What is the best looking stand??

Hey guy's I am officially doing research for the best looking stands, I need ideas!!!! A friend of the family is a master carpenter and agreed to help me make a nice stand.... he only does super nice work if its not perfect it will not be made by him haha so I need to have a great design and know exactly what I want any help guys?? btw any pics of super nice stands are greatly appreciated and will be added to a file for later reference ;D

 

Here is my maple stand.

 

wow that is a very beautiful stand if you don't mind me asking how much in wood did that cost you and is that for a 180 gal or what size tank is that for??

 

do you have the tank already or could you do a wave front tank?

 

wow, that is an impressive stand!
didnt expect this thread to make me jealous that quickly lol.

i'm sure you're more experienced in this hobby than i, and aware of everything required for your tank, but as i'm starting to put my tank together theres already a couple things i'd wish i'd thought about when building my stand.

firstly, have seen cabinets with a seperate compartment for all electrical boards & controllers, usually like an opening side panel. having my power board hang on 2 screws above my sump may change. especially after realizing i'll need at least twice as many sockets.
also, starting to wonder where i will put storage containers for dosing, ato, food, meds my media reactors etc.
my sump and fuge take up pretty much the whole of my stand and am just thankful it was made taller than i initially thought necessary as its given me a little room to play with vertically.

i think one of the key elements to a great stand is functionality as well as form. having all the perfect nooks and crannys to tuck & hide everything into would be awesome

look foward to some more amazing stands in this thread but wanted to throw a couple of my thoughts in with the pics

 

Woah thats beautiful.

I have a question though, what if you live in a possible earthquake area (Los Angeles) and the stand does not have little walls where the tank could sit into, would you run into the risk of it falling over in an even of an earthquake?

 

Yeah I do have a tank my current tank is a 55 gallon and the current stand is seriously lacking!!! its practically falling apart with my 700 pounds of aquarium above it hahaha!!!
Oh and I do plan on upgrading to a 75 gallon within a year or so, so instead of building 2 stands I figured I might as well build 1 with and extra 5 inches of depth for a future upgrade and of course if I do it right I will have plenty of room for a 29 gallon sump plenty of room for a power box and other things

 

it's hard to make it look good, but personally I really like having some extra room on my stand to use as a table to set things down on when I'm doing a little fragging or what ever I'm using to mess with the tank. Do you know if he's planning on using a router to finish your edges or using trim? I''m not that good of a carpenter so when I built my stand I needed to use trim to cover up some gaps, but it would look really cool if all the edge pieces where routered to the shape you want your finished look to be. I've also thought that it would be really cool to see a stand that was put together with just wood pegs and no screws, but that would be a PTA to do.

 

This is the stand I build mine after if you have not already checked this thread. http://www.3reef.com/forums/i-made/reef-sparkys-18-x-18-x-18-nano-build-95329-2.html

 

The tank is 225G. Dimension is 72"Lx30"D without canopy.