. Right now I only have space behind a door, but obviously I don’t want to smash fragile glassware every time I open the door.

Edit: lab was throwing one out, post here.

Plant shelf for lab office

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I want more plants in our lab office, but I don’t want to clutter my desk too much. I’ve already found a way to suspend some plants from the ceiling, but I also want to reuse some old / damaged lab glassware as planters and I don’t want to hang those.

My desk is in a corner with two windows overseeing the lab. Both windows have a small ledge, so I’m thinking of putting a shelf onto them. I could make it mostly out of reused wood from the lab, e.g. wood that was used for shipping some of our machines.

I think the weight on top will keep everything in place, but I want to secure the thing to be sure. I don’t think I’ll be allowed to drill into the window frames. I guess I could wedge something between the frame on the long side, so the shelf can’t move. Maybe I can use bolts in T-nuts to push into the steel frames on both sides and wedge it that way? Or perhaps a very strong magnet on both ends to make sure the thing doesn’t slide off?

Mattress extender

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I want to make a mattress extender, but to make it wider instead of longer. There’s about 20-25 cm between my bed and the wall, I’ve got square buckets of hydroponic media there for storage but I think it would be nice if I put some sort of mattress extender on top of it. Perhaps I can just make it out of an old duvet cover, which is already the right length. I’ve still got a bag of foam scraps that I used to make my beanbag, I don’t know if it’d be enough.

Radiator cover

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I’m making a radiator cover.

Goals

  • Hide ugly radiator
  • Extend windowsill for plants
  • Protect windowsill plants from touching hot surfaces
  • Work with fabric for a change

Steps

  • Measure
  • Find inspiration
  • Draw design
  • Buy materials
  • Cut materials to size
  • Assemble

Design

I would’ve embedded the Pinterest section I made for inspiration in this post, but apparently you can’t embed Pinterest sections, only whole boards. Here’s just the design I came up with:

It’s a simple design made out of wood, unbleached cotton and rope. Part of the wood is reused hardwood skirting boards that we had laying around. The plywood sides are closed, the bottom is open, and the plywood top has a 10mm ventilation slit. The whole thing is lightweight, which makes it easy to attach to the wall so I can vacuum under it.

I might put some reflective foil on the underside of the overhanging part of the windowsill extension, so less heat is radiated directly into the plants. I might even extend it all the way down behind the radiator, but I don’t know if the fabric I bought is dense enough to hide it.