Washing Sorter

Ages ago when I was coming up with ideas of what shelving to have in the office, I decided I liked this idea:

Once I'd built the boxes out of plywood and painted them all, I decided they looked a bit cheap and nasty and it wasn't the look I was going for! The boxes ended up languishing in the cellar, while I went on the build this shelving instead:

I recently decided that I needed a washing sorter in the cellar, as I had just been throwing piles of dirty clothes on the floor (whites, colours and sports stuff) until the pile was big enough for a load and then they got bunged in the washing machine!
My thrifty self decided to take apart all the boxes that I had made and repurpose them into one big box with an open front and shelf brackets for holding 3 washing baskets.
This actually took quite a lot of time and next time I'd just pay the money for new wood!
Anyway, aren't things always easier in hind sight?!
So, I took all the boxes apart, made my measurements for the washing sorter to fit 3 washing baskets and then played a bit of Tetris trying to fit the pieces of wood I had into the shapes needed for the 5 pieces of wood needed for my washing sorter.
I then cut some pieces to size and fitted them all together using wood glue and screws.
I then attached the sides, top, bottom and back of my sorter together, spent an ages filling in all the holes and sanding it down and painting it!
I used scraps of wood and screwed them directly to the sides of the box to act as gliders for the washing baskets to rest on.
Not bad for a free project but a bit too time consuming for my liking!

Feature Wall

I have injured my foot running so am resting it at the moment, which on the plus side means that I have quite a lot of spare free time! Have put some of that free time to use and painted one wall in our bedroom.
Everywhere else in the house has white walls (apart from the office and downstairs bathroom), so it was nice to get a bit of colour flowing!

Here's the walls before I started painting

I chose a colour called blackberry and painted the wall in a matt colour.

I then bought a stencil of cherry blossom and stencilled in a repeat pattern along the whole of the wall in a slightly lighter blackberry colour in semi gloss. The trick was to use as little paint as possible on the roller.

I then just used masking tape and started in the top lef-hand corner and worked along and down lining the stencil up as I went.

I love it! It gives off a really nice shimmery shine and is really nice and subtle but beuatiful. It also ties in really nicely to the blinds from Ikea which also have a sort of cherry blossom design on them.

We just need new bedcovers and I might even make some cushions with the cherry blossom stencil on too!

Letters Shelf

In a bid to have somewhere to put letters and all the little bits and pieces that are in limbo and don't really have a home (i.e. the stuff that comes out of G's pockets at the end of the day, like his wallet), I decided to make a little shelf to go next to the front door.

I made it using all scrap pieces of wood, paint, hooks and a jam jar that I already had, so this is a free project - love it!

I used one piece of wood as backing and cut out the corners with my jigsaw to give it a bit more of a fancy look.



I then screwed the shelf into it from the back. I added a bit of trim I had left over from another project so that the shelf has a lip to stop thing falling off it.

The hooks are ones I already had at home and I painted them a gloss black.

The jam jar was also hanging around in the cellar, so I painted it with some glass paint and slotted it into the round holder I made out of scrap wood with my jigsaw. It can be easily taken out to add water, depending on what little flowers are there. At the moment I've just got some dried lavender from the garden.

I painted the whole thing the same white as the shoe rack that is also in the hallway, so it all ties in nicely.

Here it is hanging up in all its glory:

Drawer Cupboard

So, here's the last installment in my cupboards built and now there really is no excuse for not having a neat and organised cellar (does it meet your high standards, Thorsten?!).

This cupboard is the same design as the cleaning cupboard and tools cupboard but is full of pull out drawers made out of plywood. This now sorts out the madness that was all my screws, nails, fiddly little things etc. that were previously just thrown together in one heap.

The drawers are made in the same way as the boxes I made for my craft shelf.
I used 12mm plywood for the sides and 6mm for the bottom.
All holes were predrilled, countersunk, screwed and the bottom is nailed and glued to the box.
I cut a notch out of the front of the boxes using a jigsaw to make them easier to pull out.

They are just on a really simple drawer slide that I made myself.
I screwed pieces of wood to the sides of the cupboard and then rubbed a candle over the tops of them so the drawers would slide more easily.
This mechanism is hidden by a piece of wood that is glued to the door frame and slides.
I also added a bit of wood as a stopper to the back of the drawer so you don't pull it out too energetically and it comes crashing down on you!

I finished the drawers by painting the fronts with chalkboard paint so that you can easily see what's where!

Cleaning Cupboard

Here comes my second cupboard to sit next to the storage cupboard in the cellar.
This cupboard is to hold cleaning stuff, e.g. ironing board, hoover, bucket, mop ... that type of thing.

The cupboard is very similar to the other one I've made, so won't bore you with the details of how I made this one!

The differences are that this cupboard only has one shelf to hold the iron and will possibly be a storage area for cleaning products or something and it also has a normal hook on the side so the ironing board can hang clean off the bottom of the floor taking up as little room as possible.
The door front is also different. I bought a ceiling medallion (or what ever they're called!) that is just polestyrene so is super light. I glued it to the middle of the door and then attached the door knob in the middle of it and painted everything the same colour - a nice purplish colour! I think it looks really nice with the white door knob.

Sorry about the dire photo quality too - they were all taken in the cellar with no natural light!

Storage Cupboard

After living in our house for a year now and just having all DIY/tool type things piled in a big heap on the floor, I have finally got round to building a storage solution for them!

I bought some white covered chipboard from my local DIY store as it was on offer for €9.99/m2 and I didn't need really good wood as it was only going to be a cupboard for storing tools in the cellar.

I saw this plan for a cupboard and basically adapted it to suit my needs.

I used Sketchup to design my 2m high and 1.20m wide cupboard:

I got all my wood cut to size for free where I bought it and assembled it as follows:

First, I marked equal points all down the inside of the cupboard sides and drilled shallow holes to fit metal shelf holders. This means that I can move my shelfs to be different heigts, depending on what I store.
A good trick for this was the measure the depth of the metal holder and then mark the drill at this height with masking tape so you can't drill deeper than necessary.

I then built the shell of the cupboard by joining the sides to the top and bottom shelf using pockethole screws. I marked where I wanted the shelves, predrilled holes and glued and clamped the pieces together at the same time as screwing.

I used glue and nails to attach the 3mm mdf backing and used brown packing tape for the vertical cut I had to do to make sure it fit in the car.

I built the frame for the front of the door separately using pocket hole screws and then attached it to the shell of the cupboard with nails and glue.

I then built the doors separately by making a frame out of wood as the chipboard just didn't quite cut the mustard and then attaching the mdf backing.

The doors also have pegboard on the inside to hang up smaller tools with hooks. I put wood scraps behind the pegboard so it would have space behind it for the hooks and just drilled through the pegboard holes and into the wood scraps to keep it in place.

I attached the doors with a 3mm gap between the doors and the frame using hinges that I had painted black. The handles are ones that I got from Ikea designed for the kitchen but I thought they would go well with my cupboard!

The doors stay shut due to a magnetic door latch at the bottom.

I then added a bit of detail moulding cut at 45° angles with my mitre saw and painted the whole thing white and ... there it is!

Shelf

I wanted to make a shelf for above the desk in the office for storing all papery type things so the desk wasn't too cluttered.

I looked around for inspiration

I liked the idea of a box within a box but I wanted a design that snaked up the wall next to and over the desk.

I saw this plan on Ana White's website and decided to use the joining method but design my own shelf.

I used SketchUp to come up with this:

I got my wood cut to size for free when I bought it so all I needed to do was mark the notches out of the pieces of wood

I then cut the notches out using my jigsaw, glued them together, checked for square and hunted out all the heavy things I owned to keep them in place until the wood had dried.

I then primed it and painted it a high gloss white like the desk.

Each box is 40x40cm in size and 20cm deep, with a 5 cm end bit outside of the box.

I then routed out mortises to fit some keyhole hangers I bought at the DIY shop. I also made a slightly deeper hole in the mortise to fit the screw head.
These then sit flush in the shelf and are held up by screws attached to the wall. You feed the screw through the bigger hole of the keyhole hanger and it drops into place and is held tight in the narrower shaft.
I have also put little plastic stoppers on that you can also see in the photo below to stop the shelf scratching the walls.

I was originally just going to attach these with L brackets but am so glad I made the effort to borrow a neighbour's router and attach it using keyhole hangers - I love a nice "floating" shelf!