Right, so a couple months back, a buddy (who works in construction) landed a couple of leftover pieces of rockwool panels as freebies, and he knew i was looking for something like that, on the cheap. These things turned out to be about 1.2 x 0.42m (4x1.5ft roughly).
So, obviously, first step for something like this is putting together the outer supporting frames. I still had a few strips of wood like the ones i had made the surround speaker stands out of, not long ago. I figured a pair of screws into each butt-joint corner should do the trick. Since this is not exactly a high-stress or high-intensity application, and the rockwool panels barely weigh a couple pounds each (ie. less than the frames), it should suffice. If need be, i might later add some diagonal stiffeners in the corner, but i doubt that'll be necessary.
In the attempt (or at least hope) to minimize the chance of splitting, i of course piloted the holes - in this case, with a 2.5mm drill, about the same as the shank of the drywall(?) screws i had a handful of. I decided to try to also be clever about it, and first i made out a little template / drill guide from an off-cut of the above-mentioned wood strips. In the memorable words of the one and only AvE - "Work smarter, not harder, amirite?"
Post-assembly: yep, stiff enough (cue "That's what SHE said" joke). An impromptu test-fit showed the rockwool panels were a few mm (maaaaybe 1/4") wider than the inside of the frames, so just about right. Nothing wrong if they fit more on the snug side, rather than flopping around on the inside (or "hot-dog down a hallway", if you will).
On to the... <ahem> creative part of the project, then. Thanks to my lovely girlfriend (at the time), i got my hands on some old unused sheets, to use as covers for these panels. But since the walls here were already white, why not "liven up" the place a bit, with a splash of colour here and there? Drawing a sliver of insipiration from a T-shirt design from Ozric Tentacles i got from the one time i got to see them live (and who happen to be among my all-time favourite bands), the solution was quite simple: tie-dye!
A bit of googling revealed plenty of guides and how-tos and whatnot. With these first two things already ticked on the checklist, next step was dyes. Can't quite recall how i came across them (probably Google again), but i found Dylon dyes to be quite easily available, and decently priced. They're not from the Far East, and seem to be owned by Henkel, so they shouldn't be (too) crap, right? I ended up going for six colours: red, blue, green, yellow, pink and black. Nothing too subtle, i want these things to POP.
Now then, the tie-dyeing itself. While the guides indicated using a broomhandle or something, i went with something closer to hand, and easier to wield - the handle of a hammer. Place in the middle of the laid out piece of cloth, and turn. Well, in my case, i had to pinch the sheet to hold the sheet onto the shaft, for enough grip for it to "twist up" the fabric. Once that was done, i just tied up the resulting "donuts", to maintain their shape through the process.
Not having any sort of a grill (to keep the "package" out of the puddle that would form on the bottom, so the colours wouldn't bleed together), i went with improvising one - stretching some wire across a wooden frame. That frame, years ago, used to be the "platform" to sit my ancient HP LaserJet 4M+ on the small chair i had at the time. It also came in handy acting as a sawbuck / sawhorse.
I added some bubble-wrap under, to prevent any dyeing of the floor in the bathroom, "just in case". Bubble-wrap because it was the largest single-piece of plastic i had to hand. Anyway, initially i thought i'd make them both using the six colours i had, but as it turned out, pouring the diluted dye out of soda bottles pretty much prevented such levels of accuracy (ie. one colour on "only" one sixth of the surface). So i ended up settling on three colours for each: black-yellow-pink, and red-green-blue. Because reasons...
Due to having rubber gloves on, and being busy with pouring the dyes, i didn't snap any photos "during", but here's how they look more or less "after", hung out to drip off / start to dry out, in the corners of my (small) balcony.
I let them sit out there overnight (since they had to sit to let the dyes "sink in" for 6-8 hours anyway). And the outcome is... oh so cool! Some white "streaks" where the dyes didn't get 100% all the way through, but it's looking pretty damn neat. The black-yellow-pink one came out somewhat off-center, but that's no problem - it's [ahem] "art", it's not supposed to be perfect.
The lighting doesn't quite do them justice though, the colours look a smidge "brighter" in real life. Either way, soldiering on... Since, once again, this is way far from being a "high integrity" application, there's no real need for uber-beefy affixing methods, so i went with a real simple solution for attaching the covers to the frames: staples! Well, the frame's made out of pine (i think?), so reasonably soft, and the fabric isn't exactly what i'd call thick either, so why not?
As the preliminary measurements indicated, the rockwool panels were juuuust a bit wider than the inside of the frames. I used a piece of circuit-board to help channel the sides inside the frame, and insertion proceeded uneventfully.
And then after popping in a few staples on the long side as well, it's job done.
There's still the drilling-holes-into-the-wall and the insertion of anchors to hang these panels up left to go, but at least on a preliminary "showing", i'm pretty damn happy with the outcome. It may be worth noting that, as mentioned the lighting wasn't the best, so the colours are a bit less "flat" than here, but me likey. All that's left is to attach some eyelets on the back & hang these bad boys up.
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