The Nice Touches In A House Thread.

iamlegend2008

Hi

I have used this forum extensively and learnt a lot and I thought it might be worth having a thread (with pics) showing what you have done in your house as inspiration for others.

Of course, taste is relative so dont bother slagging off the pics of others, if you dont like it then fine.

Mods: Please let me know what you think.

I hope to add to this later with apic of the stonework/tv/radio in my bathroom (and things canonly get better from there )

Cheers.

windyboy

Great Idea,

Could do with some inspiration!

Windyboy

iamlegend2008

Hi

Ok this was my idea so here goes.....

This pic is of a TV/radio/cd/mp3/phone setup in the bathroom. The car stereo is from Aldi (hey Im on a budget here ) and TV is hidden from view until its turned on by a one way acryllic mirror. The earphone outputfrom the TV is fed into the ext input of the stereo allowing all sound to come through the ceiling speakers. I also stuffed a freesat box behind the mirror so get all the FTA channels.

Even the stereo has a remote control so there is no need to physically touch anything on the wall.

The whole thing is surrounded by lightweight building stone.

Enjoy.

iamlegend2008

Hi

In this pic, we purchased a load of B&Q larder doors from B&Q (70% off sale ) and used them to make cabinets in front of the knee wall on one side of the house.

Enjoy.

iamlegend2008

Hi

I have a normal satellite dish outside and used a quattro LNB (not quad) to wire 4 sat cables to a central location (hot watercupboard/comms room). From this room, we ran 2 sat cables to each room. This means youcan plugin a satellite receiver in each room (including bathroom) and watch different channels to the rest of the house.

The pics show the sat distribution amp in the comms room that has 16 outputs (2 per room in my case). I ran 2 per room in case one gets damaged and in case I wanted to put sky plus or a freesat recorder in any room.

The 2nd pic is of the wall plates that hold 2 sat connectors and 2 cat 5 connectors ( see entry for cat 5 to each room).

Enjoy

iamlegend2008

Hi

As I was running 2 sat cables to every room, I also ran 2 cat5 cables to each room. The first pic is of the comms cabinet in the comms room (a patch panel and router). The 2nd pic is of the cat5 wallplates in each room.

I used cat5e rather than cat6 as its more forgiving. I did not want to use wireless as I plan to use it for having a networked mediaplayer in each room and a hard driive with movies in the comms room. Also wireless is not great if you use foil backed insulation boards.

Enjoy

iamlegend2008

Hi

Rather than just plasterboard the landing, we applied the same stonework as in the bathroom (see above) and made a fireplace which will house candles (or an lcd tv showing a fire ). You cant see it but the alcove also has power/sat/cat5 outlets.

Enjoy

Jollyman

This was our effort at a built in fish tank, looking through from the hall into the office. We made the tank ourselves and clad the wall with stone cladding. The link below is a search of my blog the first item has the pics of the tank...

http://selfbuildardmore.blogspot.com/2009/05/fish-tank-wall-entrance-hall.html

Builderfromhell

Brilliant fish tank.

Once made one from surplus double glazed units which were being dumped by window manufacturer. The fish were very happy with the u values:D

Quazzie

Some really nice touches there IAL. Really like the stone on the landing and the use of the cabinet doors.

liamolaighin

iamlegend2008 wrote: »

Hi

As I was running 2 sat cables to every room, I also ran 2 cat5 cables to each room. The first pic is of the comms cabinet in the comms room (a patch panel and router). The 2nd pic is of the cat5 wallplates in each room.

I used cat5e rather than cat6 as its more forgiving. I did not want to use wireless as I plan to use it for having a networked mediaplayer in each room and a hard driive with movies in the comms room. Also wireless is not great if you use foil backed insulation boards.

Enjoy

Thats a neat job in fairness. Did you wire it yourself or did you get your electrician to do it? And where did you get the wall plates and cable?? Locally or off the net?

voodoo

Hi there,

Yeah, interested in where you got the plates etc... I would REALLY, REALLY, LOVE to get this done on the basis of trying to get to a single system for music and movies across the house and spoken to a well known provider and the system is looking like it would cost about €12k to get the cabinet, patching, plates, cable, individual controls in 4 areas and also 6 cd changer and integration with an iPod... on the face of it, it's not too bad a price, but wonder if there is a cheper way of doing this! I know guys in IT so could maybe discuss this with them - I haven't done this yet!

Leadership

voodoo wrote: »

I would REALLY, REALLY, LOVE to get this done on the basis of trying to get to a single system for music and movies across the house and spoken to a well known provider and the system is looking like it would cost about €12k

Have a look at the Opus 300, 6 room audio and video for 6 inputs. You can buy the system for under €2k.

RKQ

iamlegend2008 wrote: »

As I was running 2 sat cables to every room, I also ran 2 cat5 cables to each room. The first pic is of the comms cabinet in the comms room (a patch panel and router). The 2nd pic is of the cat5 wallplates in each room.

Hi Iamlegend,
this is an excellent idea for a thread, well done.

I ran cat5 cables and a sat cable to each room 6 years ago. It might be time to sort it all the cables out

My question is similar to liamolaighin, where did you get the cat5 sockets and the sat distribution box?
I have all sat cables running to a comm point in the utility. Your sat distribution box looks great. Please PM details if you can't post them.

Well done, some nice ideas there.

iamlegend2008

Hi


The modular wallplates and network connectors were allsourced from www.tlc-direct.co.uk. I have about 10 sat quad faceplates left if anyone is interested.
The satellite distribution switch came from www.satellite superstore.com.

The quad sat plates are made by labgear and the distribution switch is made by Triax. They do not needto be from the same manufacturer.

Its important to note that the setup I put in place is NOT a whole house audio setup but simply the wiring needed for network and undependent satellite TV in each room.


I now plan to place a NAS drive in the comms room and use an XBMC xbox in each room to show the movies, again allowing independent movies in each room.

I estimated my costs as follows:

Quad wallplates and network plates (per room) 12 euro
24 port netgear gigabit switch (ebay) 90 euros
6U comms cabinet (ebay) 70 euros
2 rolls of cat5 cable 80 euros

Im not sure what the cost of the electrican running the cables and terminating them was but I estimate it at no more than 2 hundred euros.

I will probably get shot down here but with the cost of IPOD docks/enabled hifis dropping all the time, it would probably be a lot cheaper to have one in each room rather than spend huge money on complex audio/video systems.

Cheers.

rodred

Hi guysm

this is a great thread, i am just finishing the 1st fix e & p at the moment
1 idea that i have done is to put in a main power kill switch at the front door and the main bedroom. so when we leave the house or go to bed this switch will turn off everything in the house except the fridge an 1no. socket in each room to allow for phone chargeing.

can anyone tell me where thay got the lightweight building stone? i would like to do a feature wall with it in the kitchen.

thanks

JuniorB

We're looking at something similar RodRed. Not sure about the kill switch at the bedroom for the rest of the house.. with alarm clocks/tvs etc in other bedrooms it might be more hassle than it's worth.

We're going to have one at the exit of the sitting room that will kill all sockets there, as this is where most of the 'standby' type equipment will be. We'll leave one 4 plug socket near the tv for what ever version of TV recorder we'll be using and a few spares in case we have anything else that will require power overnight.

Davy

iamlegend2008 wrote: »

Hi

Rather than just plasterboard the landing, we applied the same stonework as in the bathroom (see above) and made a fireplace which will house candles (or an lcd tv showing a fire ). You cant see it but the alcove also has power/sat/cat5 outlets.

Enjoy

Nice job on the idea and stonework. Have you the tv in place yet, or the fire?