Keg Lamp

This project was done during the fall of 2023. The keg lamp was an impulse build after Drake Keating was given an empty keg that had been stolen from one of TKE’s neighboring fraternities. Drake figured the best way to use it was to make a round end table to go next to one of the many couches they had.

He stained a prefabricated round piece of wood from Lowes and glued bottle caps all over the top. Afterward, he poured epoxy resin over the top and let it cure for three days. Drake then installed a lamp made out of a one-foot metal pipe, connected to the tabletop with a flange, and ran a wire through it into a light bulb socket. A red light bulb was used along with a lamp shade that was dyed red and had fringe glued to it.

(SIDE NOTE: There had been zip-lock bags filled with bottle caps in the TKE garage for years at this point. Drake thought they were supposed to be for an old class project that was never finished. Also, this marks the very first time he had done anything with epoxy resin, which would later inspire him to use it for the bartop in the garage.)

Jeep Record Shelf

This project came to Drake out of sheer boredom while working in Corning, New York. He noticed that the Jeep Wrangler model from 1987 to 1995 was less desirable due to the square headlights, but this was perfect for him since the grill vents were large enough to hold vinyl records.

Drake ended up ordering a Jeep grill with working headlights for about $150 off of eBay. The building process was easy—he just strung the lights together, connected a voltage dimmer, then screwed a wooden box to go behind the grill and a flat top over everything. A relatively simple build, but it works surprisingly well. This was done at the beginning of fall 2024.

Hanging TKE Sign

The hanging TKE sign was another one of Drake’s impulse builds due to boredom. He made it out of scrap pieces from the TKE garage and some black and white acrylic paint that was left over. He hung it up using some jute rope that he had for some reason. Drake mainly remembers doing this project because he used it as an excuse to procrastinate studying for a Dynamics test. This project was completed in the fall of 2021.

Foyer

The foyer isn’t so much a project as it is a collection of bullshit in a corner near the front door. The idea for it came after Drake bought another CRT TV from Clancy’s Resale in St. James. The TV set cost about $50, and they had to use Joe Schroeder’s truck to haul it back to 3rd Floor.

Once Drake got the TV back to the apartment, he wired it up by splitting the coaxial cable that powered the small TV in the bathroom. The TV set is now connected to the many other TVs in the house. This project was completed in the spring of 2023, with minimal additions in later semesters.

Besides the philosophy of “fuck it, why not,” the foyer serves a practical purpose: it provides entertainment for people who are either trying to leave or waiting for a sober ride.

Bathroom TV

In the spring of 2022, Drake made a small shelf to hold a micro-portable CRT TV he had lying around for years. After testing the TV and figuring out how to get it working, he hung it up in the bathroom next to the mirror and wired it to the entertainment center using a 100ft cable running across the apartment’s ceiling. Now, the TV can crudely display whatever is happening in the living room, even while someone’s taking a piss.

(SIDE NOTE: The original black TV used was one that Drake and Jack Gutting bought from a garage sale for about 50 cents in the fall of 2020. This TV sat and collected dust for years before finally being used. During the fall of 2023, this TV was replaced with a small baby-blue one Drake found on eBay. As of now, the original black TV is sitting in the foyer but only shows static.)

Paddle Rack

This was a small project Drake did toward the end of fall 2020. It’s simply an angled paddle rack that holds up to four paddles, which was the average number of people per room. Paddles are generally placed in scroll order, with the lowest on top and the highest on the bottom. The only noteworthy thing about this project is that it was the first time Drake had ever used a router.

BOAT

In the spring of 2023, Drake came up with the idea to make his own pool table light for the kitchen countertop. The goal was to create a faint glow in the kitchen so that when doing dishes or making food, they wouldn’t have to turn on the bright kitchen light.

The construction was relatively simple and only took a couple of hours at TKE. The reason it ended up so fucking big was due to Drake’s own laziness. Six feet is the shortest standard cut length for wooden planks at Lowes, so to avoid making more cuts, he built the light 6 feet long and about 1.5 feet tall. Because of its size, the light was later nicknamed “The Boat.”

It was installed with metal hooks connected by 2x4s screwed into the ceiling. As Drake learned while building the bar, the stud finder doesn’t work on the ceiling for some godforsaken reason, so he just randomly screwed into the ceiling until he found a stud.

(SIDE NOTE: When Drake was randomly screwing into the ceiling, he had finished about half a fifth of Beefeater Gin. Needless to say, his judgment was impaired, and his impulsiveness was significantly boosted. Looking back, he’s so fucking happy he didn’t hit a wire or pipe—please, don’t follow his example.)

Luckily, Drake found a stud and secured the soon-to-be Boat to the ceiling. At this point, it was still bare wood, but after realizing how fucking stupid it looked, he and Dylan Rose painted it black and hung it back up. This slight aesthetic change made it look significantly better and less of an eyesore.

It will be painted soon by Connor Marler.

Tekecade

The Tekecade is the oldest project Drake has built that’s still around. He built it during his second semester as a freshman, which was in the spring of 2020, right before the COVID-19 outbreak. Drake had wanted to build an arcade machine since middle school but never had access to a shop full of woodworking tools until college. He had acquired arcade buttons and a joystick back in early high school and kept them until he could finally use them in college.

There’s not much documentation on the construction of this project—it’s simply an NES in a box with controllers wired to traditional arcade buttons.

Notable experiences with the Tekecade include Dan Bulgarian beating Contra without the Konami code, Andrew Rhodes beating Ninja Gaiden with a Guitar Hero controller, and Drake himself doing Ninja Gaiden shots during his freshman year. The rules were simple: every time you die or beat a level, you take a shot of Caliber Gin. Drake was catatonic in the shower after level 2. (Don’t do this, please.)

Fire Table

Pre-Construction

During the fall of 2022, Drake Keating and his roommates were given an old conference room table from campus, courtesy of Nathan Shaver, who at that time was working with the University Police. When Drake returned from Cedar Rapids in the spring of 2023, he started working on the 3rd Floor bar and used the conference room table as a workbench. After the bar was completed, Drake shortened the table and set it on some old milk crates they had lying around. This is how the table would be used until the middle of spring 2024.

In the spring of 2024, Drake was the head of the float for St. Pats. Once St. Pats had ended, he immediately took apart the float and stored the wood in the TKE garage. With this sudden influx of free material, Drake wanted to make the most out of it.

(SIDE NOTE: This was the first TKE float that was legitimately built since the spring of 2020, which was cut short and never displayed due to COVID-19. The wood from the 2020 float was used to make the 101 Bar, and the wood from the 2024 float was used to build the Fire Table.)

Drake had always wanted to build storage underneath the conference room table, but it was never a priority and would have cost money. Now, with a bunch of float wood available, cost was no longer an excuse. Shortly before starting construction, Drake found a propane fireplace kit online for roughly $90. The installation was simple and only required cutting a rectangular hole in the top of the table and creating a space to store the propane tank.

Construction

The construction process was relatively simple. Drake started building during the beginning of his spring break, completing the project in four parts so it could be easily transported to 3rd Floor. Once everything was built and sent to the apartment, Drake connected all four pieces and screwed them to the bottom of the conference room tabletop. Afterward, he cut out a hole to fit the small, metal fire pit and connected the gas hose and ignition wire.