Shop update #407 (8-27-25)

A friend of mine has a set of vintage christmas ornaments from the movie Holiday Inn.  He is very fond of them and asked me to build him a stand to display them in during the holidays.  He gave me some pretty exact measurements.  I built the carcass out of 1/2″ plywood and have been debating what to do with it from there.

My first thought was to spray it with black lacquer and then glue some red bricks on it to simulate a fireplace.

I had some scrap 1/4″ plywood laying around so I cut it into 1″ strips and then trimmed them down into 2 1/2″ lengths to make bricks.

I set them on the display stand in a brick like order to see how they look.

They felt a little big so I used one of my lasers and cut the same size bricks out of 1/8″ MDF.

I then placed those on the stand to see how they look.

I’m leaning towards the thinner pieces but I’m not sure yet.  I’m going to add a face frame to the front of the display stand this weekend then spray it black.  I’m thinking that I will pick up some red stain and see how the 2 different materials take it and then try them on the black stand to see which looks better.

I also mounted a spare TV on the wall under the mini split.  I want to build some kind of picture frame around it but it’s an older TV and is kinda thick so I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it yet.  The mini split was hung using drywall anchors and the TV is mounted to an arm that is screwed into a stud so I wasn’t able to get it quite centered under the AC.  That also bugs me.