Crafty Comforts
Decorate your base with Detailcraft’s best builds
Look at that grill above this text. LOOK at it. It almost looks real, doesn’t it? We’re sorry to break it to you, but what you’re looking at are lies, deception, and MORE LIES. It’s not a working grill, but campfires, trapdoors, and looms put together in an amazing display of creativity. You see, combining Minecraft items can lead to the creation of all sorts of interesting furniture, which happens to be the speciality of the Detailcraft subreddit.
Do it yourself (or DIY as the cool kids say) is something that the crafty folk of Detailcraft take to heart. They’re experts at turning trapdoors into hot tubs, building display cases from barrels, and crafting all kinds of bookcases from all sorts of items. How do they do that? The answer is MAGIC. No wait, sorry, I meant REDDIT. Here, Detailcraft’s members can post and share their own intricate designs, from fiddly backyard BBQ tables to something more simple, like the user GokuBuildsYT’s elegant display case. Let me show you how to build it!
Display case
1. Start by plunking down a barrel. The one tweak I made to this design was adding a sea lantern to the walls above and behind the barrel to illuminate the case. Hey, whatever works for you!
2. The case is done (but not yet closed!). Now add an item frame and whatever you’re displaying. In this case, I followed GokuBuildsYT and went with a golden sword.
3. Drop the scaffolding over the sword. You can even stop here if you want, or you can top it off with a spruce trapdoor to complete the wooden look. There! You now have a neat display case!
Now that we’re all warmed up, let’s see if we can tackle something more challenging and make that grill, eh? Luckily for us, we have all the help we need thanks to the architect behind the design, TayG0, walking me through his creation. The grilling effect is as simple as it is brilliant: use a couple of hidden campfires buried beneath the cooker to give off smoke, and you’re ready to get grilling.
BBQ GRILL
1. Dig a rectangular two block wide hole and place two campfires in it, side-by-side. On the sides of the hole, add a couple of dirt blocks. While standing in front of the hole, place a loom on top of both campfires, attaching them to the dirt blocks. It will look like this screenshot. The dirt blocks can then be removed.
2. Now place a dirt block behind each loom. While standing behind the looms, place birch trap doors on top of the dirt blocks. Remove the two dirt blocks, and open the trap doors to create the grill’s back.
3. Hold shift and place an item frame on the front of both looms. Place iron trapdoors in the item frames, and right click-until they’ve rotated to where they are in the screenshot. Now you have ‘handles’.
4. Place iron bars on each side of the looms. Place an item frame on top of both iron bars, and your favourite food in the item frame. While standing in front of the grill, hold shift and place the acacia button on top of one of the looms, to look like a sizzling steak.
HOT TUB
You’ve probably worked up a sweat by now. What better way to relax than with a dip in Tinyworld’s excellent hot tub? If you felt comfortable with the grill, this has a similar start to its construction. A combination of hidden campfires and trapdoors builds a warm, welcoming, and wet garden feature that you can use to upgrade your yard. Let’s dive in!
1. Start by digging a nine by nine square that’s two to three blocks deep (depending on how smoky you want it). Cover the bottom of the hole with campfires and seal it off with nine spruce planks. This should leave you with a square of wood with campfire smoke drifting through.
2. Place a blast furnace on the middle edge of one of the sides and top it with two cobblestone walls and a flower pot for a rustic looking burner. I want to say you’ll have a blast doing it, but I’m afraid of what will happen to me, given Minecraft’s no puns policy.
3. Put down ten spruce trapdoors around the edge of the square and open them. If you’ve placed everything correctly, they should open to create the edge of the tub. Remember to leave a gap opposite the burner where you can place some spruce stairs leading into the tub. That’s my tweak on the design, as the original used train tracks. Technically, I guess this is my design now? I’m a genius!
4. Time to wrap it up! Just add water and soak your worries away in an apparently steaming hot tub. Or boiling, depending on how many campfires you ended up with!
Nice and rested? Good. Towel off! It’s time for a challenge. Thatsreytgoodthat, another member of Detailcraft’s talented community, has a talent for interior decorating and making tutorials, which is why we couldn’t resist sharing two of his step-up-in-complexity-videos.
In the first one he shows you that if you’re creative with carpets or smart with slabs you have plenty of options to expand your furniture. There are six builds in this video, detailing how to craft bookcases and office storage spaces that would fit any number of base designs. It starts off with a ‘basic’ bookcase, but by the sixth build he’s made an office desk complete with a laptop, and I was just completely in awe at what I was looking at.
If you want to feel lovely and pretty (don’t we all?), you can make that happen with the dresser he designed. This is by far the toughest build in this feature. The tricky part isn’t in the overall design, but in how you turn banners into mirrors. The dye mixing is where the magic happens, crafting a pattern and mixture of colours that will baffle anyone who sees it for the first time. It’s tricky, but by the end you’ll have an elaborate monument to vanity.
It’s party time! Send out invites to all your friends on your server for a backyard BBQ and hot tub party, then invite them inside and really wow them. After they’ve been amazed by your unconventional house designs, you can send them to Detailcraft. Soon you’ll have the fanciest server in the land!
- Written By
- Craig Pearson
- Published
Block...Block...Block...