Thanks Archer. Welcome to the board. Real good people here. I gave some of the bar top details in a previous post. If you need more information than that just ask. As far as the lighted columns go, they are made of MDF (primed and painted). I have a 6ft fluorescent lights mounted inside the columns. The lighted panels are basically rail and stile glass cabinet door construction (router table and door making bits a must for this). MDF cuts really easy with the router. You must leave one side of the lighted panels removable to allow for changing of the light bulbs. On my removable panels, I countersunk some of those rare earth magnets (very strong) on both the panel and the column to hold the removable panel in place. Be careful to get the magnets lined up properly and the magnet’s poles the proper way before gluing them into the panels. To keep the magnetic poles straight, I put all the magnets together and then marked each magnet on one of the sides. For the glass, I just used stained glass. It’s pretty expensive. The glass I used cost me about $600. Some stained glass you can see through too easily so in this case you must use some light diffusers (like those used in suspended ceilings under the lights) so you can’t see the lights inside the columns. I went to a local stained glass dealer to choose the glass because it’s really the only way to see what you are getting. Pictures of stained glass on the internet don’t show you what you really get. Tip!!! If you are going to use some kind of stained glass, choose the glass first and then try to match the paint to it later. I ended up painting the entire room over again when I found the glass I liked.
For the lighted stars, I used a product from StargateCinema.com (I think). It’s an array of fiber optic strands powered by an LED “light engine”. The one I used cost $299. You can Google “Ceiling stars” to see some various products used for this. I used a smoother ceiling tile than I used in the rest of the ceiling and just painted it a midnight blue (almost black). You need to drill small holes in the ceiling panel and then glue the fiber optic strands in the panel. Tip!!! Mount the “light engine” first and then string the appropriate strands to EACH of the ceiling panel areas that you will be lighting BEFORE starting to glue up the strands. I started gluing up the first and second panel and when I got to about the third panel I had a tangled mess of fiber optic strands. If I had strung them properly to begin with, it would have been easier. Live and learn I guess. To turn the stars on and off, I used a remote control appliance module (Insteon from Smarthome.com) that I plug into the same outlet as my projector.
Let me know if you need any more information. The only plans I had to go from I sketched on paper and I don't have them any more. No one else would be able to decipher my chicken scratches anyway, so I can't send you any plans.
Measure twice, cut once! I can't even begin to tell you how many pieces I had to build twice because of mistakes!
Have fun on your build!
