Creating guitar storage in the man cave

hubobulous

The air vent was quite easy. £3 from Wickes, (and another one purchased for the lower storage section which will be looked at once this is finished), and just a case of measuring the centre of the panel, and leaving enough space for the blind.

I drew around the outside, noted the screwholes and then traced out an area to be removed to go behind the vent openings. I drilled holes at the corners big enough to allow me to get the saw in, and then cut out the inner piece:

Once it was attached, it looked this this from the front:

Almost complete now, so I wanted to make sure that I glued all of the remaining acoustic tiles in behind the area that the panel would cover.I put some on the ceiling and coving too since I noticed that when I was putting guitars into the upper level, I was sometimes banging the headstocks against those areas. This way I was able to help a little with the sound damping as well as providing some protection:

So the final bits are to add the blind to the panel, glue in all remaining acoustic tiles, glue in the neck separators and get the LEDs in there!!

terada

Brilliant work! Been following this all the way and its nice to see it all coming to fruition!

hubobulous

@terada - many thanks. Its been quite interesting as I've said before. None of this has come particularly naturally to me, and I'm never going to be the sort of guy who has a 'tool shed'. The power tools aisle in B&Q is an unknown zone for me..!! 

Its been fun working through different aspects of this, and figuring out how to achieve what I wanted without too much hassle, whilst keeping an element of permanence to the design given that I'm not considering having to do this again :-)

The blind, which I'll come onto next, ended up being less of a challenge than I expected, but still needs some remedial work given the angles of the walls.

hubobulous

I bought a blackout blind from IKEA since I'd put one up before and knew how they worked. I wrongly assumed that one side of the blind would be white and the other a slightly different material to give it the darkening property. Therefore I needed to be sure that I'd get the white side facing outwards.

Like the toilet paper thread from a little while back, I really wanted the blind to come over the front of the roller, since this would mean that it was flush with the opening and there would be no gap between the blind and side batons. IKEA makes them with the material coming over the back which lead to me spending needless hours trying to work out how to fix the blind so that the white part was at the front, but right next to the vertical batons, (with the blind coming from the back of the roller, I'd have to somehow guide it to be at the front).

This thinking stopped when I realised that both sides of the blind were identical - after the feeling of dumbassery subsided, it was a simple case of fixing it to the top wood panel, but essentially back to front to allow the material to drop down the front. Finding the right place to attach it meant ensuring that I knew where any other batons that were connected to the wall were located in relation to the wood panel.

Before the final 'assembly', I finished off glueing the acoustic foam panels to the back and side walls and glued the neck dowlings into the holes. I then screwed the wood panel and side batons back into place, placed the guitars inside and made sure that the blind closed properly

        

I'm pretty happy with how this has turned out. I've obviously got to paint it and figure out how the LEDs are going to work, but getting to this stage has meant that I can tidy up the guitars cases into the loft and reclaim a little space in the house.

The section beneath the lower rack is going to be used to store stuff like cables and pedal board bags, so I've got to now think about creating the front panel for that.......

Dalefty

How do you have the audacity to call that a 'man cave' when there's not even a humble stripper pole in the place? Hell I'm telling my girlfriend bluntly that we are getting a stripper pole put in the living room, and she can either like or leave - in reality I'm asking her really sheepishly and praying she says yes, but still, it's not a proper man cave with a stripper pole in it. DaLefty

hubobulous

@Dalefty - you make a good point. When you get yours installed in your lounge, if you could send photos over then perhaps I can grab some inspiration from them? ;-)

Dalefty

k

hubobulous said:

@Dalefty - you make a good point. When you get yours installed in your lounge, if you could send photos over then perhaps I can grab some inspiration from them? ;-)

Dude my girlfriend is not only Irish, but red haired too, if she even suspects or finds out that I have mentioned on a forum on the Internet to a bunch of strangers that I would love to have a stripper pole in my living room she wood castrate me with a blunt plastic spoon, and that's if I'm lucky and she is in a good mood.


DaLefty

hubobulous

I guess that's ruled it out for both of us then!!

Dalefty

hubobulous said:

I guess that's ruled it out for both of us then!!

But we can always hope and dream, they can't take our dreams away from us yet.


 DaLefty

Phil_aka_Pip

Dalefty said:

Dude my girlfriend is not only Irish, but red haired too,

you lucky lucky bastard

57Deluxe

Yeah - @Dalefty has a point - you call it a Man Cave but have gone out your way to tidy them away out of sight and sound...

So as to keep your missus happy...??

A proper Man Cave has them adorning the room, resplendent on their thrones...

usedtobe

What if you buy more guitars?

hubobulous

usedtobe said:

What if you buy more guitars?

Well, the thing is, this isn't actually enough for what I currently have. So the plan is to have some on hangers on the walls and I might end up creating a similar storage unit to this on the other side of the fireplace above where the desk will go, but obviously only half the height with one rack inside.

Just depends on how successful I am in controlling GAS over the coming years ;-)

hubobulous

57Deluxe said:

Yeah - @Dalefty has a point - you call it a Man Cave but have gone out your way to tidy them away out of sight and sound...

So as to keep your missus happy...??

A proper Man Cave has them adorning the room, resplendent on their thrones...

I have to make their thrones first. Then shit's gonna get real :-)

usedtobe

hubobulous;646004" said:

usedtobe said:

What if you buy more guitars?





Well, the thing is, this isn't actually enough for what I currently have. So the plan is to have some on hangers on the walls and I might end up creating a similar storage unit to this on the other side of the fireplace above where the desk will go, but obviously only half the height with one rack inside.

Just depends on how successful I am in controlling GAS over the coming years ;-)

Haha.. You legend!

hubobulous

So Erin sort of got in the way with the man cave progress, but things have settled a little and routine has taken a very loose grip, so I've had some time to continue.

The main outstanding task was the cover to the low area where I'm going to store leads, boxes, stands and other odds and sods. In a similar vein to cutting round the coving, I needed to put some vertical batons at the bottom fitting flush to the skirting boards.

I decided to try to get the shape a little more accurate by creating a paper stencil:

 

Cutting the wood took a little time, but with some careful sanding I got a pretty good result:

The other reason for adding batons at the bottom too was to ensure that the panel used for the cover could have straight sides which would be easier to create. Once attached in place, the size of the panel was straightforward to calculate:

  

Before making the panel, I had 2 small things to do:

1) put a small cross beam at the top of the gap to ensure that there was something for the panel to lean against

2) put two small wedges at the bottom to act in the same manner for the bottom of the panel

hubobulous

I wanted the panel to fit snugly and be flush to the side batons. I therefore ensured that the cross beam and the lower wedges were spaced back a little to allow the thickness of the panel to be taken into account.

The panel was to have some handles and an air vent to help with the potential issue of the hot water pipes, so I got some MDF and cut a piece according to the measurements. 

  

Adding the vent was the same process as for the upper panel and I had two spare knobs to help put the panel in place and remove it.

I added two pieces of wood as braces to the MDF to give some rigidity and that was that!!

So now its onto the other alcove to the left of the fireplace with more storage and a desk. :-)

Wazmeister

Mate, just read this whole thread; brilliant, inspirational and entertaining

randomhandclaps

Whaaayyyy!  Thread back from the dead and Daddy got some 'me' time.  Looks absolutely great. 

Deadman

What a brilliant job. Some beautiful looking guitars there too.