From Mini-Fridge to a Laundry Closet

Stealth growing has always been an interest of mine, mainly due to my state being non-legal till just up to last summer. Had a few halfassed grows in closets before legalization and was always toying with the idea of how to have a grow in plainsight and virtually undetectable. Fast forward to legalization and almost jumped and bought a tent and everything to get a legit grow going. 1 major hurdle was keeping it from our kids. So the brainstorming went rght back to my old days and glanced over at my minifridge and thought why not go micro for the first run. Thus my venture in utlizing this mini fridge to complete my first legal grow!!

You can check it out here Mini Fridge Micro Grow Im almost complete!!













So with the micro grow going so well and still keeping everything hidden in plainsight, i started brainstorming how to go bigger. We live in a small house and storage space is limited so i decided to go the route of building a "laundry room closet/pantry" for "storage" lol. Wanted a big enough box to pull a decent yield and maybe something perpetual if i redesign the fridge to veg a couple plants at a time for a few weeks. Started back in April and got to work building and designing the cabinet as i went.
















Now I am not a carpenter by any professional means lol. Some mistakes were made in construction but everything eventually came together to form my basic shell of this grow box. Last picture you can see the size difference between the mini fridge and the new digs.

to be cont'd....

So with basic design complete, i needed to figure out a way to have it lock in a hidden manner. i messed around with some strong magnets and some slides on the inside of the door and nothing was working to my satisfaction lol. went back to the drawing board and figured let me just do something that I KNOW i can make work haha. Being a 12 volt technician i am very familiar with actuators and keyless entry systems so grabbed some from work and went to town adding remote locking to this thing


Built some enclosures for the door locks. Used a 12 volt power supply, old Viper remote start brain (has keyless entry as well, only using this function....for now lol) and materials i needed to build my control board. (Pictured further down below). Mounted boxes to door and drilled some retaining holes in the threshold then used metal sleeves for support in the wood when the lock rods are extended into the threshold to lock the doors.





Will uplaod a video shortly (and once i fugre it out lol)



Needed ventilation in this thing so went with desiging 2 passive intake channels with angled and rounded light baffles. Air will be drawn in from the bottom of the back of the cabinet and pulled up through 2 4x12 vents at just under what my canopy should be. Will be using an AC Infinity 6 inch cloudline fan for exhaust in the upper chamber of the cabinet. The upper chamber will sealed off from the grow area and will house all my electrical and ventilation. More on that later.





Stain drying, but i eventually changed this as well lol.




Stain ended up being too dark so i sanded most of it off and white washed what was left and sealed it with a semi-gloss poly.





to be cont'd

Loving it. Lots of attention to detail. The micro grow made me laugh with the mini Scrog

Mini Fridge would fluctuate with whatever the temperature was within the laundry room since it had metal walls and i tore out the insulation to make more room. this time, ive went the route of insulating the walls in this box to help fight off the huge fluctuation of temps of this room (right next to our backdoor and heat, cold, humidity all is all over the place in here.




got her all paneled in and light added along with the vent holes cut and fitted with covers.



was sharing pictures of the progress with my pops (who IS a carpenter by trade) and told him i painted and caulked all the seams. He followed up with "a little caulk and a little paint, makes you the carpenter you aint" lol!!



Fan came in and was promptly mounted where i wanted it.


Interior of grow area almsot complete!!






Duct work fitted to the fan, exhausted thru the top of the box in back corner, and duct dropped into grow space to attach carbon scrubber eventually.

Fan on Level 3 sucks paper right to the bottom intakes on the back of the cabinet. At full tilt i have to apply pressure openig the door to break the seal of the negative pressure of this thing moving massive air.



Final dimension of interior grow area is 70 inches high x 36 inches wide x 20 inches deep. Shopping for a light currently, any recommendations would be great!! First run in this thing will be a drying run, as my current grow is finishing up here soon. had the ventilation running for a few days in the big cab and its holding temp and humidty for drying very solid.

When i do get to growing in here im thinking i want to go with SIPs filled with a living soil and do a water only grow again. i did the same in fabric pot in the mini fridge but found that at that small of volume in soil she depleted the soil wquite a bit and needed to be ammnded. im on page 203 of the SIP thread and ive read every post hahaha. learning all that i can until i can get things rolling.

anyways thanks for checking my build out.

cheers!

pahpah-cee said:

Loving it. Lots of attention to detail. The micro grow made me laugh with the mini Scrog

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Lol, i love me a good scrog and with the height restrictions in that fridge i knew it was gonna be fun keeping her short!! i think shes sitting at about 9 1/2 inches from tops to the soil right now so i think i did a pretty good job at overcoming those restrictions haha

Nice job man. You've got skills.

PadawanWarrior said:

Nice job man. You've got skills.

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Thanks!! I can wrap my head around things oretty well and eventually figure out a way to do something, but sometimes the growing part throws me for loop after loop still working on those skills

Smscreations said:

Thanks!! I can wrap my head around things oretty well and eventually figure out a way to do something, but sometimes the growing part throws me for loop after loop still working on those skills

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Well if you can build that you can grow weed, . I had a Viper alarm too back in the day. I actually might still have a remote around somewhere. That's cool shit that you used that too.

PadawanWarrior said:

Well if you can build that you can grow weed, . I had a Viper alarm too back in the day. I actually might still have a remote around somewhere. That's cool shit that you used that too.

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Haha I'm trying!! I'll have to figure out what to use the Remote Start function and Aux channel for now lol

That is dope af! Dig the woodwork. Literally the opposite of my style which is to hammer a big ass hole out the wall over what would be the master bedroom door to run a big ass duct to the dryer vent put a blackout screen over the window and use as much space as my income and eventually grid allow for

Smscreations said:

Thanks!! I can wrap my head around things oretty well and eventually figure out a way to do something, but sometimes the growing part throws me for loop after loop still working on those skills

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Sick job on that DIY closet. That’s about as stealth as you can be in a home. Ppl can literally walk by it & compliment it without even knowing what they were actually looking at. (Well if they think it’s an awesome piece of work.. then they know what they’re lookin at, but you know what I mean lol)
That tiny scrog is pretty cool too. Nice content already. I’m subbed up for any updates that may come.

Lenin1917 said:

That is dope af! Dig the woodwork. Literally the opposite of my style which is to hammer a big ass hole out the wall over what would be the master bedroom door to run a big ass duct to the dryer vent put a blackout screen over the window and use as much space as my income and eventually grid allow for

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Lol thanks man!! I wish I could have a whole room dedicated to it, but still got some years to go till the kids leave and free that space up for me lol

HydroKid239 said:

Sick job on that DIY closet. That’s about as stealth as you can be in a home. Ppl can literally walk by it & compliment it without even knowing what they were actually looking at. (Well if they think it’s an awesome piece of work.. then they know what they’re lookin at, but you know what I mean lol)
That tiny scrog is pretty cool too. Nice content already. I’m subbed up for any updates that may come.

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Appreciate it!! Yea I've already had my landlord walk past everything in that room and compliment what I've done with that space lol
The little DIY carbon scrubber in the mini fridge can no longer contain the smell of the plant finishing in there, but he was none the wiser to what was going on in there haha.

Shopping for lights now. I'm planning on doing 3 10 gallon SIPs and wondering if I should do 3 100w boards that way I have adjustability on heightand dimming options per plant or if I should just go with a single light to manage things.

Inside grow dimensions are 70"H x 36" W x 20"D.

Wow man, that's pretty epic.

I'm just gonna sit and admire this thread.

420PyRoSV2 said:

Wow man, that's pretty epic.

I'm just gonna sit and admire this thread.

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Lol thanks man, much appreciated!!

Smscreations said:

Lol thanks man, much appreciated!!

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Thank you for sharing.

Gives me a few ideas with that 2x2 now.

That fridge is dope, you & this guy should compare notes. You're both McGuyvers lol

Beautiful closet!
My closet is similar:


But I built a double-decker:


With great results:


Have fun!

It's an exact fit with no room to spare, 3 5-gallon SIP with 2 Gallon reservoir. Lol. It's the weekend, so time for another DIY project. Post of the SIP build a little later today!!





Cheers!