Cupboard update...

First of all, let me tell you what my husband thought of the lamp makeover when he came home on Sunday. He said the stripes and the emblem reminded him of a SPORTS LOGO!

Yes. He thinks the stripes are a bit NIKE. He wouldn't know a grain sack if I threw one over his head and throttled him with it.

My daughter is hurt that her initials are not included.

Everyone's a critic. Luckily I'm still happy with it despite the whingeing.

Okay, so onto the cupboard doors...

I took off all the posters. It looked better already.

The door was a nightmare to get off. The hinge screws had been painted over many times. It was one of those doors that once all the screws are taken out, will stand there quite nicely held in place by paint alone. All our doors seem to be like this.

I had a slight change of plan. The problem with sticking cladding all over what is essentially a hollow door,

 is that the hinges, which are face mounted, are screwed into nothing. So it's not going to be very strong.

I decided to pull off the face of the door to uncover the skeleton inside. This means I can add beefier horizontal pieces of timber inside the door where my long hinges will be placed and the whole thing won't fall apart.

This was very therapeutic!

So now the whole front panel was off but that panel actually sat in a slight recess. All around the edges of the door was a little lip...

It looks big here, it was actually only 2mm deep. It's the white part in the photo.

I needed to remove this so that the cladding laid flat on the inner framework of the door. As I don't have a plane I used my belt sander and it only took a matter of minutes to level it all up.

I left the back panel in place for now. If I took that off the door would probably lose its rigidity and bend out of shape. Those central bits of timber seem to be just glued to the hardboard panel and nothing else so if I took the back panel off, I think they'd all fall out.

Time to clad!

I'd already figured out that I needed to start in the middle and end up with two thinner boards at the sides of the doors... you don't want to start at one side without planning where your boards will end up. You might have a full board at one side and a piddling little strip at the other side which won't look right.

 In order to get the first board in the right place I had to mark the middle of the top and bottom of the door, and the middle of the back of the  board (not including the tongue) and having glued the door front and turned it all upside down, just made sure the lines met up.

Then I placed lots of heavy things on the door and left it overnight for the glue to dry. I couldn't flip it over to panel pin it as the board would have moved.

So, day two...

I panel pinned the first board and carried on with the cladding...

I glued where I could and panel pinned into the inside frame.

As you can see, I've left all the edges overhanging rather than pre cutting the boards to size. I'll cut them all level afterwards. This makes the job easier as I'm not having to line up the boards as I go and it should make the end result straighter.

One side done!
 
I don't know if I'm doing this right but it seems to be working so far. My dad has been consulted over the phone several times! Not that he's done this before either...

I'm really enjoying it and I've decided I want to be a carpenter when I grow up.

I have added incentive not to stuff this up. If this cupboard makeover works out, I might be allowed to build an entire walk in wardrobe in the master bedroom. Ha! I have no skills in carpentry whatsoever, but I do know what I want it to look like so I reckon I can wing the rest. And I do NOT want to get a man in to do it! I don't want some laminated chipboard jobby.

I'm off to invest in a jig saw later so I can continue...

In the meantime, there's a huge pile of ironing and a box set of Breaking Bad to keep me occupied. Back soon!