There’s a Corner of my Apartment that is a Problem. See, my windows face north, so even on sunny days, which are rarer than unicorns here in Portland, I don’t get direct light into my rooms.  During the summer, this means that my apartments stay cool during the day, which is nice.  But in winter particularly, this corner is sort of dim and less than appealing.  Here’s a picture of it:

Leaving aside the rats nest of cables over by the stereo, which is something else on my list, you can see how this corner just sort of dies, especially at night when there’s no light coming in from the window.  So, I could go to Ikea and pick something out a torchere, which is where everything else I own comes from, or I could design and build something myself.  Here are the preliminary designs I’m working with:

Curved Wood Concept:

This would be a steam-bent curved plank of wood, with the source being either T2 miniature fluorescents, cold cathode, LED strips, etc.  In the far right thumbnail you can see where that would live.

I think I could steam the curved plank inside a large piece of PVC pipe, as shown:

And then bending it in a jig, like so:

I’m going to work with a few other designs and see what I come up with.