It’s official, that's the most boring blog post title I’ve ever crafted. But let’s be honest, there is no exciting way to talk about radiators or pipe covers so that’s what you get. Anyway, the last few months have been a blur of bathroom construction and newborn baby duties which has lead to a lack of blogging and/or artwork in general. There was a fair amount of design involved with our bathroom remodel but I won’t go into all that right now. Instead I will focus on a small bit of the bathroom - a custom pipe cover for a hideous set of pipes that feed the radiator.
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| How dare you besmirch my bath you bastard pipes! |
Yes, those are the pipes that need covering. The photo can’t even convey how funky they look, they were clearly done during some prior renovation as the rest of the radiator pipes in the house are run in a precise and orderly fashion. Whereas the above pipes have way too many connectors, are coupled down to a strange size, are actually copper shittily painted instead of cast iron, essentially they are all wrong. The only respectable solution is to cover their pipe shame, and while some may have constructed an entire radiator box I actually like to see the radiator so I just wanted those damn pipes disappeared.
Naturally with a problem like designing a radiator cover the first place to start is Maya, right? So I hoped in there and crafted this bad boy to cover those pipes:
Ok, I did do some quick sketches of this before modeling but since I did them on scrap cardboard they met their doom in the recycle bin months ago!
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| The radiator cover nestled into a digital bathroom in Maya, yes it is to scale! |
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| Radiator render before cover, as you know the actual pipes look much worse than this... |
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| Radiator render after cover! |
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| Another view of the radiator cover in my faux bathroom - has a “Money for Nothing” Dire Straits feel to it? |
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| One last mental ray render because why not, the scene was all setup might as well render that shiz! |
The next step toward radiator pipe covering bliss was to actually build this thing in the real world. I made it out of scrap wood from a recent back porch project, construction shots below!
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| This was an epic clamp-o-rama - I wanted to make sure this glue setup tight because of the heat it would be subjected to next to the radiator. |
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| The cover stands proud in the basement/workshop. Next was priming & painting... |
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| What ugly pipes? I have no idea what you’re talking about. |
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| The cover in the room, it tucks in nicely to the side of the pedestal sink, bully! |