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.

Day 396: The wee cabinet in the corner

Corners are not just for naughty children anymore - cabinets can go in there too. Children can also go in corner cabinets, but that isn't advised.

So this weekend's dilemma was how to fit a fridge and hopefully a somewhat usable cabinet space in a short span of wall. We found some rather slim, but tall 400mm cabinets that should do the trick.

First, I put in some supports onto the wall to hold the countertop.

Next came the base cabinet. This was fixed to the wall using the support and some corner brackets. A bit more stone cladding on the right side to make every thing look tidy.

A countertop was then cut using some of the leftovers from the breakfast bar. There wasn't much material remaining to use, so once again, very little room for missed cuts.The cabinet mounts were then placed on the wall with care .. and some brick dust .. cough. 

And the tall cabinet fit snugly against the wall .. completely level of course.

Now with the doors on and the wee microwave we ordered to just fit the gap. 

Next some pelmet action. Think I was spending more time by now taking photos than doing any real work ... oh well

And some more stone cladding ... I elected to do this after installing the pelmet so that I could measure the exact size needed (much better than trying to add).

And finally I closed things off with a door. Sorry bad daddy humour; builder humour unfortunately can't be printed on a PG rated website.

A little nifty work was required to finish off that small gap between the base cabinet and the wall. I put 2 pieces of cladding together at a right angle so that I could fasten it without any screws being visible from out outside. The wider edge was then screwed from the inside of the cabinet. Very nifty.

 

And the (almost) finished product. I just need to do a bit of cornice work at the top to make things look pretty. So we managed to squeeze the fridge and a somewhat useable cabinet into a very small space in the corner. More great things are planned for this cabinet, but that will be the subject of a future post... stay tuned.Just need to now find a new corner to put the naughty kids ...

Day 382: Getting stoned

With the Great Peninsula of Surbiton firmly fixed, on came the stone colour match cladding. 

This was generally pretty easy to do. Measure the gap, tape the ends and cut to length. I used my squeeze grips to hold in place and fixed with 30mm wood screws.

The back was a bit more tricky as there was a gap between the back of the cabinet and the cladding. So I had 2 options: 1) screw it on from the front and have the screws visible (the lazy way) or 2) find a way of fixing the panel from the back.Fearing that I'd risk losing my loyal following to this blog (a cast of millions) and be subject to the "your screw is showing" criticisms at home - I opted for the more challenging option. I put some wood to bridge the space and some corner brackets on the bottom. I'm sure that there is probably a much easier way to do this, but I couldn't think of one. 

So there you go, my peninsula is now stoned and looking fine. The cladding makes a huge difference to the overall look of the cabinets. And for the record, none of my screws are showing.

Day 367: The Great Peninsula

This weekend's little task was to complete the worktop on the peninsula. If you've read my previous posts on worktops, you'll know that we have a bit of a love-hate relationship going on... mostly hate.

What I don't like about them:

• They are heavy
• They are unforgiving
• Cutting is messy

But a kitchen without a worktop wouldn't get me any Brownie points. And I'd probably lose my DIY license around the house. So off I go.

The countertop was rough cut to size and scribed previously but not fastened down. I still needed a sliver of counter to go on the other side of the range. The fancy jig shown below was to keep everything straight whilst the glue was setting. In the end, it wasn't at all necessary. But still a cool setup.

Next came the edging. As the countertop had to be cut to size, there was one rough edge. This was lightly sanded down to prepare for the edging strip. The capital pine worktop has a rounded ABS edge that is impact resistant and can be sanded down to get a nice rounded edge. It is quite thick and sold in rolls, making it somewhat difficult to fix in place. 

I held it down with a straight piece of wood and clamps and applied contact adhesive to both the edging strip and the cut edge of the worktop. I should mention now that the adhesive was all green, tree hugger, save the dolphin friendly. I could probably drink the stuff. And did it work ... NO! So lesson learned, drive a Prius if you want to save the whales but make sure to use solvents if you want your countertop edging to stick.

With the edging on (finally) the countertop was ready to go back into place and fastened down.

 

And the fit was of course perfect.

Amazon to the rescue. My super solvent, hazardous, ozone and small animal killing extreme mega grip contact adhesive showed up not a minute too soon. And did it work ... YES!!!!!

Countertop's on and fastened down, edging tightly glued, drawers installed .. welcome to the Great Peninsula

Day 369: A spooky Halloween update

What a difference a year makes.

Last year, I was stripping Artex and knocking down walls. The only Halloween decoration was a half-filled skip out front of the house. The place had natural spooky appeal I guess. Kids didn't want to go near the place as they were under the impression we were hosting a meth lab. Check out the Walter White costume - BTW this was pointed out to me after the fact, not at all intentional.

This year, We added a few skeletons, spiders (the original ones gave up and left), tomb stones and lots of scary sound effects. And a spooky vampire princess and witch to boot. And the kids came ... in significant numbers I may add. What a difference a year makes. Next year the plan is to set up a Halloween shot bar out front for the adults, and continue with the treats for the kiddies.

Day 361: When a kitchen looks like a kitchen ..

Now that the kitchen floor is down, we can really focus on getting the rest of the kitchen in place. I'm looking forward to getting my office back. It's pretty much been a box room for the last couple of months.

This weekend the target was getting a wall cabinet up and putting in the breakfast bar "island". Update: Joan has since correctly pointed out that it's really more of a peninsula as it's connected on one side.

First the cabinet. Not many pictures of this getting built as it was pretty easy to assemble on the ground. As you can tell from the snugness and the sloping ceiling - it was less easy to manipulate into place. Hence difficult to capture the moment. Believe me, lots of grunting and grown up words. But we got there eventually ..

Next came the island/breakfast bar/cabinet/peninsula thing. First thing to do was assemble the cabinets. We've got a 600mm 3 drawer unit tied to a 300mm simple cabinet. This gives the right length to get 2 stools on the other side and lots of storage space. I've done enough of these to be able to quickly bang them together. The most time consuming part was trying to balance all 8 legs.

 

After that, it was time for the countertop. I really don't enjoy countertops to be honest. You basically get one shot and if you measure/cut wrong .. that's it. Fist part was getting the supports onto the wall to hold the back side. This will provide strength and since it's the only part fixed to anything, it needed to be sturdy. No worries about this thing moving anywhere.

 

Then the cutting started. Basically a combination of circular saw with a fine blade to get the straight lines with a jigsaw to cover the fancy cuts. The garden ended up looking like a sawmill with all the random cuts I was making.

 

The challenge here was the irregular shape of the cut and the need to join the main section with the little sliver of cabinet going down the left of the range. I ended up doing a bit of an offset cut which should make the joint less obvious. Let's see. The other challenge was getting the right size of overhang. The internet is full of opinions, some I'm sure are right. Apparently the recommendation for breakfast bars goes from 6" min to 18" max. 6 is too small to get even little legs under. 18 wouldn't haver let us get by the bar, and would have looked a bit silly, and was wider than countertop allowed, and probably would have snapped anyway.

 

Needless to say, we went with a compromise .. 9". It felt about right and didn't take up too much real estate in the kitchen. And my apologies if you bang your knees or spill food on your trousers when you visit.

 

Anyway, I think we've hit the magical day when the kitchen is starts to look like ... a kitchen. I think I may just hang out in this room and forget about the rest of the house.