scholar
Established Member
I thought I should post some details of some units I am building in our conversion project.
This is a conversion of an old chapel hall where we have put in a new floor - the bedrooms have rooflights and to satisfy fire regulations there has to be a means of escape no more than 1100mm from the rooflight (which are of the fire escape pattern, hinged at the top with gas struts - quite what you do when you climb onto the roof I do not know....!).
Anyway, the building officer required a means of stepping up to the platform and as space is a little tight I designed these units to provide storage and bedside tables.
The carcase construction is 25mm MDF, rebated and joined with dominos as I did not want any screws visible (where there is a rebate on both sides of the board I used a larger through domino). I cut the domino mortices in the vertical boards before machining the rebates which I did on the spindle moulder for edge rebates and the table saw for the rebates in the middle of the boards.
By the way, I sourced the panels from Severn Ply (part of Timbmet) using their cutting service - you just send them a spreadsheet and they deliver it all cut to size with individual sticky labels identifying each piece. The accuracy was spot on and the sawn finish superb; I was very impressed with the service.
I made the drawers using AWO from Timbmet, dovetailed on the Woodrat.
Backs of the units, only a little bit of which is visible, is oak veneered plywood as are the drawer bottoms.
The carcases and drawer fronts will be painted in some Farrow & Ball colours (tba) and I intend to spray these. Given that the units are very heavy and unwieldy, I need to spray them in situ (although not fixed in place). I have built a knock-down spray booth which works well in the space and will be usable in due course in the workshop at home. I will post some photos of the spray booth as I am quite pleased with the design, but you will have to wait until I make some space to put it up.
The units will have oak countertops.
I am now at the point of considering paint to use for this job - it needs to be waterbased as my spray booth is not explosion-proofed. I have seen some helpful guidance here on spraying various waterborne finishes on MDF, in particular Morrells so I was intending to use their products.
I was somewhat surprised when I popped into one of the Morrells branches to get the impression that they do not sell much water-based product (the only tin of their main water-based primer was out of date, although he did give me a sample to try). I believe they will match any colour at head office.
I would welcome any views on suitable products - my spray unit is a Fuji Q4.
Here are some photos in case you are interested:
[Edit:Sorry, still learning how to attach the photos - hopefully this works]
This is a conversion of an old chapel hall where we have put in a new floor - the bedrooms have rooflights and to satisfy fire regulations there has to be a means of escape no more than 1100mm from the rooflight (which are of the fire escape pattern, hinged at the top with gas struts - quite what you do when you climb onto the roof I do not know....!).
Anyway, the building officer required a means of stepping up to the platform and as space is a little tight I designed these units to provide storage and bedside tables.
The carcase construction is 25mm MDF, rebated and joined with dominos as I did not want any screws visible (where there is a rebate on both sides of the board I used a larger through domino). I cut the domino mortices in the vertical boards before machining the rebates which I did on the spindle moulder for edge rebates and the table saw for the rebates in the middle of the boards.
By the way, I sourced the panels from Severn Ply (part of Timbmet) using their cutting service - you just send them a spreadsheet and they deliver it all cut to size with individual sticky labels identifying each piece. The accuracy was spot on and the sawn finish superb; I was very impressed with the service.
I made the drawers using AWO from Timbmet, dovetailed on the Woodrat.
Backs of the units, only a little bit of which is visible, is oak veneered plywood as are the drawer bottoms.
The carcases and drawer fronts will be painted in some Farrow & Ball colours (tba) and I intend to spray these. Given that the units are very heavy and unwieldy, I need to spray them in situ (although not fixed in place). I have built a knock-down spray booth which works well in the space and will be usable in due course in the workshop at home. I will post some photos of the spray booth as I am quite pleased with the design, but you will have to wait until I make some space to put it up.
The units will have oak countertops.
I am now at the point of considering paint to use for this job - it needs to be waterbased as my spray booth is not explosion-proofed. I have seen some helpful guidance here on spraying various waterborne finishes on MDF, in particular Morrells so I was intending to use their products.
I was somewhat surprised when I popped into one of the Morrells branches to get the impression that they do not sell much water-based product (the only tin of their main water-based primer was out of date, although he did give me a sample to try). I believe they will match any colour at head office.
I would welcome any views on suitable products - my spray unit is a Fuji Q4.
Here are some photos in case you are interested:
[Edit:Sorry, still learning how to attach the photos - hopefully this works]
