Day 1250: Sort of DIY cabinets

Alcoves are the areas around the fireplace a.k.a. nooks. They are actually pretty useless space most of the time but work well with little inbuilt cabinets. 

I had great intentions of building my own custom cabinets out of MDF. But seeing as I don't have a proper wood shop .. yet .. I decided to buy them. As you can imagine, getting custom built cabinets typically cost an arm, a leg, and maybe some fingers and toes. I managed to find a hybrid called DIY Alcove Cabinets which cuts the cabinet to measure and flat pack ships them. It's DIY but in reality, it's just like Ikea flat packs with a bit of extra steps. 

Anyway, photos of the assembly below. 

So just like Ikea furniture, I got a bunch of flat panels and a box of random kit. Instructions were online .. I would have like to see it in the box too. Minor gripe. 

Putting things together was pretty simple - screws and dowels

Caitlin and Ashley were very entertained by the assembly (in my head at least) .. In reality, they were more like, "what are you doing with our TV?!!"

My second grip (and I only had 2) was that the cabinets were not built high enough to accommodate the skirting underneath. My goal was to make this seamless with the rest of the room. I gave them the details/height for the skirting but evidently it was missed.

Not letting that get in my way, I made a couple of 36mm shims by screwing together a couple bits of floorboard. Care this is why I don't throw away scrap wood. 

With my shims in place, the cabinets were put into position and very importantly, leveled. Next the fillers at the side were installed and the doors test fit.

Finally, the top was cut to the shape of the alcove.

Test fitting the skirting to make sure I got the correct height.

So that was the left one .. easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Next came the cabinet on the right. This one was a bit harder because of all the cable-ey thingies.

I also had to finish off the network cabling. This was on my very long to-do list but figured this would be much easier before the cabinet went in place. So some quick networking was in order.

The skirting behind wasn't at all necessary but hey, for all that was involved I put it in anyway.

Now the fun part of cutting out the back to provide access to the cable-ey stuff.

First try .. and almost

Second try with a little more cut out. 

The other fun part was cutting a hole in the top to let the cables exit for the TV. I bought one of those ring things to make it look neat, but I still needed to cut out a 50mm hole. This wasn't as easy as I would have though as it had to go through about 50mm of MDF. I thought my hole saw was going to start a fire it was working so hard to get that hole cut. 

And finally, the kids got their TV back. And I got a, "oh that's nice, now get out of the way!"from the kids.... with this discerning audience, you take what you can get I guess

Left side with skirting (sans doors)

So there you go, sort of DIY cabinets. I had to use tools at least to put them together so I guess that counts.

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.

Day 496: The very last cabinet

I have been consistently reminded that some of our glasses and dishes are still in the same boxes as the move. Some might say that could be seen as an indication that we have too many glasses and dishes. Others would argue, that we need more storage space. 

So this update is about how we found a home for our neglected dinnerware.

We used the empty space to the left of the chimney breast. This was where the original larder cabinet was located .. to see what it looked like click here. By original, I mean c. 1940 as the paper found inside the shelf would attest.

Debate went on for weeks about how best to use this space. I was originally thinking of a floor to ceiling cabinet. Except that one didn't exist to fit the space. The other option was to stack 3 x wall cabinets, one on top of the other to achieve the same effect but this was too many doors. The option that we decided on was a floor cabinet, a little countertop and a wall cabinet. This would provide us with another surface in the kitchen for mail and random stuff (and we have a lot of random stuff). 

So the "base" cabinet is actually a wall cabinet that I chucked some feet on. This was because the opening was only about 40cm deep and most base cabinets are 60cm deep. We ended up getting a 33cm cabinet and pushing it out from the wall by a small margin.

Now the challenging part, the countertop. We had 2 slabs of countertop: 1 was 3m long (sink unit) and the other 2m long (breakfast bar). All the bits were essentially used up across these and the wee cabinet in the corner. So where would I get an 80cm x 40cm piece. Ordering a new slab would take weeks, cost quite a few quid and lead to waste. The other option was to use the cutout that I made for the sink. It was just, and I really mean just, large enough to work. But the edges weren't exactly straight or great so it needed a lot of TLC to get right. But being the seasoned countertop specialist that I now am .. no problem. 

After cutting the slab to the right size, it was time for edging. Using the nice, smelly solvent based cementit was fairly straightforward. I used a piece of wood and a couple of clamps to hold the strip flat while spreading the adhesive on.

And voila, a nice square edged finished countertop. And lesson learned for all the DIY'ers reading this .. don't throw out extra wood unless you are sure you won't need it again.

Next came the upper cabinet. This also needed to be pushed out by 4cm but it couldn't just be put on feet and slid to the right depth like the base cabinet. This time I needed to get creative. I used 2x4's as shims. This got the right depth by had the secondary benefit of making the cabinet fixings pretty darned solid. As I told Care, this one you could stand on.

I also fixed some batons to the wall to support the countertop.

And there you go, 2 cabinets.

 

With all the doors, cladding, cornice and pelmet attached on the top.

And the final product. We now have a home for all of our neglected glasses and dishes. After about, well 496 days, they are finally out of the boxes. We also have a nice counter space for all our random stuff to sit on - which nobody will ever see because it's already buried under stuff - but at least this photo is proof.

So that's now it for cabinets - YEAH! Just some finishing touches - skirting, lighting and a bit more tiling and the kitchen will be finished. And then on to the next project.

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 ...

Day 400: One hot cabinet

Today's project was to put on the boiler cabinet. Not something we wanted on display in the new kitchen. This was a tougher job than initially thought.

Unlike the other wall cabinets, the boiler one wasn't an assemble by number job. Instead, its a "here's a bunch of panels, have fun" job. Added to that, since the boiler was already in place, attaching the frame to the wall also presented a challenge.

So first, and most important was measurements, this all centered around the door, which I didn't want to cut down as I'd lose the smooth painted edges. So I had a boiler and a 600mm wide cabinet to build around.  

The first piece to go on was the outside cladding, which in this case was also structural. This piece would need to be fixed to the wall using plugs and long screws as it would hold both the frame and the cabinet door. The depth also needed to be sufficient to allow the door hinges to fit but not stick out too far to interfere with our worktop space. And finally, I wanted to mount it as high as possible to allow maximum space underneath - challenging with a sloping ceiling.

The second piece of structure was a 38mm x 63mm piece of timber to hold the cabinet to the wall on the other side. There was just enough space to right of the water pipes to allow for this bracing.

Everything had to be cut to length in my outside workshop. The key here is picking which edges were to be visible and making sure the smooth factory edges faced outwards.

Outside, inside and bottom panels now installed.

Then came the top panel and outside cladding. The top left corner had to use special corner braces as there was no other way to fix it on.

Next went the pelmet at the bottom.

A complication came with the hinges. The soft close ones were far too big to fit in the cabinet. The alternative was to mount the door on the other side, but as it was 600mm wide, you would need to be a contortionist to access the boiler and I had no clue how to get the screws in place. I elected to go with the el-cheapo non-soft close hinges - how often do you access your boiler anyway?

The little bit of plastic is a jig for finding the right spot to drill all the holes.

The added complication was the opening of the boiler control panel door - right where the hinge was supposed to go. As usual, there is a special tool for that .. hello Amazon. The tool in question is a Forstner bit - 35mm in this case - which clears out space for the hinge cup. In all, not a difficult task - just make sure not to go all the way through the cabinet or the concealed hinge won't be well concealed.

And with the door now in place.

The slightly adjusted hinge location.

Finally, on went the cornice on the top to finish things off. As could be expected, this was also not the easiest task. The combination of the sloping ceiling and sloping cornice meant that this involved lots of trial and error with a bevel (angle gauge) and Dremel with a sanding attachment. Eventually however we got there. 

I'd put this down as a more difficult task for the average do-it-yourselfer since it essentially involved building a cabinet from scratch. However, like most things, I'm sure it becomes easier with practice. Hopefully, I don't have to do it again for a little while however.

The only thing left to do here is box in the top part of the piping and build a removable front plate to cover the piping the bottom. All in future posts I'm afraid.