In order to ease congestion in the kitchen and bathroom, I have a number of small projects in mind. One is a spice rack, another a small movable book case (for our cookery books), and a third is a medicine cabinet.
I started work on the last of these today. I’m trying to use only wood I have on hand, after having to fork out £8.25 on a piece of plywood for the roof of the firewood storage unit. That was supposed to be made only using stuff I had already. But in the end I simply didn’t have anything suitable for that job.
It may be that I have to do the same for the door of this cabinet. Or perhaps I might glue some boards together? If I go the latter route, it’ll mean quite a lot of work prepping and gluing the lumber, which’ll prob’ be derived from my stock of pine floorboards.
The main box is made from 12mm ply, with hand-sawn box joints, and a table-saw cut dado for the back. The back is recycled from the rear panels of our now destroyed Ikea Malm chest o’drawers, which was painted grey on one side. I’ve kept that colour as part of my design, and tacked the back on with panel pins.
The finger joints were rather rushed, as I was working outside, in the fading light. There’s simply not enough room in the shed! Consequently they aren’t terrifically precise or neat. I used some ‘Brummer’ to fill a few gaps, and undercoated the box in Valspar ‘Elk Antler’.
The box was fairly severely out of square. Cutting and gluing the back-board was hard work. Cutting it to size took several passes, gradually shaving more off. But it was getting the box itself a bit better aligned, or in square, that was hardest. Thankfully the back panel helps improve the shape a bit.
All the above was done yesterday. Today I wound up having to buy some ply for the door; cost, £1.80! And whilst doing so, at West End DIY, I bought the fixings. These comprise two hinges and a catch. Cutting a recess for the main part of the catch was fun. I like chiselling out little areas like this, with a good sharp chisel.
Due to choosing 9mm ply for the door, the screws that came with the catch wound up being a mite too long. I rummaged around and finally found some much smaller, shorter screws which were a suitable colour/style match. Sadly they’re the flat-head screwdriver type, as opposed to my preferred philips.
One thing I found amongst my hoarded junk/treasures, which’ll come in handy on this job, was a bag o’ wooden handles. I intend to paint the box a beige/buff type colour, and then stencil a big white circle and red cross on it, so it looks a bit ‘army surplus’.
The door knob came from a bag of about 20 or more. One of my many very useful Freecycle acquisitions. I busked the fitting of the hardware, and mercifully it came out ok. I plan to add an internal shelf at some point soon.
Once assembled, I painted it all in a coat of Lark Song, another poetically named Valspar sampler pot! This is the second coat for the main box. But only the first for the door. I’ll let it dry, and then paint the inside as well.
In the pic below, as well as the medicine cabinet, you can see sheets of plywood for the spice rack, a broken nursing chair I need to fix, and the writing box I got from the local dump, also in need of restoration!
I reckon I’ll start, and maybe even finish, the spice rack tomorrow. And I’ll hopefully also paint the white roundel and red cross on’t medicine chest, n’all.
It’s tomorrow now. Here are two pics of the current state of the medicine cabinet. Nearly finished! And I’m happy with it.
Now to crack on wi’t spice rack…