Before:
After:
And why did this take me nearly a whole week?
There are eighteen doors (and three drawers) which require eight steps (six for the drawers):
- remove door and knob,
- spray with degreaser, scrape off gunk, wash with soapy water and leave to dry,
- first coat all over with 1 part paint to 19 parts thinners to seal the surface a bit,
- drill additional holes for handles and counter-sink on the back (bolts were a bit too short),
- proper second coat on front,
- proper second coat on back,
- proper third coat on front,
- fit handles, re-fit door, faff about with hinges.
Including sticking up dust sheets so that I had somewhere to rest them while they dried, several trips to Screwfix, tea and fag breaks, and replacing two sets of hinges* which were completely knackered, it works out at about 1.5 hours per door and 1 hour per drawer, that's basically a full week's work.
* The new design Häfele hinges (£4.29 per pair) are brilliant. Once you've screwed the back plate to the side and popped the door on, you can adjust them for left/right and forward/backward (as on the previous design) but the new design has a third grub screw for up/down as well.
Friday, 19 June 2020
... and we're finished!
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12 comments:
I was quite good at estimating timescales for software development, but woefully bad at estimating timescales for diy.
Nice result though.
MIM, I didn't pre-estimate, I knew it would be about week of grim-ness. Once finished, I had to justify to myself why it had taken me so long, and 1.5 hours per door doesn't sound so bad.
And thanks!
Looks really good. I never did understand the attraction of dark wood.
J, I know. Start with some new pale wood, coat of varnish, lovely. Why paint it a darker colour than it was to start with? I couldn't sand them back because the design is really fiddly. And also thanks.
Does look better than the brown.
Din, ta. Usually, the obvious ideas are the correct ones.
Looks great, totally transforms the space.
S, thanks. it does - the units now look bigger, but further away. Strange.
At the risk of sounding sexist, women should do one big DIY job at the beginning of any marriage. That way they find out a) its never straightforward b) takes time/skill if you want a reasonable job.
Otherwise they think the show 60 Minute Makeover is a realistic benchmark.
BTW, fairly heroic with a paintbrush. I'd have waited for a spell of good weather and set up a spray booth in the back garden.
B, that's not sexist, that's a very sensible idea. Men should also cook one big meal and put one load of laundry through at the beginning for the same reasons.
As to spray booth, sure, that would have reduced 'painting' time by half, but I'd have had one day's faff getting marquee and spray gun and setting up some hooks or racks for them to dry; and then another day's faff dismantling and returning marquee and spray gun etc. So no overall time saying.
It's just as sexist for women to expect men to do all the DIY as it is for men to expect women to do all the housework and childrearing.
B, but as Theresa May said, there are girl jobs and boy jobs (which is why her husband takes out the bins).
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