Drill into the fold: August 2015

As men we have several ... ... expectations on us. Drink Beer, overtly eye-up other women and like football. Well I fail admirably on (1) and (3) but I think I make up for it by doing some DIY Actually on August Bank Holiday weekend!

The project is quite simple actually, which is good since although I definitely enjoy DIY, I've not done that much of it actually, since I left home especially not at eighteen to go to college.

So the plan is to rip out the awfully done shelves and rail, including the sliding doors that are currently in the cupboard next to my front door. Then I want to install nice new shelving as you can see by the picture below. Finally, boxing off the electric meter to prevent the switches getting interfered with by incoming shoes is the load on the plan.

Cupboard design in SketchUp

Part Zero

There is of course the step before doing anything, getting what you need, so its off to B & Q (I get a 10% discount there - not that really stems how expensive they are in the first place) to stock up since I've not really done any of my own DIY. I do not have anything, even the basics, so it was a big shop: screws (ended up buying a box of 1200 in a variety of sizes), Wood Glue, sheets of MDF (12mm and 6mm 606 x 1220 sheets), a jigsaw (Bosch) with blades, batons of planed pine (12mm square, approx 1m long).

And the best bit .. the bill - approximately £ 100!

Part one

The shelves to the left are intended to hold shoes as a neat way to store and hide them effeciently with the space. Initially I had to work out the best way of cutting the material down on paper before taking actually to wood with the jigsaw.

I got six shelves out of the 12 mm sheet with enough material to make at least two more no problem if needed. Heading back inside to do a test fit I noticed did the doorframe wrapped around the inside of the cupboard wall too so had to take out a 15 mm deep notch to accomodate for that.

Notching for the doorframe

Next step was to decide at what height the shelves would go at this Took a little bit of thinking I got myself muddled up. Because with the simple division ... I've got a 1.2 m tall area for the shelving, and I want 6 shelves, but obviously there will not be a shelf at the top of the 1.2 m Region! To knock off a bit then do the division. Simpleton moment over the wall got marked up.

Shelf locations marked up - triple checked!

I then cut my batons of pine strips down into 12, 6 at 130mm and another 6 at 120mm. Pre-drilling with a 4 mm drill bit and then a screw initialised. The space I had where I would be attaching these batons to the wall is very confined, so I would not be able to apply large amounts of pressure because I would not be able to get myself into a position to achieve the leverage, that's why I pre-drilled the pine batons first to reduce the resistance did I would be facing.

Batons mounted

With all 12 batons secured, the shelves went in.

Initial fitting

The next step was to tidy up the shelves: the square corner just Looked to offensive to the eye (let alone being practical) so I used a dinner plate to trace around it.