Day 579: A cylinder in a box

When we put the new boiler and pressurised cylinder in, we had to demolish the old airing cupboard where the previous cylinder was installed. In spite of having so much free time, I never got around to building a new cabinet to hide the larger cylinder. 

You can see from the difference in wall colouring that the new cylinder and piping was slightly larger than the old one. That and the lovely wallpaper - well at least it will be hidden inside a closet now,

First though, the cement base of the fireplace needed a bit of TLC. Or as they say in the property market "some refreshing". We decided to keep this in place as 1) it was pretty solid; 2) would be a PITA to actually remove and 3) I think it is somewhat supporting the cylinder which is c.200kg when full of water.

I used a can of u-can to patch the concrete. It does what it says of the tin and yes I can!

Not quite a colour match but pretty good I think ..

Next came the framing for the closet area. This consisted of a couple of 2x4's fixed into the masonry. 

The outer stud needed to be held in place to ensure it was perfectly square and plumb. Once it was, it was braced to the floor and ceiling.  

Next, I got to use my new toy, the stud finder to fix the cross-braces.

The cross braces needed to be cut on some strange angles. This was helped with the use of a bevel and several attempts to get correct. But I got there finally ...

The stud finder worked really well. Even on the most difficult of studs :)

With the frame in place, I went with the door frame. As before, this was cut to size, assembled on the floor and checked with a square and finally braced with some spare wood to hold it in shape. The frame was then lifted into place and fixed with some spacers an wood screws.

Again, making sure that it was perfectly square and plumb with the frame.

Once the frame was finished, I started working on the drywall ..

Aside from some odd angled cuts, this was pretty simple.

The last step was to put in a shelf to make good use of the remaining space above the cylinder. I plan to put in another shelf above this as well.

The last step will be to install a door and eventually plaster and paint, but that is the subject of another blog sometime in the hopefully not to distant future.