20 December 2007
Another installment in the ongoing quest to make my room more livable and less warehouse-y is my attempt at making a partition wall/curtain to separate my work area from the sleep/relaxation part of my room. This will make lighting the two spaces easier (see my post about building light fixtures for the bed area) and will keep me from being distracted while at work, while also allowing me to focus on relaxation and sleep when I’m not using the workspace.
I went through a number of ideas before settling on one. I considered buying folding partitions (probably rice paper stretched over a wooden frame), and sewing curtains using the heaps of fabric I’ve got laying around. I even briefly considered framing and building a separator wall, but it seemed like too permanent a solution for the need. Eventually I decided that the partition would be an array of tiles, 6″ square each, strung together with one-inch gaps in between. On both sides of the tiles will be paper applied with decoupage, using whatever interesting prints I can find.
Material Selection
I spent a lot of time and consideration to decide on the materials I would use to build this partition curtain. I decided that the material had to be relatively inexpensive, lightweight yet heavy enough to not be knocked about easily, and mostly flat. Vinyl commercial flooring tiles were considered as an option but the idea was scrapped after realizing that the tiles are prone to bowing and curving unless adhered to something else. I even considered glass, but it just seemed too impractical and dangerous for many reasons, including the building process and its use later on. Quarter-inch plywood was too expensive and heavy. I settled on quarter-inch composite board because it’s cheap, it’s easy to work with, and it takes adhesive very well.
Home Depot sells this stuff in boards measuring two feet by four feet - easy to transport by bicycle although still somewhat awkward to handle. After taking the first board home I drew a four-by-eight grid of six-inch squares, split the board into smaller chunks with a circular saw, and then cut the individual tiles with the radial saw. I thought it’d be easy to make evenly-sized and shaped tiles doing it this way, but I was wrong for a few reasons. I’ll explain this more later.
I went to Urban Ore in Berkeley to look for printed materials that I could use for decorating the tiles. Urban Ore really ought to be everyone’s first stop when looking for cheap, plentiful materials for craft projects and really anything else - I recently bought an amazing 1980s Yamaha stereo receiver from Urban Ore for $40 and it’s probably the best piece of stereo gear I’ve ever owned, new or used, in any price range.
They have a huge book section and also tons of road maps. I’m fascinated by maps of all kinds for many reasons, including their often-beautiful, simple methods expressing and communicating information and because of the geometric patterns that can be found in the natural and built worlds. I picked up a whole bunch of maps from the past few decades, and also found a book about Silicon Valley published in the early 1990s, filled with tons of corny stock photos and ridiculously idyllic portrayals of life in Northern California. I bought over 100 square feet of interesting and colorful printed material for only $6.00. Sweet!
The Process
Once I had all of my materials (which also include Mod Podge, several foam brushes and a squeegee I made by stapling part of an old flannel shirt to a piece of 2×4), I set about the repetitive, tedious work of making each tile. The process is pretty simple and can be perfected easily. A thin, even layer of decoupage is applied on the back of the paper, after which the tile is pressed into place and is then firmly rubbed from the center, out. Using an X-Acto knife, the outline of the tile is traced and cut. The tile is flipped over, and the squeegee is pressed into the paper, again moving from the center to the edges of the tile. Repeat over and over and over… and over. I think it took four or five hours to make only 32 tiles, but I also spent a little too much time going over the printed materials to choose which images to use.
The goal is to make enough of these tiles to span an area that is seven feet by eight feet, with prints on both sides of the partition. With each tile being six inches squared, with a one-inch gap between each tile, my estimate is that I will need about 164 tiles for the partition to be complete. I made 32. I have a long, long way to go. Once all the tiles are made, holes will be drilled in each corner, through which will be some kind of string or wire, connecting the tiles in a grid. The curtain of tiles will be hung from an overhead pipe which bisects my room, effectively creating two separate rooms within my one, huge room.
Results
After this first round of tile-making, I made a few observations and came up with a few changes to my design:
- The tiles were cut pretty carelessly. I didn’t foresee that the circular saw would be harder to control when cutting material thinner than 1/2″. The result of this can be seen in the uneven edges on the tiles.
- I spent way too much time looking for choice images. I realized later that randomly-chosen images can be very pleasing, and the overall result surprisingly intriguing. I will probably be able to spend half as much time making as many tiles if I’m not so picky the next time around.
- A little extra effort will go a long way. If I take the time to sand the edges of each tile on my room mate’s upright stationary belt sander, the tiles will be perfectly square and create a more visually appealing result. Also, painting the edges of each tile with white acrylic paint will create a very pleasing, modern look that lends a feeling of professionalism and artistry.
I didn’t expect to get it right the first time, but this first attempt is very promising. It will make my room feel so much more comfortable than it is currently. I’ll see how my next attempt works out, and if it comes to plan, I will post more about this as it develops.
Tags: building stuff, Crafts, warehouse
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I found this blog post, which mentions a new Open Source effort by Amazon to allow users to control/manipulate their EC2 instances via a FireFox plugin. At first I thought it was an odd design choice - controlling a virtual machine with a browser-specific application - but I decided that it’s really, really cool. I would rather have a GUI-based Java command-and-control application, but this is good enough for what I need.
