As you may have already seen in the shots of Windows 7 on the projector, I finally gave in to the wife and had a gas fire installed in the lounge. However this meant that the slot DVD in the previous firebowl hole had to move and the only logical place was above the other switches in the right hand side.

I spent half a day and butchered the bottom half of the chimney breast to make way for the new gas fire. Because the speakers and TV are right above the fire I’ve also had a piece of stainless steel fabricated to mount directly above it so to reflect the heat out into the room and away from the TV. It was an idea from the CVO fires website.

But it was only after a while I realised I still needed to relocate the slot drive, so with access at its best I carefully cut out the hole for it and fed the power and data cables through…

And on the inside I supported it with various, er, strategically placed wooden blocks. You can see in the image below that the power and data to the drive come off an adaptor unit on the back; the power has been spliced to a 5V PSU and the 2 USB data cores have been spliced to a typical USB head that has allowed it to be plugged into a 5m USB extender that runs back up to the loft.

No shots of the new drive in place I’m afraid, but unfortunately I think the dust has gotten to it because it won’t read discs very well so a Blu-ray upgrade may be on the horizon. However here’s a shot of the fire in action; it kicks out so much heat that we only have it on for an hour then have to turn it off. I’ll take some newer shots of the drive, fire and steel plate and post them here soon. (click it for a larger version)