I used to have a 120 gal built into the wall. But, in July 2016 I found a very good deal and quickly bought a 300DD from another reefer. He had built his stand in place and we literally had to cut it in half to remove from his house. This picture shows the stand after moving and "rebuilding." It is vastly overbuilt (thankfully!) with 2x8s, 2x6s, and plywood and skinned with FRP.
You can see there was a single door on the left side (behind the stepladder) that was simply a panel of FRP held in place with magnets. Overall, this worked well but I never really liked it. The same was true of the canopy which was a 2x4 frame with FRP panels that hung in place. About a year ago, I built a new canopy frame out of 1x2s and it has always remained open with the goal of eventually putting some type of facade on it to keep light "pollution" down. :0)
Well I finally decided to make the change and re-face the stand. Given the way the stand was built, I had very few options. First, I removed the FRP and you can see just how much glue was used to secure those panels in place. Yuck!
I removed the little panels inside the opening which were used to secure the door panel. You can tell the opening is not "centered" on the left side and it almost goes to the middle of the stand. I was not able to make the same size opening on the right side but it's now much easier to access the right side underneath:
The opening on the right is 20 x 20" while the one on left was closer to 26 x 20". But I planned to skin the stand with 1/4" plywood anyway and figured I could even them out that way. It turned out pretty well, given my limitations.
Now the openings are centered on each side and are the same size. They are slightly rough but I'm not concerned by that. They won't show anyway. I also skinned the sides and now the glue from the FRP is completely hidden. Figured I better cover everything with a waterproof/resistant primer:
The difference isn't too drastic yet but at least it's more protected from splatter. The sump and equipment are all in the utility room to the left of the tank (where the 120 was located) so I don't really have to worry much about the humidity/moisture inside of the stand (hopefully!!).
Just this week I found (finally) some cabinet doors that seemed to be "winners" as far as this stand is concerned. The trick here is that two doors would look really bad as they are far too small to have that "furniture" feel. I opted to use 4 doors and wanted to find something as big as possible that would give us a nice look. Anyway, my wife found 16 x 28" doors at Menards that were unfinished. Perfect! Although I have to wait until Feb 11 for 3 of them to arrive (despite them saying they had 9 on hand. Grrrr...
Because there will be 4 doors that will cover much more than the openings I decided against traditional hinges. Instead, I'll be using 4 sets of heavy duty picture hanging cleats. This way, I'll simply remove the door altogether when I need to access underneath the tank (which is rare). Looking forward to the rough fit so I can give a better idea of what this will look like when completed. Will also add trim at the top to hide the aquarium frame, as well as a base trim to provide some top/bottom match. Now that I have the doors picked out, I can also pick out the trim.
Once the stand is complete I'll get moving on the canopy. Considering a complete rebuild as I feel it will be much easier than re-facing the stand while it is in place. With the stand, I had no choice.
More to come!
You can see there was a single door on the left side (behind the stepladder) that was simply a panel of FRP held in place with magnets. Overall, this worked well but I never really liked it. The same was true of the canopy which was a 2x4 frame with FRP panels that hung in place. About a year ago, I built a new canopy frame out of 1x2s and it has always remained open with the goal of eventually putting some type of facade on it to keep light "pollution" down. :0)
Well I finally decided to make the change and re-face the stand. Given the way the stand was built, I had very few options. First, I removed the FRP and you can see just how much glue was used to secure those panels in place. Yuck!
I removed the little panels inside the opening which were used to secure the door panel. You can tell the opening is not "centered" on the left side and it almost goes to the middle of the stand. I was not able to make the same size opening on the right side but it's now much easier to access the right side underneath:
The opening on the right is 20 x 20" while the one on left was closer to 26 x 20". But I planned to skin the stand with 1/4" plywood anyway and figured I could even them out that way. It turned out pretty well, given my limitations.
Now the openings are centered on each side and are the same size. They are slightly rough but I'm not concerned by that. They won't show anyway. I also skinned the sides and now the glue from the FRP is completely hidden. Figured I better cover everything with a waterproof/resistant primer:
The difference isn't too drastic yet but at least it's more protected from splatter. The sump and equipment are all in the utility room to the left of the tank (where the 120 was located) so I don't really have to worry much about the humidity/moisture inside of the stand (hopefully!!).
Just this week I found (finally) some cabinet doors that seemed to be "winners" as far as this stand is concerned. The trick here is that two doors would look really bad as they are far too small to have that "furniture" feel. I opted to use 4 doors and wanted to find something as big as possible that would give us a nice look. Anyway, my wife found 16 x 28" doors at Menards that were unfinished. Perfect! Although I have to wait until Feb 11 for 3 of them to arrive (despite them saying they had 9 on hand. Grrrr...
Because there will be 4 doors that will cover much more than the openings I decided against traditional hinges. Instead, I'll be using 4 sets of heavy duty picture hanging cleats. This way, I'll simply remove the door altogether when I need to access underneath the tank (which is rare). Looking forward to the rough fit so I can give a better idea of what this will look like when completed. Will also add trim at the top to hide the aquarium frame, as well as a base trim to provide some top/bottom match. Now that I have the doors picked out, I can also pick out the trim.
Once the stand is complete I'll get moving on the canopy. Considering a complete rebuild as I feel it will be much easier than re-facing the stand while it is in place. With the stand, I had no choice.
More to come!