Purchased a very old century home a few months ago and have been renovating room by room. This is not a "down to the studs" job, just making things nice enough to actually live in. Figured I'd post because why not, slow board and not in the mood for a stone thread.I started by levelling off a very nasty section of the floor. The posts in the basement collapsed and were repaired maybe 50 years ago and nobody fixed the top floor. I'm not in a position to level things up the proper way, so for now I'm doing the worst areas so I can move in without my chair rolling into the low spot. No,the existing boards are not salvageable, extremely warped and damaged pine, not to mention layers of possibly lead based paint.
Did my best to feather it into the existing floor
The corner of the room had this weird and poorly built shelf hiding the main vent stack. It looked stupid so I confirmed I can put some elbows in it and went to town
Built a new shelf that tucks into the new vent shape. I'm not a carpenter but pretty happy with this
It was at this point I noticed we had no ground on any plugs, so I had to pull some new wires, luckily I had a few open slots on my panel. One of those plugs was put into my not so great framing job pictured here... At least my computer will be grounded now.
The shelf and wall got drywall and plaster and I moved on to making a few floating shelves. I bought these brackets thinking I'd just slide some drilled planks up, but they looked thin. Having to carve into the plaster down to the lathe sucked, and having to use a magnet to find studs was a pain in the ass too.
Here is where things were with the brackets up, plastered my channels etc.
I built the shelves out of quarter inch birch veneer plywood and the internals are 3/4 plywood. A bit janky but strong and very light weight. The shelves are 12 feet long.
Once I had my desk built, cleats on the wall etc I finished wiring some 12v LEDs into two zones and installed them in the shelves. The front is capped with 14 foot lengths of poplar, a pain to get in the room but I really didn't want to see any joint. The poplar was very green compared to the birch, needed to be treated with oxalic acid to brighten them up. Not perfect but looks good enough for me.
For flooring I went with glue down vinyl, it's robust and has no issue following the wobbly slopes of the floor. The last thing I wanted was a floating floor with gaps under it
For cabinets I used Ikea Alex. Custom cabinets were expensive. I had to build podiums for them and trimmed them out to match the rest of my quarter round. The desk top is 3/4 birch plywood.
Now time to run some wire channels into the wall, mount monitors etc. it's been about two months since ive had a computer.
Forgot this photo. There is a transformer built into the wall with an access panel on the next room stepping things down from 120v to 12v. Then two dimmer switches inside the shelf. I hope nothing breaks, would be a pain to access these dimmers. The shelf also has cleats and is screwed from the top, it's not just resting on the metal brackets. In theory I could pull the entire shelf off if I remove the top screws.
came here to be a dick but i think you ok, op
>>2982678I'm open to all criticisms, I'm a tradie but not very good with carpentry (I work with stone). I'm proud of my fake trim filing cabinet door though
>>2982680This is better than what 99% of this board can accomplish. Nice job OP.
>>2982680A lot better than I could do
>>2982663this is the only thing i can comment on.as boomer as it sounds, i would never ever use anything but common sockets for lighting, like e14, e27,gu10 and g13. an led retrofit tube is something they will still sell in half a century, when the chink strip breaks its a pain in the ass to swap
>>2982659Nice work but I gotta ask: why use the cheap stuff for flooring? If you are going through the effort, real wood is a better option.
>>2982649Always fun to see how others solve a problem.
>>2982702Real wood is heavy, expensive and would require me to properly level the floors. I have acres of land around me that have been neglected for a very long time, I can't make things perfect for now. Glue down vinyl looks nice and plays well with this very very unlevel floor>>2982705My options were this or to pull boards and sister new joists to proper height, but it would have set me back a little too far on my schedule. Like I said in the last comment, tons of land on my property that needs attention, I have leaking foundations, a massive unkept pond, downed trees, a garage that leans to one side... I just needed a habitable space before spring.
>>2982649>>2982661Always sad to see some vintage lead painted hardwood flooring get covered up by modern plastic, but yeah no that pit is gnarly I don't blame you.
Looking good OP. Make sure the room gets some sovl though, don't go full apple store. I also modified an Alex drawer. It looks completely normal and the top drawer is original. But I turned the faces of the bottom 4 drawers into a door so I can hide my PC behind it without having to change the look. But I feel like my desk can't accomodate a sufficient distance between me and the monitors, despite the monitors being mounted flush to the walls. Is that not an issue for you?
>>2982715>Alex faces joined This is a smart idea, I should have done that instead of getting the one with the single big door, this is eventually where my PC will go. >Sovl It's going to be an office/painting studio, should be quite cozy when it's done.
>>2982715Oh, on the monitors side of things, I have about 26 inches of depth, my main problem is with my CRT monitor, not sure how I'll sort that out or if it will even go here. I'm so busy I don't think I'll be spending much time here, maybe next winter.
>>2982729>this is eventually where my PC will goI drilled a big ass hole in the back plate and put a computer fan in said hole to get some air flow. I suppose in your setup you could put the hole on the side? I made another hole for the cables. Works like a charm, but it does collect dust. I also put some rails underneath the desk to prevent it from sagging over time, something to consider.>This is a smart ideaThanks. I like to think so. I don't have too many of those.
>>2982649How do you find the energy to renovate your own home and work at the same time?
>>2982734Sometimes things need to just get done I guess? I also have no tv or computer right now so I can't distract myself even if I wanted to, I've started to unpack...
Looks great anon. Please have my updoot.
>>2982656is that the sunset? looks like a nice viewgood luck
>>2982657whats keeping the shelf from just being pulled off the brackets
>>2982871Sunrise >>2982876I have blocks of wood mounted to the wall between the brackets, once the shelf is slid into place I put screws from above into the blocks so the shelf can't be pulled forward.
