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!

Play Kitchen Christmas Present

For E's Christmas present I decided to make her a play kitchen. They have the Ikea one at her nursery school and she loves it.
I took the measurements from the Ikea kitchen and reworked it so that one of our spare shelves from our oven would fit in her oven and made it no wider than the little bit of wall separating our kitchen and living room, so it would fit nicely in the corner and not get in the way.
I made my design using sketchup.
It's hard to say how long the actual project took as I did it before I started back at work but when E had just started nursery. They have a good system here where they break them in gently by going for half an hour one day, an hour the next etc. and then slowly building up to staying for lunch and then for nap time. This meant that I had various half an hour slots in the morning to have a quick tinker in the kitchen and just slowly worked on it over time.
I built the main kitchen using spruce wood. The units are painted white and the worktop is stained chestnut and then nicely buffed so it's super smooth to touch.

The tap is made out of 3 pieces of spare wood I had that are all loosely screwed together so you can still twizzle it round in all directions.

Added extras:

Kitchen mixing bowl for the sink
Door knobs for the taps and for the oven knobs (all attached loosely so they spin around)
Cork coasters painted black for the hob
Door handles left over from our kitchen for the cupboard and oven handle
Grill shelf from our oven
Battery LED light that turns on when you push it for the oven
Perspex for the oven window with a balsawood frame on the inside to protect it
Hinges painted black for both doors
Opening hinges for the oven door so it doesn't bang directly on the floor (These need to withstand a lot of wear and tear and E loves to lie on the door and generally mishandle it!)
Hook rack that I had lying about and some S hooks
Magnetic paint for one side
Chalkboard paint for the side and the cupboard door

E was ill with bronchitis and a fever over Christmas so it wasn't the lovely look of surprise I was hoping for when she saw her new kitchen... in fact, she didn't want to open any presents at all! Since then though, she has played with her kitchen every day so far and loves baking her cakes and making a cup of tea. The only thing missing for her is that no real water comes out of the tap!

Here are some snaps of the work in progress...

A door clamped in place to dry after gluing and screwing together

 

Painting in progress

And here's the big reveal Christmas morning!

Checking her cakes in the oven!

Framed Chalkboard

I was commissioned with the task of making something out of wood for my friend's birthday. This was quite tricky as it couldn't be anything too heavy or fragile as I had to send it in the post to good old England!

I decided to go for a framed chalkboard to hang in the kitchen to put a shopping list on or something.

I had some nice border wood that I mitred into a frame and just glued it together and clamped the edges until they dried.

I then cut out a piece of plywood to size and painted it with chalkboard paint.

I painted the frame blue to match her kitchen colour and sealed it with a top coat as it will be in the kitchen that might get splashed with water.

I hammered the plywood into the frame and then added a pretty ribbon onto the back for hanging it from a hook.

Hope she likes it!

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!