Utility Room Appliance Unit
Next job was back in the utility room, get that unit finished, to make a frame that would take the appliances, boiler and Belfast sink…
The Belfast sink had been acquired through eBay, I’d bought it just after I had had a terrible time with some back problems. Back then I remember was my first full on run-in with middle age, I recall when I had first bought the house I had had some back twinges that had been brought on by my lumberjack activities, this had prompted me to buy a back brace but this was nothing as serious as it had been last summer. Basically I used to play a game with my little girl to get her to go to bed, what I’d do is pretend to be a robot and I’d pick her up and throw her onto the bed a few times, well one time things had all gone wrong and the next day I’d been unable to walk upright and had assumed a rather bend and pained individual.
Anyway I digress but there is reason in my madness as I was heading up to Ikea and picking up the Belfast sink on the way just after this back problem had abated. Turns out that no-one had told me that Belfast sinks are heavier than a small sun, they weigh a metric tonne. I turned up as arranged for the sink and at the address agreed I knocked on the door – no answer – tapped on the window, no answer, however, I did notice a man hiding in his dressing gown who now realised I’d seen him. I continued to tap and he opened the door. It turned out that his partner had advertised the sink and had gone out to walk her dogs and as he was in his jim-jams he didn’t seem inclined to make the sale… and to give me a hand with the sink. On payment, he gestured to the sink, which looked nice, and as per description but was a bit wet having been relegated to a garden nook.
Being a bloke in a bloke’s presence, I didn’t flinch when I realised just how much it weighed and struggled to my feet with as much grace as possible and walked in an ungainly fashion across a busy road ignoring speeding traffic to get to my parked car as quickly as I could. At that point, the rather apologetic partner appeared with her dogs to explain she’d have helped out should she have been on duty. I tried to look as little distraught as I could, tried to put some sentences together without having a coughing fit and left with as much pride intact as it was possible to do without passing out at the same time. Ikea was not so comfortable but at least I had not completely bandied my back again.
Anyway getting back to the cabinet.
The frame took a few goes to get right, sizing up the washer and dryer and getting the horizontals horizontal and the verticals vertical took a couple of attempts but it all worked well in the end. I did have to rehash the corner of the frame as I’m a bit of a perfectionist and it just didn’t hang right in its original configuration.
Making the Belfast sink section took some work too as I had to make it support the weight of a small elephant but again it all went to plan and upon presenting the sink to the frame it all fell into place. Dropping the washer and dryer in was just as successful but upon trying, the washer out I got an error message, which required the removal of the washer to rectify. In fact after much gnashing of teeth and taking apart of the washer it turned out that one of the new pipes joined to the washer had been blocked with a blanking plug and had unwantedly caused the error lights.
Once everything was in place I was ready to fit the worktop, I was going to use mixed lengths of reclaimed floorboard and the solution to this was to pin it down to some plywood. So in an effort not to make it any higher – it was getting rather tall – I sunk the plywood into the frames on top of the worktop, this took some time but saved on a centimetre of height or two.
All this had been going on while I was simultaneously fitting power to the room, I’ll get to that later. But once the worktop had been fitted it was just a matter of painting up some trim:
Then fitting it to the front of the cabinets.