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Hello. About a year ago I began planning a cabinet / book case / display unit for my living room. I posted an initial mock up and the plan was to build from scratch. After some thought and more time spending planning how to approach this I did the sensible thing and realised a scratch build is far, far beyond my skill set. A few people suggested kitbashing some Ikea book shelves which while a good suggestion, didn't sit right with me as the the materials used (in my experience) warp after a few years, sometimes quicker and also there wasn't much in the current range from Ikea that suited what I planned for. However, I did get pointed in the direction of a company that provides modular shelving systems made from pine, so after some thought I went back to the drawing board and now have the following project to work on.  The unit is three shelving systems for storing books, a display cabinet (left wall) and house a television (far wall). The TV will be mounted directly to the wall (suitable hole will be cut into the backboard of the unit to accommodate the wall bracket. Really dumb colour coded key thing;  Blue - Left unit Yellow - Centre unit Green - Right unit Purple - Television with cable tidy. The cabling will run into the bottom cabinets and off to the green unit where the electrical outlets and aerial points are. Pink (right) - Radiator Pink (left) - Light switch / thermostat Red - Not part of the kit. The finished model looked a bit bland with a flat top. If the build goes well then in future I'll add something like the red unit as a cap. An ugly render  While the unit is made of pine, I have blinds in the window and back door which have a faux mahogany finish. Once the wood arrives I'll be investing time in lightly sanding the components in order to stain them for a finish that matches the blinds. The supplier finishes all components with a light varnish. Unvarnished is unfortunately not an option. The patterned end boards isn't set in stone yet. I haven't made up my mind on if I'm going to leave them as stained wood or have a tessellating pattern on them. The corner units  The design of the unit leaves a 300mm x 300mm void in both corners. I could use larger units for each side and have open corners, but from experimenting with this in sketchup I didn't quite like the look of it. For a bit of fun I've decided to put some shelves in the two voids and implement hidden doors in the backboards to access the voids where the two arrows are. This is in the early stages of planning and I'm still trying to figure out how to do it. Suggestions/advice would be greatly appreciated! I found this example of a flush mount door mechanism on youtube and would like to do something similar with flush mounted doors which open inward, then upward to give access to the corner cabinets. The Thunderbirds fan in me is toying with the idea of having all of the hidden doors wired up to a little control panel on the coffee table but my only experience of doing such a thing is watching youtube videos of arduino projects. Doing that is still a wa The white strips you can see underneath each shelf are placeholders for shelf edge lighting. I'd like to have LED strip lighting projecting light toward the rear of the cabinets. To hide the LED strips (and mount them so they face the correct direction) I'd like some brass rail hanging from underneath each shelf. I've found carpet rails are just the right size for this and can easily be cut to length. The rail spikes (don't know the technical term for them) can be filed off to avoid pricking fingers when near the shelves. And that is my dumb project to keep me occupied for the time being. The shelf system components are currently on order. While waiting for those I'll be confusing myself with how to make the hidden cabinet door mechanism. I'll try to keep updates regular as I progress.
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Feb 11, 2019 15:49
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 13:54 |
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I've got wood! The backboards come unfinished but the rest has a very fine layer of varnish which will need sanding off. I've started with sanding the uprights as they're the more fiddly bits. Shelves, base fascias and infills are fairly straightforward and will come second, third etc then onto staining. Updates so far: Delivery received and all components accounted for. Began removing finishing of components ready for staining. Wood stain ordered. Television and wall bracket for centre unit has been purchased and ready to be mounted to the wall.
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Feb 14, 2019 00:28
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What company did you go with? I’m thinking about creating a built in for my mudroom and this is an interesting option.
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Feb 14, 2019 04:57
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That lumber looks pretty good-nice to know that is an option. As a test/experiment, you might try some stain on top of the varnish on a part that won’t show. Leave it on a little longer than usual before you wipe it off. Especially with pine, a thin barrier coat can help stains go on more evenly. It might be worth a call to the company to ask at least; they might be putting this coat on for exactly that reason as many people are going to want to stain pine shelves anyway. You need another clear coat over the stain in any case. It would sure save you a lot of work trying to sand all the finish off, and if you don’t sand it off exactly evenly to bare wood all around, it is really going to show when you do stain it. While it would be fun, I’m not sure about your idea of putting secret doors in the corners. To make space for the door you’d have to cut out most of the end wall section of the cabinet which is what is bearing all the weight of the shelves and holding the cabinet together.
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Feb 14, 2019 06:01
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stupid puma posted:What company did you go with? I’m thinking about creating a built in for my mudroom and this is an interesting option. Shelf Store. Sorry, I should have put that in the first post. They've got quite a few extras for the modular system. If this cabinet build goes well I may use the same system for my workspace. Kaiser Schnitzel posted:That lumber looks pretty good-nice to know that is an option. Varnish: I did some tests with different stains on a sample piece of wood sent out by the company. The varnish while being a thin coat, isn't so thin it could be penetrated by a stain. I had a lengthy chat with the company over the phone once I placed the order (Nice guys, they made the call to check everything with the order was correct and give some guidance / suggestions) and they advise the varnish will need complete sanding away for a stain, but for painting only needs roughing up a bit to allow the paint to adhere. Corner doors: Good shout but the walls are not load bearing in this case. The uprights come hollow and in-fills can be purchased (which I've done) to close the space. The shelves sit on metal brackets which run at a 45° angle into the uprights which take all the weight of the shelves. The infills are purely cosmetic. I'm still not sure how to about making the doors motorised but that's not currently a priority. Today's update: More fun with the orbital sander. 
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Feb 14, 2019 13:57
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A minor update. Sanding - An on-going project. Started with the uprights and almost done. I'm in a terraced house with paper thin walls so am quite conscious of the noise the orbit sander makes. During the week this leaves me with a two hour window after coming home from work to sand the components ready for staining as I don't want to annoy the neighbours with the noise all night every night. On weekends I can dedicate the days to working through much more components. The edges of each component need to be sanded by hand so I've spent the remaining 'quiet time' in the evenings doing that. The television wall mount. This was due to happen today, however inspection of the walls shows they are not stud walls but are in fact 'dot and dab' walls which can only just about take a flat mount. Any kind of articulation puts more stress on the mount and thus, the wall. One solution is to add a solid wooden board than runs from the floor up to a few inches above the top of the mounting bracket, and attach the mount through the board and then through the wall. The downside of this is it brings the cabinet forward from the wall a bit (losing space) or implementing said board into the cabinet, losing less space overall but would change the cabinet depths in the centre alcove compared to the other spaces. The other, much more simple and also cheaper alternative is this; Just add another shelf to the centre alcove and have the television stand on that with the feet it came with. I think I'll do that since its straight forward and no hassle. Also the shop I bought the wall mount from have said they're ok to refund the mounting kit since I've left everything intact in the box. Picture for picture's sake (apologies for poor quality), telly temporarily up and running on a table so I can have some background noise while hand sanding cabinet components. [IMG]  [/IMG]
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Feb 22, 2019 20:26
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How's this project going? FWIW I fitted an articulating TV mount to dot & dab wall, by putting 100mm anchors through the player/air gap and into the block wall behind. Do-able, if you're confident in the wall behind.
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Mar 11, 2019 00:03
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cakesmith handyman posted:How's this project going? Slowly slowly but getting there. Work was quite full on the other week so I took a break from everything as was fairly tired in the evenings, then some life stuff (the good kind) happened. I returned to the project today as I now have a decent amount of free time again and have a long weekend. I did come across a wall fitting that was made to accommodate wall mounting on dot and dab walls but as you said, depends a bit on the wall behind. The wall behind is the same as mine, dot and dab (mid-terraced house). As the cabinet is a modular system its no problem to fit another shelf and put the TV on that on its own feet. Current job: Continue never-ending saga of sanding. Next job: Measure and cut skirting profile out of the uprights.
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Mar 17, 2019 18:22
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I knew there was something I was forgetting. Many apologies for leaving the thread to die a pathetic and lonely death. Life stuff going on and sanding a bunch of wood felt like a never ending exercise in tedium. Project now back in motion and some progress! The now finished finish stripped pile of stuff.  Some pieces (In-fill boards for instance) were such large areas at times it felt as though I wasn't making progress, although comparing them side-by-side with components which hadn't yet been stripped helped reassure me I was making progress, if slowly. There's been some nice weather the last two months but some days it was so bright outside I couldn't tell if I was making it through the finish. Its not been an even coating from the supplier. Some components had much thicker finish than others.  The last pieces to be stripped were the cupboard doors. They needed dismantling before stripping off the finish. They're put together quite well. The handle side has these wee gromit thingies which lock a screw into place, and wooden dowel push fit either side to reinforce the join. Same method used on a lot of flat pack furniture.  Loosen the gromit doohickies and tappy tappy tap the handle side of the frame away. The other frame components appear to be dowel and glue, so I left those alone and sanded by hand.  Disassembled doors ready for sanding. Once the frame was removed, the infill panels came right out. If one wanted to replace the wooden infills with glass, its a straight forward process.  It would have been a nice time saver if the infill panels had the option of coming unfinished like the backboards.   After sanding, I tackled the door handles. I'm not too fond of the existing cutaway handles and sourced some new handles to add later after staining. Doing so however, still leaves the gaping hole behind the new handles.  One of the new handles, with the giant hole behind.  Solution: Fill the holes with wood filler. Build up gradually and leave to dry between each layer. I've used Ronseal Wood Filler which will also work with wood stain.  A comparison of an unfinished filled hole, with a first sanding of a filled hole. This should blend nicely behind the new door handles.  Looks good so far!  Alright, maybe its quite obvious what's been done here as the wood grain comes to a sudden stop where it meets the filler. If the sudden change still stands out like a sore thumb after staining I'll review the situation. Perhaps continue the grain pattern with paint?  Now that all the components have been stripped, and the door handles have been filled and smoothed, the next phase is to start making the necessary adjustments to the components to fit in the designated space. The first part to tackle is the uprights, I'd like this unit flush to the walls so I need to take the skirting boards into account. The skirting boards are a Torus profile. The supplier has a tutorial for removing material from the base of uprights to accomodate skirting boards, however this is just removing a massive chunk of material, which leaves voids between the skirting profile and the upright. I'd like a flush join between the two.  I picked up this skirting board profile stencil... tool... gizmo. Its ok for getting an approximation but for me, an idiot, it wasn't great for transferring the skirting profile to wood for cutting. I did a few practice runs marking the profile out from the template onto some scrap wood and removed the waste material with a coping saw. Terrible results. My sawing skills are good for straight lines (because there are things called jigs you see) but with a coping saw I need much, much more practice.  What I am good at is finding stupid but kinda workable solutions to puzzles! The wood filler used to fill the door handle voids is good and solid when dry. Something I'm experimenting with at the moment is how the wood filler sets against different surfaces with interference. Test spot 1 is on wood with a cling film barrier between the filler and wood. Test spot 2 is on wood with two barriers, cling film and a layer of vaseline. Test spot 3 is on wood with one barrier, cling film. Test spot 4 is on wood with one barrier, vaseline. Test spot 5 is control, wood filler directly onto wood. The reason for this is from my art college days, for small flourishes we had molds of the flourishes which clay would be press fit into. Removing the clay can be difficult, but a barrier of vaseline prevented the clay from sticking to the mold and allowed the press fit clay to be removed without damaging the flourish, which could then be applied to the pot. I figured why not try the same with an off-cut of Torus skirting? Remove the was material from the base of the upright, then add the negative of the torus skirting (once dry) to the narrower upright base which should then marry up to the skirting board and provide a flush join. Dumb, but worth a try. If the current tests give positive results, I'll next try against a skirting board off cut and post back with the results.  That's where I'm at to so far. The next few jobs are as follows;
As an apology for failing to update (although it really would have just been two months of, "Today I did more sanding" or, "Today I was busy with work") here's a picture of a fluffy dog looking at some freshly hatched Swans. 
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Jun 10, 2019 20:10
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Minor update. Results from the first test of dumb molding idea. Control: Wood filler on bare wood. As expected, stuck right on there. Single barrier - Cling film. Kind of worked but not great and needed a bit of effort to carefully pull away from the cling film. Some film stuck to the base of the dried filler.  Single barrier - Masking tape. Bad result.  Double barrier - Cling film + vaseline. Worked well. Dried filler slid right off with a gentle poke.  Single barrier - Vaseline. Best result. Wood filler dried in expected time. Solid clump of filler. Slid right off the wood.  I have a small piece of torus skirting being delivered to be used as the mold. Once that arrives (3-4 days from now?) I'll do a complete molding test. In the mean time I have the additional shelves I'm waiting on and need to work out a wiring diagram for the shelf lighting. Also still need to figure out that hidden sliding door mechanism.
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Jun 11, 2019 18:48
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Oscar Romeo Romeo posted:A minor update. I am still pissed that they lied to me about Buckaroo Banzai part 2.
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Jun 12, 2019 03:31
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Latest development. Large quantities of filler are drying in the sunlight. Started to remove waste material from the uprights to make way for the skirting boards. Bought an ice cream because its sunny. Applesnots posted:I am still pissed that they lied to me about Buckaroo Banzai part 2. Same. 
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Jun 14, 2019 18:55
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 13:54 |
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The dumb "Let's make molds from filler!" plan has not gone well. Solid chunks crack and crumble when trying to release them from the skirting profile. I put that problem aside yesterday while I removed material from the base of the uprights to go around the skirtting board (Straight cuts, not flush) and leave a space against the wall to accommodate the backboards. If the flush to skirting thing continues to go badly, its not the end fo the world. The uprights can now go into place and clear the skirting boards, I'd just have to live with seeing some slight gaps where the cabinet meets the skirting board at the base. Functionally, no problems and the rest of the build can go ahead. However, knowing that gap is there will bug the hell out of me and I'd rather try and resolve this than give up and go onto the next stage. I have access to a scroll saw. New plan (why didn't I do this before the stupid molding thing?) is to work out the profile dimensions of the skirting board and cut them from small blocks of wood on the scroll saw. Sand and file down gradually and compare against the skirting board until I have a match, then add those pieces back onto the uprights.
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Jun 16, 2019 15:16
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