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Pretending I'm butch enough for DIY
12 Aug 2023 02:53 pmYou may recall that we recently received some new furniture, including an IKEA KALLAX shelving unit. Well, I set it up, and it was looking a little messy:
So I got a bright idea in my head and, over the past couple of weeks, I built little doors to hide some of the shelves. No, of course I've never made cabinet doors before.
Of course, you can buy doors for the KALLAX. IKEA sells official doors (although this is more of an insert that closes off the back of the box as well, which wouldn't have worked for one of the shelves I wanted to hide, which needs to have cords going out the back) and you can also buy decorative doors on Etsy and other places that were made by people who know what they're doing. But I didn't want just any doors; I wanted the doors to include built-in corkboards to display enamel pins. And nobody appears to be making these. So I made them myself:
In the process of making them myself, I did figure out why nobody seems to be making them. Even with everything I did to keep the weight down (the backing is made of hardboard, which is a very light-weight pressed board sort of material) these do weigh more than the decorative doors people sell on Etsy, and I realized they needed real serious cabinet hinges. That was the most intimidating part of the project, because it came at the very end, I've never installed cabinet hinges before, and I had no idea if I could do it right. But they work! Here's one of the doors open:
I don't intend to write up any kind of tutorial, because I have no idea if I did any of this correctly and frankly I'm not sure that I recommend anyone else do this - the thick outside parts of the KALLAX that these hinges are attached to are actually hollow, so these screws are really only held in place by, I think, about 1/4" of MDF or something similar. I won't be surprised if they eventually rip out from careless use or just from wear over time. But I'm happy with the results anyway.
Monthly words to date (August): 3,889
Annual words to date (2023): 290,003
Dinner tonight is: spaghetti with home-made meatballs, because I made a fresh batch of meatballs to freeze!
So I got a bright idea in my head and, over the past couple of weeks, I built little doors to hide some of the shelves. No, of course I've never made cabinet doors before.
Of course, you can buy doors for the KALLAX. IKEA sells official doors (although this is more of an insert that closes off the back of the box as well, which wouldn't have worked for one of the shelves I wanted to hide, which needs to have cords going out the back) and you can also buy decorative doors on Etsy and other places that were made by people who know what they're doing. But I didn't want just any doors; I wanted the doors to include built-in corkboards to display enamel pins. And nobody appears to be making these. So I made them myself:
In the process of making them myself, I did figure out why nobody seems to be making them. Even with everything I did to keep the weight down (the backing is made of hardboard, which is a very light-weight pressed board sort of material) these do weigh more than the decorative doors people sell on Etsy, and I realized they needed real serious cabinet hinges. That was the most intimidating part of the project, because it came at the very end, I've never installed cabinet hinges before, and I had no idea if I could do it right. But they work! Here's one of the doors open:
I don't intend to write up any kind of tutorial, because I have no idea if I did any of this correctly and frankly I'm not sure that I recommend anyone else do this - the thick outside parts of the KALLAX that these hinges are attached to are actually hollow, so these screws are really only held in place by, I think, about 1/4" of MDF or something similar. I won't be surprised if they eventually rip out from careless use or just from wear over time. But I'm happy with the results anyway.
Monthly words to date (August): 3,889
Annual words to date (2023): 290,003
Dinner tonight is: spaghetti with home-made meatballs, because I made a fresh batch of meatballs to freeze!