Floor to Ceiling Storage

Even though we've been trying to declutter we're always short of storage in our house. 

The old dinning room used to contain a large sideboard against the one wall. But now, with that wall gone, we needed somewhere else to store things. Turns out mainly craft items that the children spend all their time doing! 

So I made some floor to ceiling units from the pine board that I had used to make the kitchen. Really simple construction to make the carcasses, just using dominos (A large dowel type joint), glues and then screws to clamp it together. Makes a really solid unit, far better than an MDF or chipboard one. 

I must confess to it taking a few months to make the doors but it's made such a difference now they're on and everything is hidden away. 

The doors are a simple shaker style made with domino joints in the corners and grooved to accept the ply panel. They're all to have a painted finish. 

I've gone for my black duct tape handles for now but they'll be replaced with leather at a later date!

Cupboard In A Cellar

Last week I build a cupboard in a cellar for a customer. They left it largely up to me on what I built, it was mainly to hide the gas meter and the water filter to make it all look a bit more presentable as they're selling trying to sell the house.

Frame work in - made harder by the fact I couldn't drill any holes in the walls due to the tanking. Instead I wedged all the pieces in place and used a frame fixing foam.

Adding WBP ply to the outside

Adding kitchen hinges on the doors

The finished cupboard - looks much smarter now

The large door gives easy access to the gas meter and to to the water filter

Cupboard Remodelling

This is a few days work from back in March remodelling a cupboard and creating a new one after a new fire place and flue had been fitted.

Boxing in the flue. I used fire board on the inside just "to be sure" even though the timbers were all outside the distances allowed to the flue

The other cupboard in the kitchen is above the fire place in the living room (if that makes sense...)

Simple MDF doors made on site to match what's already there

Boarded out, trim added and shelf fitted.

The finished cupboard

The othe cupboard finished. I also think that with this one I must hold some sort of record for the fastest hung door...

Fitted Cupboards

Over the last two days I have been building two fitted cupboards either side of a fireplace for a customer.

The brief was that they were to look traditional, meet her budget and be build in a relatively short time so that her office wasn't out of action for too long.

We settled on building the carcases out of 18mm MDF to keep costs down and have the book shelves in 25mm ply for strength.

 The walls either side of the fireplace were massively out of level and square so it took a bit of time to level it all up. I then started to build the units i n place before adding the sides and the shelves above

First unit nearly built

All the beading to hide the edges of the MDF and ply

Simple MDF doors that will look really effective when painted up

Lots of space in each unit

The book shelves are 300mm deep to accept to rows of small books

The finished units - difficult to get far enough back to take a good picture I'm afraid!

It took me two very long days to fit these two cupboards but I'm really pleased with how they turned out in the end. I've asked the customer to send me a picture when they are painted and full of books so watch this space!

Funky Cupboard Doors

I fitted some cupboard doors that I made today. I was quite impressed with how they look.

 This is a simple set of three MDF doors, hung with kitchen hinges. The doors have lines scored across them that are 3mm deep, painted grey to contrast the white finish, each individual door has one line picked out in a different colour and some of the lines pass through two or three of the doors to tie them together.

What the doors are hiding

I think these look a little bit more like art than simple cupboard doors and I'm pleased with how they came out (I didn't do the painting).

This shows that a low cost material with a bit of time spent on it can give a great finish.

Cupboard doors and wardrobes

Trying to juggle my own work whist being foreman on the Summerfield Park job can be tricky. The bank holiday has let me fit in a job that came up a couple of weeks ago whilst not missing any time on my other job.

The first part was to ease all the doors in the house as they'd just had carpets fitted, I did this in a morning (before going to a wedding much to my wife's annoyance) and then came back yesterday and today to do a couple more jobs.

The first was to alter the cupboard under the stairs. The door the house builder had put on was tiny making the space unusable so the plan was to cut a bigger opening and fit a new door. This was a much more awkward job than you'd give credit to! Still it looked good when it was done and it's the first time in years I've had to bisect angles (glad I still remember how!).

The next job was to make use of a small alcove in the second bedroom and turn it into a wardrobe full of shelves for storage.

[Before]

[After]

The trouble with a new house is there is never anything to fix to, this makes putting shelves up difficult, not only that but you have to be extra carefully removing skirting - my new Multimaster earned its keep over the last few days! All they need to do is give it all a good coat of paint (I've filled all the nail holes and caulked up the edges for them) with no damage done to anywhere else.

The customers seem happy, they've already asked me to come back for more work and they gave me a bottle of wine as a tip!