a little do.it.yerself.

not sure what it is, but lately i've been wanting to do DIY-type stuff. nothing in particular, i just want to make/build/create things. maybe because part of me wants to buy a house, and i know i can't afford what i would actually want, so i'd have to buy a fixer-upper and do a lot of the work myself. and while that's a few years off, i'm a bit of a planner and somewhat obsessive compulsive.

anyway, while sitting at work today, i realized that i have totally done-it-myself once already pretty recently (though it was before i caught the DIY bug, so i didn't realize that it fit into the category) so i thought i'd share (my apologies for the awful image quality).

a few months ago, i was moved from a shared office at work into a cubicle that faces a hallway. that's quite a bit of foot traffic, and i don't like feeling like people are looking at what i'm doing behind my back, so i wanted a way to set up some privacy. lots of people at work just buy and put up soji screens, but i don't like how stiff they feel, and wanted something much more dynamic. so, since i had some extra japanese noren curtains, i decided to build a little structure and hang them up around my cube.

i bought pvc pipe, elbow joints, clamps and a pipe cutter at home depot, as well as some yellow fabric to make the side panel (it was too small to fit a full noren curtain) and voila! i think it turned out pretty nice, and i've gotten quite a few compliments on it.

the clamps were the smallest thing i could find to anchor the structure to the cubicle, since i couldn't actually cut a hole in the cube itself. i wasn't sure how it would work since they kind of stick out a bit, but it hasn't been an issue at all.

i used 3/4" PVC pipe for the vertical parts of the structure, and 1/2" for the horizontal so that the curtains would fit. the outer corner of the cube where i had nothing to clamp the structure to, i happened to find a cardboard "corner" from our marketing department that worked great to stabilize it. otherwise i would have found the equivalent of a small umbrella stand. the hardest part was figuring out which pvc joints i would need and buying the necessary converters for them.

from inside the cube.

there is a bit of a sag on the horizontal bar since the curtains are heavy and i used a thinner pvc pipe. but it's pretty high up (i made it 8 ft tall, standard door height) and not really noticeable.

anyway, the next thing i plan on doing is installing energy saving window film in my apartment. we don't have central air, and the windows are super thin. the apartment gets really hot in the summer and really cold in the winter, and this film is supposed to help a lot with that.