Day 416: Tight spaces

One of the reasons that I actually enjoy doing DIY is the inherent problem solving. Especially when fixing up an old place, things don't always fit as expected and a little ingenuity is often required. Problems can be often fixed with some creativity and/or new tools in the arsenal (in other words some new DIY war stories and kit for show-and-tell)Today's story involves both....THE PROBLEM: How to mount shelving in a space that won't fit a drill or even a stubby screwdriverLong story, but what happened is that there is a pillar right in the middle of where we wanted to put the base cabinets (see previous post on the corner unit for an idea of all the aggravation this has caused). The kitchen design tool ignored this pillar and just freely placed the cabinets. I anticipated that the corner unit had to be "notched" but didn't realise that the pull-out spice rack needed also needed to be shifted. This created a gap (a problem, or an opportunity depending on the fullness of your glass).Scott's idea - cover the gap with a panel and be done with itCarolyn's idea - utilise the space as shelving for cutting boards etc.You can probably guess who's idea won .. this would otherwise have been a quick post.So I needed to mount shelves, except as the rest of the cupboards were already installed, this presented a challenge. Nothing useful would fit in the space to do the work. Taking the cabinet apart, although possible, wouldn't have been very fun (and wouldn't make a very good post either). If you really want to see what this would have worked, just navigate this site backwards.  So first the easy part, cutting the shelves. By now I've accumulated lots of excess wood. I just needed to pick out a few pieces with good edges and cut them to size. I also mounted some white paneling to the back to make everything look neat.Next came the hard part - how on earth to mount these things? For the bottom one, I cut some smaller pieces of wood to fasten from the bottom. These will be behind the plynth and won't be seen. Now the creative part. I fastened a drill bit to the chuck of my Dremel tool and used the 90 degree attachment to create a "tight space" drill. This worked a charm and using my stubby screwdriver, I managed to get the bottom shelf fastened. 

So far so good .. but for the middle shelf, even my MacGyver drill contraption wouldn't get into the space. More creativity/tools was needed.

I opted to use some shelf support clips to hold it in place. To make the holes for these clips I needed to order some crazy long (30cm) drill bits. Thanks Amazon. 

First, I drilled through the corner cabinet side and then progressed to go 1cm into the other side. I found that these drill bits can actually bend. Kind of like a small scale horizontal drill string. Using the ring in my adjustable wrench as a guide (bare hands not recommended), I positioned the inner hole exactly where I needed it.

And voila, a new home for our cutting boards! So for the average person visiting our kitchen, they will not think anything of this great feat of engineering. But for the informed Suburbiton Project reader - they will know that this isn't just an average shelf.

DIY war stories +1

New kit +1

Just need to think of what else I can do with a set of 30cm drill bits now ...