Soldering up LED Light Strips

When it comes to bending, the LED light strips act a little like thick tape. They will go around quite a broad curve, but you have to break them to go around a sharp corner. Fortunately, every third LED, the strips have a line where they can be cut, and little solder pads to wire […]

Top Cabinets Finished

The top cabinets finally got finished this evening, and they look better than I’d imagined. Indeed, it’s pretty amazing how close they come to looking like the original design. The face frames are mostly poplar, with a couple of plywood panels thrown in around the corner. For strength, they are assembled with dowels and glue. […]

First strip of lights goes up (temporarily)

Andrew came over last night, and we installed the first strip of LED lights to try it out over the whole layout. As I mentioned previously, one strip is definitely not enough. Also we both agree that the mixture of warm white and cool white is more pleasant than just the cool white (shown below). […]

Next two pieces of backdrop

Tonight Andrew and I managed to get the next two pieces of backdrop up. The curve on the right is a 3′ radius, and was much easier to accomplish with the quarter inch Masonite. As with the sharper curve at the other end, we made a couple of plywood formers to support the curve. The […]

A Start on the Backdrop

Andrew came over for the first time in a while this evening and we made a start on the backdrop. What a battle! Of course it doesn’t help that I’m super-cheap, and so I’m using hardboard that I salvaged from the original basement walls. It is nominally 1/4 inch, but it’s about fifty years old, […]

Lights

I went back and forth for ages on what to do about lights for Pembroke. On the one hand, I’m familiar with fluorescent lights, and I know I can get ~5000K bulbs relatively easily. On the other hand, vertical space is at a premium, and I really wanted to check out the new LEDs. Finally, […]

Top Cabinet Carcasses Installed

Last night I finished installing the angled top cabinets in the corner. These were originally going to be just a single large cabinet, but it turned out to be more efficient in terms of material to make two cabinets. For some reason, which I shall have to investigate, the smaller of the cabinets is a […]

A Tale of Two Cabinets

Last night I got the second of two cabinet carcasses screwed to the wall and the ceiling. This took much longer than expected; indeed, I’d thought I would be done by Friday night, and I was finishing up at midnight on Monday. Well, as usual, I learned some stuff, and I’m writing it down here. […]

Cabinetry

For much of December, when I wasn’t over-eating, I was working on the cabinets that will go around Pembroke. They’re a long way from finished. Indeed, there will be six cabinets, and only two carcases are assembled so far. However, progress is happening and accelerating; hopefully I will get the first two cabinets installed tonight […]

North Section Wired

By gum, but it’s cold out there! The garage where Pembroke is under construction is not heated, except by a tiny little plug-in fan heater; it’s got about the same thermal capacity as my wife’s hair dryer, which is to say, it doesn’t make much of a dent in the -8 Celsius that we are […]