Home DIY

Have you tried a google image search for alcove cupboards?

If you make a frame for inset doors you can use traditional hinges, otherwise modern cabinet hinges (kitchen cupboard type) will work with a pretty small gap to the wall. You can get overlay hinges.

On the styling side it seems to come down to victorian or modern, I would avoid floating if you want cupboards , plinth at skirting height suits modern or traditional and has a practical advantage of allowing you to level the base of the cupboard.

There are quick ways to make this kind of thing but making doors is the tricky bit if you want anything at all fancy.

Decided to see how our new down pipe / gutter combo was coping with this mornings downpour. Elbow joint pops off 2m above my head and I get ~30m2 of roof water in my face. Lol

Haha, oh god - not ideal!

Appreciate you will have probably thought of this but - ikea besta 2x600 wide units - could be worth considering tand making custom doors and top in veneered ply ? Will be some fiddling around doing some scribes / shadow gaps and skirt or plinth tho.

Also - my efforts in 2009 - would have defo done a shadow gap between the chimney breast and the boxing panels in hindsight. Rather than making them flush (cracked in the end) Just painted mdf and 2x2 pine. I did a flush plinth the same height as the period skirting but set back. Birch ply tops and shelves - when it was 50 quid a sheet - lol.

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My second fix carpenter, who is a great guy and doing nice work, just picked up some battens for me for a big floating desk. He knew the size etc and has got me 1 by 2's, which feels way too small to me. He's the expert, so kinda want to trust him, but feel he may have made a mistake?

I have two water troughs and I'd like to connect them so that water that collects in one will overflow and fill the other (downpipe will fill the first from the rainwater off the roof). This water can then be stored and used on the garden.

The easy way to do this would be to use a normal tank fitting and connect the tanks at the bottom ... but:

1. it's easier to use the water if only one tank fills first so the overflow needs to be nearer the top (easy)
   
2. the design committee are insisting on an internal overflow pipe that's open at the high water point which is then routed down internally within the tank before exiting at the bottom (more complicated)
   
   

Does such a thing as a double sided tank/bulkhead fitting exist, ideally with 15mm compression joints to conect pipe to? Most tank fittings are understandibly single sided, I could probably figure something out with a threaded tank fitting and compression adaptor but if a single fitting exists that would do the job I think that would be better.

alcove cupboards?

Yes! This is the search term I need - too focused on the TV element.

styling...

Modern (or mid century)

avoid floating if

Noted

There are quick ways to make this kind of thing but making doors is the tricky bit if you want anything at all fancy.

Go on.

probably thought of this

Have not really thought about it at all, beyond measurements and wonding if I can dismantle and cut 2cm off the width of a g-plan side board.

I'll check out ikea. I'd much rather mod something and decorate that doing it from scratch.

It’s more about the fixings into the walls really. 2x1 isn’t going to crumble, that’s what I’d use, just got to make sure it’s properly secured and not on a single skin of plasterboard.

Posting here as I know there are a few people who know about electrical stuff.

My mum has an e-bike the she stores and charges in an outdoor shelter. She's having problems with corrosion - she's had to replace the kickstand twice in two years and just had the spokes on her front wheel replaced.

I brushed my leg against the bike whilst it was charging the other day and noticed a buzz from the pedal. My dad brought out his multimeter and measured a 160V potential between the bike and ground whilst charging.

What would be the best, or most practical way of reducing the electrical potential between the charging bike and the ground in order to reduce the speed at which the bike is corroded to dust?
We could add a large rubber mat to try and isolate everything, or some kind of grounding wire attached to the frame? Or are we barking up the wrong tree?

ikea besta 2x600 wide units

Do you have experience of Ikea Besta stuff?

Basically can I take this triple and remove one unit easily, or will it be a hassle, and I should hold out for a double?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/IKEA-BESTA-Storage-Shelf-unit-combination-with-doors-and-glass-top-panel-/204297954642

I mean, there categorically shouldn’t be 160v to earth on the frame. Contact manufacturer rather than try and solve the problem.

Cheers buddy. That’s the third expert opinion, I should prob listen.
I’ve got the studs marked out so fixing should be all good.

The triples are a double and a single. Hence the measurements showing a 120 and a 60.

If you have a flat sheet of MDF for the door, 15mm minimum for the hinges and use a kitchen style cabinet hinge your biggest problem is choosing the right spec of hinge and drilling a big hole in the back of the door. So maybe some tooling costs if you don't already have a drill bit for that job.

I would avoid a flat mdf door if you want to fix a hinge into the edge, they usually pull out again as MDF is not designed to be fixed in like that.

So then you might decide to have inset doors with normal hinges and that means stiles and rails with a panel. This is where your joinery techniques will be challenged producing a flat/square frame with an inset panel.

Since you want a modern style you will probably avoid this anyway and use an overlaid door, make a square mdf box as large as you can fit in the alcove , place it on a frame which is levelled off the floor, fix to the walls and add the doors (overlaid), then add a top to stand the TV on.

Look in charity furniture shops for a cheap rectangular dining table for the top. Ply with teak face and edgings are normally dirt cheap as long as it’s square faced nobody’s going to want it. (A curved nice mid century one on the other hand £££) Hell if you can find a big one you could make the whole carcass out of it and add some sliding doors in a lighter ply to finish it off.

Cheers. This is really helpful.

Having looked more at the Ikea Besta units, I think I'm going to modify a 2md hand double unit. Creating a 'square' box + material will probably be more time consuming and expensive than it's worth - especially thinking about the faff of the internal finishing.

So my current thinking is use a Besta as a carcass and depding on what I get hold of...

• a new top
  
• new doors
  
• modified 'rear interior' as the units of some are shorter than my 474mm max available depth
  
  

All this needs to be cross checked with my OH though.

Here’s my last effort at an alcove cupboards with shelves over. It was all MDF with a pine frame to mount the doors to.

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Cheers. I quite like those exposed hinges. But will see what the consensus is. I guess concealed hinges are easier to adjust to get straight.

Trying to get information like that from Bosch is like drawing blood from a stone.

You can get the double sided compression joints, in fact our secondhand water butts were joined top and bottom with them when I got them. I swapped this for a simple purpose made hose, as you said, so the pressure is at least half decent in one.

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Tbh they were a pain to get level on all planes, but it’s what Liz wanted so.
The best advice I was given about built in furniture is to build the biggest box you can fit in the gap and then add closing panels etc to fill the gaps. Don’t build a box to match the hole. And when filling said gaps cut all the edges of the filler pieces that touch the walls at a 45* angle so that it’s easier to trim and then sand to get a perfect fit.

Take it back to wherever it was bought from, it’s categorically in fault condition.

Are there standards for how floating a voltage can be for a home appliance?