Behold! to solar project monster!!!
And so it begins…. Prologue: This first post was started late into the project so there is a lot to catch up on and I do expect to get a few "TL;DR's". That said, I have added a lot of pics and tr...
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UPDATE ON THE SOLAR PROJECT!
Little late getting this out but none the less here it is!
So what gone done this past week? Well this past weekend was a lot of lay out, staring at things, changing design plans (because again, changing plans in the middle of a project never goes wrong), and moving ever closer to getting things mounted.
Lets start with a couple non-solar cabinet design updates. First thing up is finishing the front of the cabinet with a heater grill. Some off you may have noted that in the past posts the open gap where the heater intake should be.
Now I have had a game plan in my head and finally got a chance to run with it. The frame of the grill is a recycled cabinet door. I wanted to reuse the frame of it so as to keep with the same shape and look of all the cabinet doors but just the frame alone with a flat grill wasn't going to cut it. So using the center plate of the cabinet as a buck, I formed a grill over it, and I think it turned out well.
The last thing I still need to do is install some magnets to hold it in place
My plan is to paint the grill the same color as the cabinets so that it will further blend int the cabinet and make the shape further stand out and match the rest of the cabinets.
OK, so, moving on to Solar. Now, I am going to tell you now that this was one of those days where lots got done but it looks like we have little to show for it. That said, our focus was on starting to do layout and fitment of the solar hardware.
Doing a little layout planning for what will be the back wall off the solar compartment. One alteration that was made early in the design was to switch to a "false wall" design so that we can run all the wires behind and hide them. So once we got all the components laid out, we marked where all the holes will go and will be mounting the hardware to the wall with T-nuts and some nice cap screws. Total side note here. I would have loved to use black chrome hardware for the "pretty" factor but a 1" size 8 screw cost over $4 so that idea went out the window right quick and in a hurry. So we are just going with good old black coated hardware.
Adding to the superficial topic, we decided that we are going to wrap all the compartment panels in felt and add some LED lighting for effect, but I am going to hold off on showing pics of that for now as I want to wait till that process is more complete for effect so look forward to that.
Anyways. This post is late getting up and I am already day 2 into the next project weekend so I want to get this posted now. As always, more to come soon.
-Warped
Little late getting this out but none the less here it is!
So what gone done this past week? Well this past weekend was a lot of lay out, staring at things, changing design plans (because again, changing plans in the middle of a project never goes wrong), and moving ever closer to getting things mounted.
Lets start with a couple non-solar cabinet design updates. First thing up is finishing the front of the cabinet with a heater grill. Some off you may have noted that in the past posts the open gap where the heater intake should be.
Now I have had a game plan in my head and finally got a chance to run with it. The frame of the grill is a recycled cabinet door. I wanted to reuse the frame of it so as to keep with the same shape and look of all the cabinet doors but just the frame alone with a flat grill wasn't going to cut it. So using the center plate of the cabinet as a buck, I formed a grill over it, and I think it turned out well.
The last thing I still need to do is install some magnets to hold it in place
My plan is to paint the grill the same color as the cabinets so that it will further blend int the cabinet and make the shape further stand out and match the rest of the cabinets.
OK, so, moving on to Solar. Now, I am going to tell you now that this was one of those days where lots got done but it looks like we have little to show for it. That said, our focus was on starting to do layout and fitment of the solar hardware.
Doing a little layout planning for what will be the back wall off the solar compartment. One alteration that was made early in the design was to switch to a "false wall" design so that we can run all the wires behind and hide them. So once we got all the components laid out, we marked where all the holes will go and will be mounting the hardware to the wall with T-nuts and some nice cap screws. Total side note here. I would have loved to use black chrome hardware for the "pretty" factor but a 1" size 8 screw cost over $4 so that idea went out the window right quick and in a hurry. So we are just going with good old black coated hardware.
Adding to the superficial topic, we decided that we are going to wrap all the compartment panels in felt and add some LED lighting for effect, but I am going to hold off on showing pics of that for now as I want to wait till that process is more complete for effect so look forward to that.
Anyways. This post is late getting up and I am already day 2 into the next project weekend so I want to get this posted now. As always, more to come soon.
-Warped
Moderator edit to re-size picture to forum recommended limit of 640px maximum width.
