Moving on from when I completed the “Frameless wardrobe“, I cleared the space for building the remaining wardrobe by borrowing a portable clothes rail from a friend, and completely emptying and dismantling my old wardrobe to use the pieces.
I cut away the carpet, pulled off the side skirting board, and put up a new side panel against the wall. The side would extend slightly into the bay window when the front frame was made. I was pretty sure it would look fine, Hubby wasn’t too sure, but just trusted me on this one.
I still had some bits of the old wardrobes in the shed so I used them to cut up into supports and spacers for the bottom box.
Memory and confidence issues delayed the fixing together here but I eventually set about the pieces with hammer and nails until I was happy they were in the right place before drilling holes and finally screwing the base box securely.
With the frame fitted onto the base box, and the drawer runners firmly in place, as with “Hubby’s wardrobe“, the next part of the puzzle was to make the drawers fit.
It would appear that I had forgotten how I’d re-sized the drawers at the base of Hubby’s wardrobe, it took me a while, but I worked it all out again.
The “Grumpiness” set in again and I found myself deeper in the pit than I had been for a long time, months passed with pretty much no progress until I had a little help from some “Folic acid” and started to feel more like me again.
I built fronts for the left and right of the wardrobe with some nice strong uprights to support the doors, and I fixed the one broken drawer, which I obviously hadn’t made to my usual standard.
Then, after struggling to find some suitable doors for the top box of the wardrobes, the decision was made to leave them open and to replace the flat top bar on Hubby’s wardrobe with a new shapely piece in keeping with the dresser.
It was surprisingly satisfying to see the two tops in place.
I built the front centre posts, securing them well enough to support the doors, added the rail inside, a black metal one of course, I do like things to match …
And then my wardrobe was finally ready to varnish …
The actual varnishing was delayed again, this time by the rest of the room. I’d painted the wall cream behind the desk ready to follow on, but of course, the preparation under the paint on a wall is as important as good underwear beneath that little black dress, so there was dust, and pollyfiller, and more dust before the walls and ceiling could be painted. But once the dust had settled and the room was painted, the varnishing of the last wardrobe began.
With literally just the doors to put on, I was hit by a maths problem … I had originally bought a box of thirty pretty black hinges to hang the doors. Eight doors, three hinges each, in my world that adds up to twenty-four hinges … No problem.
The problem arose not from the hinges, but from the doors. The old hinges were of the type where plastic circles are countersunk into the back of the door. Once removed, the old hinges left big round holes just where I wanted to screw the new hinges on. This problem in itself was easily remedied, I just moved the new hinges and used four on each door instead of three. Enter the maths… Four hinges on each door instead of three left me with two less hinges than I needed.
Easily remedied again… But stupidly, buying ten hinges turned out to be more expensive than buying thirty… So now I have twenty-eight spare.
Wood is a natural product, and as such can’t be relied upon to be perfect, but if you want perfect, you use plastic. The cupboard doors themselves are pretty good, but the lengths of wood I was able to buy to make the front frames were slightly warped. I managed to pull most of the wood in the right direction with a few strategically placed screws, but my main assistance in making sure the doors closed nicely were a few extra magnetic catches.
I bought some storage boxes to sit nicely in the top box of the wardrobe, and all in all I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out.
More “Fixings and finishings” on “The Seaside House” .
Photographic Memories 