Pallet Man-shed, One-man Build, the Fiddly Bits Over the Winter. Part Five

It's winter time. 4 months of indoor activities. Armed with a Facebook Marketplace, my basement woodshop, and some electrical supplies, let's get to work on the fittings of for the doghouse.

project boxes, old electrical wiring, electrical switches (DPDT, aka 2P2T,) duct piping, jb weld, steel wool scrubbers, paint, stain, bulk tins, 1x2x8, 1x3x8 pine wood, you name it, start collecting crap.

Oh where to begin. With a piece of paper. Make a list. I have a loft, that you can only walk on with your knees, so it will need a floor (I found someone redoing their basement and had pulled up pergo flooring,) 2 futon mattresses, a futon frame, tables, chairs, some kind of fireplace, sheet metal to shield the fireplace from the walls, lighting, ladders, shelves.

The point is: make a list of keywords and keep searching FaceBook Marketplace. Most of it is free, people who just want to empty a house, others are like me: we don't like waste so if it can be reused we get happy. The pergo floor guy was thrilled that his old floor was going to get a second life. The lady with the Metal cabinet doors had no idea why her father had them in the garage but figured "someone" could do something with them. Just keep checking and use your imagination.

Like I said lets be creative. We've got a whole winter to play. Here are the first two. Firstly, when I bought the big picture window for $10, the lady threw in "a stained glass piece" which turned out to be this 100 year old stained glass window in complete disrepair. I could make a whole instructable on that repair, but that is for another day. My neighbor had two wall sconces that each held two candles that wouldn't sell in a garage sale so she gave them to me Holding them back to back, I noticed they held all 4 candles at 90 degrees in a square. I couldn't help notice they would be a great chandelier. So I ordered from aliexpress 4 12v super bright LED bulbs that I could attach some 30 gauge wire to with some solder. I then went to the Dollar Tree store and bought a broom whose 40" handle was a hollow metal pipe Painted white. I cut the white pipe into 4 pieces, and used some bamboo sticks to hold up the light, and wrapped the wire around the sconces and wahla I had a chandelier. I needed some other wire to tie it up, and then I crocheted an old power cord from a broken vacuum to look like a chain and I had a chandelier.

Wiring the chandelier started out simple enough: a 12v battery to the leads of the chandelier. Over the winter, It was refined to an exact science/goof. I know the Doghouse is only 8x12, but there are 2 doors and 2 beds, and Its always nice to have a light switch by the door, and when you go to bed its always nice to have a lightswitch to turn off the light and not have to get out of bed, so this tiny 100sqft room has 4 light switches to control the chandelier. I know its overkill, but hey, so is this whole project. The wiring is following the basic wiring instructions for your house, only its using 12V DC from a battery so eventually I will put in some circuitry for battery protection as well as safety, but for now lets just get the switches working.

Just like in your house you use a 3-way on each end and as many 4-way switches in the middle as you want. As a result you will need 3 wires instead of the simple lamp wiring of two. Fortunately I have the old phone wiring that has 4 copper leads: the hardest descsion was what color not to use. From Aliexpress I picked up these really cool 4 wire connectors that screw together to run the wiring all around the the cabin and connect in the switches.

I didn't want to use regular light switches as: 1) they are big and 2) they indicate 120v and I don't want to confuse people that this is a 120v system. To that end I bought again from Aliexpress 2PDT (2 pole double throw) switches, they were about $2 each and some make-up tins that I can mount the 2PDT switches into to keep the wiring contained, and run the leads out of. The beauty of DPDT switches is that with them you can create all the functionality of any of the other switches that you would want, a regular light switch, and 3 way switch, or a 4-way switch. I'm including my wiring diagram, but if this is new to you, there are plenty of guides online. So basically I made 4 of the switch boxes, with 2 of them 3 way switches: one to connect to the battery and the other to connect to the chandelier, and 2 of them 4 way switches so this way when you flip any of the 4 switches the chandelier toggles. The two 3 way switches have only one 4 conductor connector and 1 2 conductor end (see the pic) so those two switches are keyed male and female, the mail plugging into the battery, and the the female receiving the plug from the chandelier. Don't mix them up. I was able to test all this in the basement, and in the spring after I mount the switches in their places I will measure the connecting runs and make up long runs to connect it with the right spacing.

Next up are electrical "sockets" for 12v appliances I got some plugs and sockets that are about 1/2 the size of the 120v sockets I liked the look and decided it would be perfect for 12v system. For $1.50 aliexpress also had 12v to 5v usb circuit boards so fitting into the tin was the 12v socket, the 5v socket for usb (for phone chargers,) and a kill switch. The thing with the 12v system and battery, things like the 5v circuit board and such drain the battery. To avoid this each socket has its own kill switch so there is no phantom drain on the battery.

So along with the switches on each socket, there is a master and a punch down circuit box that the single 12 battery plugs into. The battery is just a 12v Dewalt battery. At first I just used banana connectors to tap the battery, but that was sloppy. for version 1.2, I made up a 3d cad 3d print clip on box for the battery that was much safer and easier.

The other thing about Dewalt batteries is that they do not like being run down to 0v. It turns out that all of Dewalts appliances have circuitry have a built in switch that cuts the battery off when the voltage drops too low to protect the battery. Well just like anything that is circuitry, those circuits turned out to be mass produced, small and dirt cheap on aliexpress ($1.78) I threw one of those circuits inline to protect the battery. Look at the pics. I also posted on thingiverse the 3d print of the battery clip-on.

With the move of the fuse to the 3d printed battery box, the fuse here is redundant, so the Fuse box is really more of a central location for a punch down for the electrical connections. Each run from the electric box, is two wire as it is DC 12V, aka, a red wire and a black wire. each "wall socket" box consists of two "sockets" the first one looks like a regular wall 2 slot socket, only its half size and keyed so one slot is significantly taller than the other. I thought these were really great as they appear as if they are regular electrical sockets only doll sized which fits nicely into the "micro house" style. I found them online somewhere very cheap, like $0.55 for each connector, so I bought a dozen male and a dozen female so I have enough sockets all around and plenty of plugs to make up appliances. The socket is mounted onto a rectangular tin where I was also able to mount a 12v to 5v circuit board that has as its socket the USBA standard socket so people can plug in phones to charge their phones from the big 12v dewalt battery. The big difference with these made up sockets is that they also contain individual on off switches so the USB circuit doesn't drain the system when not in use. The circuit boards only draw about 20mA per hour, but with 5 of them that's 100mA per hour, and left in plugged in all week would drain the battery: (10 hours uses 1A, 20 hours 2A, etc...) So rather than charge the battery every 50 hours of non-use, its better to just have switches on all the sockets, and remember to turn them off when not in use.

I'm expecting to be able to leave a battery in the Doghouse all winter and come in in the spring and the battery should be fully charged.

I knew that the green trim was going to really make this project pop, so I would need a lot of it. I made a jig so I could rip the 1x6x72 boards down to 1x2.75x72 to be the trim. Ripping boards is not something to do casually, it can be very dangerous so I made the jig that really held down the board while I pushed it through my radial arm saw that I setup to do the job.

I painted the doors and window, and they peeled, so this time I decided to stain the trim. This was a lot better. What I did was take 1 part hunter green rustoleum oil based paint and diluted it with 3 parts minwax oil based golden oak stain. This was perfect to change that wood to the dark green I wanted.

Perfet time to make up the rails as well! they are kinda exacting, and I have all winter. Firstly lets go a little fancy, and play with the 3d software to get them just so. I know from experience if the verticals go to the floor raking the leaves are a pain, so I want a big gap at the bottom so I can just blow the leaves off. Each rail section consists of 4 1x2x8's, 2 on the top and two on the bottom, capturing a 2x2x4' spindle on each side to make a rectangle. this allowed me to fit other 2x2's between the double rail on top and bottom to mark cuts for the diagonal.

Making the first one was the only hard one, after that I simply laid new wood on top of the finished first one to copy the parts and cut lines. The railing was inspired by the house in "on golden pond" the movie.

Lots of time in the winter. worked on the pass thru for the chimney: a metal plate with a 4.5" hole cut, a section of 5" pipe glued down with JB WELD, and a section of the actual 4" chimney passing through the hole with $1 store metal scrubb pads as stuffing to hold it in place, take up the gaps. Also made neat little bench out of 1x2's based on one I saw in the park: this will mount onto the railing and add a lot of stability to the railing. Also came up with a double hinge that will be necessary so I can fold open the windows and allow the window to pin against the wall around the 2x4. There was other stuff too, the converter for the pot belly stove to 4" pipe, etc. They were all fun l little single weekend projects all winter long.

Oh, yeah, also made the ladder to get into the loft out of 1x3's I just couldn't find a ladder on Marketplace that would fit just right. It was real easy to do. Close up pictures of that on request.