So after almost 6 weeks the room divider is all finished and was installed in the home office yesterday. I was hoping that I just needed to install the divider without any problems, but in keeping with this project it had one more hurdle to throw my way. My design had one flaw with it and that was I wanted the divider to firstly fit in the door opening, but since I had to add more wood to frame when attaching the each panel to each other using the butt hinges it through my overall width off so now it would not fit into the space.
Secondly the leg design although was very strong interfered with the panel butting up nicely to the wall so I needed to change the design and method for the room divider to still maintain its portability.
LEG DESIGN CHANGE
As I mentioned earlier I needed to change the foot design on the dividers because I could not install the dividers flush up to the wall so Instead of using 2"x2" material with the mortise and tenon joint to secure the foot to the leg as seen below. I changed it by using 2"x4"s and added a different kind of caster to them.
Here was the oroginal foot design with the mortise & tenon joint, I also used castor wheels that had stems that went into the leg.
NEW LEG DESIGN
This foot design was very different because it didn't stem from the bottom of the leg, instead i used 3 pieces of 2x4x12 and cut a dado to wrap around the bottom of the panel and then I used different castors, these castors didn't have a stem so all I had to do was screw the castors into the feet.I also made one more change my original legs had on 5 castors but the revised legs have six.
Here you can see the new leg assembly, you can see the notch that I cut into the 2x4, I also chamfered the 2x4 to match the herringbone pattern.
Here is a viiew from the top down, I didnt add the casters yet, I wanted to determine if the new design could balance the dividers and it did.
I didn't want to take any chances with my kids banging into the panels or pushing it over on top of all my computers, I decided to secure the dividers to the door frames. I basically used some loop hooks and chain that way if I need to move the divider I can just unhook it from the door frames
Here is a picture of the chains securing the room divider
ROOM DIVIDER : IN ITS NEW HOME
Finally the project is complete,this project had a lot of things that I liked and a whole lot more challenges that I didn't even see coming, but after everything is said and done. I love the divider, its definitely one of a kind (in a good way). My wife loves it as it provides that much needed element of enclosure that lets her have a productive work day.
Below are some pictures of the divider in its home separating the kitchen from the office. The side that has the wood pattern is the office and the back side is where our kitchen is as my kids can use the chalk board as is already on evident.
I hope you have enjoyed this project blog and if you feel like you want to undertake this project I will have plans available soon.
Until next time take care.
Office Side, I really like the black back drop as it makes the pattern pop
Here you can see the chalk-board and cork notice board, this will provide a nice size area to hang family art work.
A little close up of the back side of the divider