Thanks, hint taken, here we go.
When we saw this house, the basement had a bed a few sofas, and this odd window in the room, seperated from the laundry room. It was used as a sewing room for the old owner. It yelled fishtank the second I saw it wanting to have a seperated area to make a big mess. My goal here was to keep the equipment hidden, keep the noise down, and not hack too much away at modifications to the house. I'm not that great at this stuff, and while its passable, my efforts go better elsewhere.
The view from the other side:
After looking at the window for some time, I just decided to start chipping away at the drywall to see what I was in store for. What an odd place for a window. We found some pictures of the house in the 70s and this was an exterior window. Nice recycle.
A sawzall took care of the frame and I convinced my neighbour to come over to lift it out and move it well out of the way. We have plans for it (surprise: we're putting it back on the exterior of the house)
The tank is waiting patiently in the background, and I'll get to that after this first bit.
Up went the drywall on the display side, looking back, I should have taken out the whole wall and used proper inside corner bead rather than sitting there and trying to putty the new sheets, that covered the house in a thick layer of dust for weeks.
And a view from the equipment side, In the process I had to add a new set of frames, take out some electrical plugs, re route some electrical plugs closer to the ceiling, more sanding, more puttying.
A more wider view, about 3 minutes after I said "I wonder if the stand is going to fit in the hole?" I didn't build the stand, this came along with the tank and is 46 inches high, precisely what I had was going to build. It's definitely over engineered, and that's not a bad thing at all. Not shown is where I gave it a good staining, sealing, and took our my natural gas hot water tank followed by cold showers for a few days as I'm too stubborn to call a plumber over a long weekend.
Things sat like that for a few weeks as I was taken out by a flu, and then one day just had the nerve to jab a knife through the wall and cut out for the tank. It went OK. It's not entirely flush up against the wall, there is a 1/2" gap between the display drywall and the tank, however it was solved with some molding, which also served another purpose to narrow the width by an inch on either side and also the tops and bottoms to cover the trim, and make someone really have to look to see the surface of the water.
I couldn't wait to get the trim on, so I started filling the tank.
If I was more adventurous and willing to hack up more of the house I would have run a water supply and drain into the same room, however I just didn't have the heart. I installed a 6 stage RODI kit in the laundry room and just teed off the tank to run into the equipment room for top ups and filling my water change vessel. I like beer, drink alot of it, and opted to keep the drain and source where I do my brewing. If I didn't have the beer I wouldn't have been able to bribe my neighbour for repeated lifting of heavy stuff. If you are ever in the Comox Valley, the invite is open to come drink some.
finally, heres the front of the display tank now, showing the work done on the trim. One thing I learned about all of this is that you get much better work done with the proper tools. Since I sold everything I owned 10 years ago, it's been alot of trips to Canadian Tire, Home Depot, and when I can get to the mainland, going berzerk at Pricess Auto. So far I am quite pleased with how it turned out, for a self proclaimed hack.
