Posted on 21/02/2008 at 16:00
WoodWork Concept
What can we do out of a window-less room, 3.70m long, 1.80m wide and 3.10m below ceiling?
Well, you can turn it into a lovely dressing room, with plenty of space to store your heavy and bulky stuff (like old magazines, scuba diving apparel, snowboarding stuff, etc.)... Kind of a small attic to me!
Well, as nothing's simple, the room's dimensions are far from the usual nowadays standards, (especially the 70cm-deep closet), plus the building being pretty old (built in 1927), the walls aren't that straight... So just forget about Ikea ready-to-go stuff, gotta custom-make it to measures!
So here we go, first I give it a try on Sketchup to fine-tune it, making sure everything fits, and listing all the wood board dimensions I need :
Invisible hinges on the doors, invisible full-extend BluMotion drawer grooves (not that easy to find these, especially 65cm long... Finally got them at a discount price from Foussier), LED lights integrated all around the bottom part...
Lots of sawdust, but not only... Lots of plaster as well! removing the crappy false ceiling, building a plaster dividing wall, treating, plastering, painting, etc...
Some pictures of the current status real soon!
3 comments
Posted on 18/02/2008 at 17:54
WoodWork
So, here is what takes most of my spare time for now... And here you only see less than a third of the wood involved into my project.
I love woodworking, but as I have some, hmmm, let's say obsessive behaviours, it progresses quite slowly, I check every detail...
And why all that, you'll ask?
Patience... I'll tell you tomorrow!
Posted on 30/06/2007 at 02:25
3 month later...
The first one is stable, both the helexine and the fern (néphrolépis boston) grow great, entirely covering the stone underneath...
In the other hand, the little aquatic plant and the duckweed (lemna minor) did not tolerate the lack of light due to the development of the plants above...
The result is very realistic to me, less "artificial" than it originally was, I feel like I've got a small piece of the Gravona, my river in Corsica...
The paludarium V2, as well, developed very well (compare with before - complete article here). The right helexine has literally exploded, as well as the top-left ficus white sunny. This one even hangs onto the surface like ivy, and its roots go though the evacuation tube down to the pump, behind!
For these two plants, I have to play with a pair of scissors pretty often, unless the poor betta would end up in the dark...
Well, not entirely empty : I've discovered it was inhabited by a cute earthworm!
The inflorescence of the Tillandsia is gone, but the plant still goes well, giving more and more tillers...
The shrimps did not last more than a month : one after another, they all died after... their escape! Climbing the "rock" wall, they all ended dried up outside of the tank!
Bettadyne, on the other hand, goes very well!
The whole thing looks more and more natural. The Java Moss (Vesicularia Dubyana) totally colonized the water fall. The structure has a nice patina look, some moss partly covers it... Everyday it looks different, the gentle water noise changes with the plants grow and the snails peregrinations over the structure...
I try to interfere as less as I can, leaving the nature do its job, the plants growing chaotically...
Rendez-vous in 3 months from now to follow the evolution!
End of the story : 27/07/2008
I found the tank almost empty this morning, while I did check the water level yesterday (I usually have to adjust it weekly due to evaporation)... And I found it was sitting in a pool of water.I first thought a plant could have grown so much that it created a way for the water out of the tank (it did happen once)... But no : the tank has a crack at the bottom : a large, horizontal crack, all the way accross one of the faces.
Nevertheless there's been no shock, whether physical of thermal. I do not understand, I suppose there was some tension in the glass when it was fabricated, which finally liberated itself. Well, "Shit happens", I guess...
Unfortunately, it would be very difficult to repair, and if so it would be ugly. And I wouldn't be surprised it the crack kept growing anyway...
So, I have to officially declare this tank dead. I'm disappointed because it was really pretty, but in the end that's only a good occasion to make an even nicer one! And I actually I have been having some ideas about that for a while now...
So, my paludarium lasted 16 month since I put water in it. It had grown a beautiful patina, it was great to watch it evolve.
I guess the technique is fine, the result looked very natural : more than once, at first glance people refused to acknowledge this was an artificial realization!
Even though I'm disappointed, I think about it as a first try! The next one will be bigger, to have more inertia against chemical and thermal variations. And probably a "desert island" look... And definitely plants only, no more animals!
Posted on 29/03/2007 at 01:00
Tillandsia Cyanea
My Tillandsia Cyanea made me a nice surprise this morning...
I actually totally ignored that this plant could produce such flowers!
Flower Power inside...
Posted on 22/03/2007 at 00:30
Bettadyne and the Four Samuraïs
Sounds logical : after the creation of the mineral part of the paludarium, followed by the implantation of the vegetable life form... It was necessary to bring some animal life to this micro-world! Well, in addition to the snails already present, against my willingness...
So, this is a Betta, named Bettadyne
, which came in!
As you can see on the middle picture, one of the helexines died ; I'll replace it with a Boston Fern later (Nephrolepis Bostoniensis), which I already used in my first tank, and does really well...