Electric Fireplace with Backlit Shelves
Like most basements, ours is typically cooler than the rest of the house. We have forced air heating so when I wanted to raise the temperature down there, I'd have to do with by adjusting vents and inline duct dampers which is a semi-permanent adjustment. To raise the temperature just when we're down there, I could put a couple of 1500 watt heaters down by the couch, but why do a simple fix when a complicated one is more fun. So, I bought an electric fireplace insert. And then, I built something to which I could insert it.
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Another reason to build this was that I had plenty of material. I bought five bundles of red oak flooring from Home Depot when it was on sale to build Nancy's desk. This was enough for her desk, the shelf above it, and this fireplace frame. One convenient thing that happens when you buy all the wood for multiple furniture pieces at one time is that you can save specific boards for specific pieces.
A little assembly line mentality creeps into my building plan when I'm looking at multiple projects. I buy all the wood I need for all the projects. I plane all the flooring grooves out, and trim off all the tongue-and-groove edges before starting any furniture build. I can then compare the lumber I have to the specific boards I'll need and match up the boards to the future assembled pieces. Flooring comes in many different lengths from about 1 foot to 7 feet long. Thinking about where I can use the different lengths is important if I want to keep my lumber budget under control.
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During the sorting process, I also try to cull out the bad pieces of lumber. Most of the flooring from LL Flooring and Home Depot is good quality, but not every piece is perfect. I take the time to sort through the wood. and I pull out damaged pieces or naturally deformed pieces and put them aside. Some of these pieces I can trim the length, width, or both to salvage the good part. The rest stay in the "not to be visible" pile. These pieces I use for the support frame for drawers, internal frame, back of the drawers, etc. This wood is going to a necessary purpose, but I can hide the faults and still make use of it.
Fireplace Frame Building Details
As is the case with all my designs, I started with a plan that was at least by half abandoned before I finished. The first parts I abandoned were the three small drawers I was planning to put in just below the top of the frame. The drawers would have made the height of the frame higher than I wanted. I bought a package of 9" drawer slide pairs for this purpose and only used one only used one of them, and that was for the middle drawer in Nancy's desk. I also planned to put cupboards on the sides, but these turned into shelves, and then turned into lighted, adjustable shelves, and the lights then turned into dimmable lights that could be adjusted by remote control.​
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This frame became fairly heavy as I put it together and it never seemed to be where I needed it to be. I was on my work bench and too high to get at, or it was on the floor, and I had to get on my knees to work on it. I don't do "working on my knees" very well anymore. A solution in the form of a hoist presented itself. Another story required.
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Sometime before I was building these red oak pieces, we decided to have the garage floor coated with an epoxy finish. By this time, however, we had all my tools and lots of stuff in the garage. We rented a PODS storage unit to use to store all the stuff in the garage so the flooring company could clean and install the epoxy floor. One problem with the plan was our driveway that sloped away from the house which meant the PODS container sloped away from the house. This also meant the very heavy 4'x8' work bench on casters I have with built in and attached saws, drill press, grinder, anvil, and other stuff was going to be a chore to get into and out of the PODS. I solved the problem by installing a small electric hoist mounted to the bottom of the wall at the back of the garage.
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I build a temporary floor between the small garage door (we have a three-car garage) and the PODS so we could roll the workbench from the garage into the PODS. Then I connected a rope to the workbench and tied it to the hoist cable which I should probably call a winch base on its use. I then pushed the workbench into the PODS until it took up the slack. I was then able guide it into the PODS while Nancy extended the cable. The important part came after the floor was completed. We were able to pull the workbench back out of the PODS with the winch without any problems.
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I now had a hoist that I didn't need for the original purpose, so I decided to mount it to the ceiling of the garage.
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I built a hoisting frame for the fireplace frame and then was able to pick up the fireplace with the hoist and put it at the level I needed. This let me do a quite a lot of the work sitting down and that was nice.
The pictures below show the fireplace insert in its frame. The frame is free standing. I only put in one screw from the back, upper center of the frame into a stud behind the wall. It just needed to be secured to the wall so that little climbers couldn't pull the fireplace down on top of them.
