Hi, everybody Joey here again and Welcome back to part three of the office aquarium build now in the previous two videos
I showed you how to build the aquarium as well as the filtration today
I'm going to show you how to build a stand now the
Ongoing theme it seems for this entire series has been the number of challenges
I've had to overcome and solve to make this built happen now the first thing there was was the actual tank itself
you guys will remember I built it out of the [offcuts] of the
375 Build the Tank I ended up building was 6 feet long one foot wide one foot tall pretty unique dimensions making it about 45
Gallons now I had mentioned that it wouldn't fit along my desk either way
So this made me move my desk away from a wall leaving me with a large area along my wall to have to fill up
Now there used to be a mere there
And I ended up ripping the mirror off the wall and and kind of ripping a lot of the wall with it
So I just slap some paint over it because this whole stand is gonna cover it anyway with that said though
That's a lot of real estate in a small office
I do need this to be a workable space for me
And I don't want to give up that much storage or area
So that was the number one focus when I built this stand, and I guess once you see the stand completed now
You'll know why I built the filter inside of the aquarium making an all-in-one filter now
You should just quickly touch base on the filter
That is just the filtration system and does not compensate for the entire circulation of the whole aquarium
That's going to be added in when we set the tank up [okay], so back to the stand
I decided that since I'm taking up such a large space
And this is such a unique dimensions of an aquarium building a regular stand would just take up the whole wall for a relatively small
Tank so I decided that if I'm going to build a stand for this it has to have a tremendous amount of storage with it
One of the things that I've been wanting to add into the office was some shelving or some sort of a bookshelf and for this
Build I decided to kill two birds with one stone. Why not build a stand that's also serves as a bookshelf
So that's exactly what I did. I did have a budget for this shelf of about a hundred dollars now
I already had plenty of screws glue and stained from Previous builds, so I didn't need to buy [anymore]
But I didn't need to buy the plywood I
Went with [three-quarter] inch birch plywood the sheets were eight feet long four feet wide and I only bought two sheets
So I was a little bit limited and wood and what I could do here, but the end result came out good
I started with the back panel and the back panel is 75 inches long by 4 feet tall
Then I moved on to the bottom panel and the bottom panel ran the same length as the back panel except it was 13 inches
wide
This got glued and screwed into place
The screws that I used were one in the half-inch pre-taped screws now pre-taped screws means that I don't have [to]
Drill any pilot holes first and there's no worry about splitting the plywood
Then I moved on to the side panels which again were glued and screwed in place
Followed by the very top of it
Again gluing and screwing that in place now. There's not a whole lot of how-to on how to build a shelf like this
It's all square cuts, and you can build them however you like and whoever complicated you like however
I decide to keep it as simple as possible with the main frame of the stand now completed
I moved on to the support system. This is actually what the stand is going to sit on
the two supports that I added in were 29 inches long and
Spaced by two feet so there's two feet in between each section again gluing it and screwing it from all sides
This would give the stand something to sit on but not the complete support system the next thing
I added in was the top panel that the aquarium is actually going to sit on
Once again gluing and screwing that into place now. You're probably wondering how I screwed from the [backside] [and] prior to the video
I simply marked off where all these panels will go
So I was able to locate those areas with the screws later on so this would allow me to screw in from any surface now
Came the actual shelving these would actually serve two purposes
You see when it comes to plywood or even any aquarium stand you're dealing with a live load meaning that the water is actually moving
And can cause the stand to shift what you really want to focus on
Is that there is no twisting that can occur so the shelves I added in are not only going to allow me more storage
But also further support the stand itself now again each area is 24 inches long however
I was running out of plywood fast, so on either side
I was only able to have one shelf each, and there's about a 13 inch gap below and above in the middle
I was able to put in two shelves and between each one there. There's about nine inches of gap
So totally usable space now you'll notice that the top would allow [me] for storage as well things on top of there
But there was really no support
Even as is though given the length and width of that top panel as [well] as the thickness of this plywood
I wouldn't really get any bowing with putting typical stuff up there however
I did have the thought that I might want to add a small aquarium to the top of it at some [point]
So I took a piece of 2-inch strip of plywood and put it underneath the top panel
For additional bracing again gluing and screwing it in so even though this is a really simple design the most important thing you can do
Is make sure everything is square once the shelving was in place?
I needed to further brace the two ends because really they were only held by glue and screws
So I took some one and a half inch plywood
Strips and put them under the entire perimeter of that panel and screwed and glued them in place making this incredibly strong
Now at this point
I was really thinking about adding doors at least to the two ends
But I ran out of plywood plus to get the hardware for the hinges and handles it
Just kept adding up
so I decided to leave everything as is and moved on to routing all of the edges of the
Stamped I used my router and a half inch bevel
to route every Edge of the stand again
Matching the rest of my aquarium stands after [I] was done routing. I was now ready to move on to staining now again
I wanted to make this stand not only be easy
Cost-effective as well as functional, but I also wanted it to blend in with the other stands that I've built for this room
So I went with the same stain that I already used for the other stands
Now this is a stain and poly urethane in one and the color is called to door although at this point
I'm pretty sick of staining stance because it's a tremendous amount of work however because I'm using shop Grade plywood
Meaning that both sides of the plywood are finished there was very little prep work after applying the first coat of stain I
waited about 24 hours
However once you cope plywood with its first stain it does cause the wood fibers to lift a bit and a light sanding with some
Steel wool will get rid of that, and then you'll remove any Debris with some tack cloth
Which is basically like some sticky cloth
And then you continuously repeat this step until you get to the color you want
I had to apply for coats to match the colors that are already in the room
So I had to do all of this for x over four days now
What really made this take so long is that I coated the entire surface of the entire?
Stand why because there's going to be an aquarium on it
And I might drip water where there might be some evaporation which might cause some condensation on it at some point
And I wanted to ensure [that] the wood was properly sealed all over the place
It's not really the stain that causes it to seal but the polyurethane that truly protects it
It's what gives. It its glossy finish however once completed
It looked really good, and it totally matches the other stands in this room now
We're coming to a close on this build and next week's video
We're going to move the stand into place put the aquarium in place set the aquarium up
Install the lighting and get this thing running in the final video will
Aquascape it and stock it which I'll admit right now this entire build has been focused around the fish that I wanted to put in
It so I'm really excited to get to that video until then. I hope you guys enjoyed today's video
I also wanted to thank you for watching and I'll see you guys next Sunday for a new do-it-yourself project