PapeRanpu

Yes, yes, I wrote that I’ll make a wood-and-rice-paper lamp, but that is kind of hard to do in a messy and ill lit workshop. So I took some time to improve my working conditions. I am guessing it might be interesting for some of the readers to see how a workshop can fit in a 55m2 apartment populated with a family of four and a dog. The apartment has been compared to a submarine, but I like to think of it just as a rational usage of available space. Read on and make your own judgment.

First important point is that the workshop is located in the bedroom under a lift bed. This means that the motorized bed can be raised to the ceiling, freeing the space underneath for other usage during the day. This also means that any furniture to be used in the workshop and stored under the bed during the night must be foldable or very short. The third this also means is that the bed covers the ceiling lamp when it is raised, rendering it useless. The only reasonable thing to do in such a situation is to install lights underneath the bed and that is exactly what I set out to do.

I bought four LED panel lamps, few meters of cable, one plug and one switch. Connected all this into a harness and tested it on the floor.

In order to install the lights, the bed had to be partially disassembled.

Once I freed the bed flooring, I could make holes on the hardboard panels that make the underside of the bed.

You can notice how I slyly cut out the part of the hardwood that was damaged when the junk pile that tends to accumulate under the bed became too high and something got crushed with the descending bed. I think it was a handlebar of a children’s bicycle.

Four holes later, the bed is again assembled, the wiring is installed, …

… and it’s ready for installation of LED panels.

And there was light.

If you are a bit bored with these static images and would like to see the bed in action, without and with the lights installed, check out the video:

I think I am out of excuses for procrastination, now I really have to make a lamp.