DIY Modular Shelving with Prelaminated Boards

We all live in a house. Most of the homes (rented or owned) have a built in kitchen, wardrobes in bedrooms. But we still need that extra flexibility with storage. Our requirements change over time and the built-in furniture may not be the best solution for places like kids room, guest room and living room, as we go thru the journey of our lives.

Modular furniture provides us with the flexibility that we seek in these areas. This can be made easily in either a workshop or by yourself (i.e. DIY way), @ home, with some basic power tools (circular saw and a drill machine).

I did this project with a pre-laminated plywood available with a local plywood vendor. The colour choices available with this material are limited. You can also buy your own plywood and laminate it yourself on both sides to get a custom made pre-laminated board with your choice of laminates and same/two colour options. I chose plywood since it gives better life and strength over pre-laminated MDF boards.

Advantages of using ready/home made pre-laminated boards
- Faster than pasting laminate after assembly
- Reuse material at a later date
- Easy to transport

I started my project with a 4ft x 4 ft pre-laminated plywood and cut it into 3 nos 4' x1' s and 2 nos 2' x1' s. Used a Bosch GKS 190 Circular saw to rip the sheet to smaller pieces and a Bosch GTS10J table saw to get the edges to be parallel to each other. Using a table saw for ripping sheets is not convenient if you don't have infeed/outfeed tables for the table saw.





For assembly, 2 barrel nut-bolts are used for each join. 12 such nut-bolts are needed for the project.
Optional grooves can be made for lower shelves (and the top shelves as well) on the side pieces. This will transfer the weight of the shelves directly to the sides, with minimum stress on the connecting nuts and bolts. I skipped this step since I wanted flexibility of changing the shelf height at a later date. The grooves can be made with a palm router or a table saw.

The joins are done with Barrel Nuts and bolts.

 

To drill holes for the barrel nuts and bolts, make a jig based on the dimensions of your bolts. More on alignment of these bolts at the below blog. http://www.finewoodworking.com/how-to/articles/two-techniques-for-bed-bolt-alignment.aspx?id=125683

Finish the project by sealing the edges with an edge binding tape.

Material:

• White Pre-laminated 4x4 plywood sheets (19mm) : 1 Nos
• White edge-banding PVC Tape : 20 ft
• Fevicol PVCFix 500gm dispenser
• Barrel Nuts and Bolts : 16 Nos (available at Saleh Sons on SP Road, Bangalore)
• Drill bits as required for the barrel nuts and bolts
• 3" C Clamps : 2 Nos

Power Tools:

• Bosch Circular Saw GKS190
• Bosch Table Saw GTS 10 J
• Bosch GSB 500 RE Drill Gun Or Skil Cordless Drill Driver 2412 
• Bosch GSR Prodrive
• Skil Palm Router 1825 (Optional)

DIY Modular Oven Cabinet

Bosch Home Appliances recently added a built-in microwave to their appliance line-up. And then there was a newer version of the convection oven launched as well. One of these German beauties was sitting on a carton box and the other was getting bored in the warehouse.

I wanted to tryout a knock-down furniture piece with Mini-Fix fixtures and pre-laminated plywood. Pre-laminated boards, cuts down the build time drastically. The project is easy to knock down and it is easy to reuse the material for a different project very easily.

On the other hand, the fixtures are not very robust and can break during repeated assembly/disassembly.  They can carry a limited of load and will need some additional design considerations for heavy load. The fixtures are not expensive, @ Rs 7 per set, buy additional sets when you get the hardware to replace the broken ones.

There are some vendors who will also paste your choice of laminate on to your choice of board and make pre-laminated boards to your requirement. Getting them to transport it to your place for a single piece would not be cost effective. Alternatively, you can buy the laminates and plywood separately and laminate the boards yourself, 1 day prior to starting the main work.

The first day was a long one. It started with cutting the side panels and making a jig for drilling the holes for mini-fix cam and dowels. Next, we drilled all the holes on the side walls and inserted the nylon inserts to hold the pins in place. The jig, which was made earlier, was used to guide the drill and make holes


Bosch microwave weighs about 16 kg and the oven weighs 35 kg. For carrying this load with the mini-fix setup, dados were made in the wall panels where the ovens were to be placed. Mini-fix dowels were also placed in the dado groove. Dados would carry the main load and the mini-fixes would hold the structure in place. These shelves were wider than the other shelves to account for the dado depth. Dados were routed with a Skil 1825 Palm Router, using the jig as guide.

Holes for the cam were made on shelves with the same jig. 3 sets of mini-fixes were used for each shelf joint. After all the holes were done and the mini-fix dowels attached, each panel and mini-fix was tested individually ("unit testing") to get a good fit. Same process was repeated for the other side. The complete assembly was put together for an "integration testing".

10 mm plywood was screwed on the back side. The back panel prevented the structure from swaying sideways and provided rigidity. It took about 10 hrs of work to get to this point.

On second day, all the exposed edges were covered with white PVC edges for edge binding. Fevicol PVCFix adhesive, which came in a handy dispenser tube, was used to bind the PVC strip on the edges. Overhanging PVC Strips were removed with a sharp chisel.

Panels for the doors and drawers were also edge-bound. Hettich fittings were used for doors and drawers. Teak beading was pasted on the edges resting on the floor. Footboard installation is still to be done.

Material:

• White Pre-laminated 8x4 plywood sheets (19mm) : 2 Nos
• White edge-banding PVC Tape : 40 ft
• Fevicol PVCFix 500gm dispenser
• Plywood 8x4 (10 mm) : 1 No
• Mini-fix sets : 50 Nos
• Side-on hinges : 1 No
• Drawer slider : 1 No
• 1" Screws : 100 Nos
• 3" C Clamps : 2 Nos
• Drill bits and Forstner Bits for Mini-fix

Power Tools:

• Bosch GSB 500 RE Drill Gun
• Skil Cordless Drill Driver 2412
• Bosch Circular Saw GKS190
• Skil Palm Router 1825
• Bosch GSR Prodrive

SOS Kitchen Repair

I got a frantic call from my friend, his Kitchen platform was falling down. He shared the pics of his kitchen.

Site visit confirmed my doubts that there was some issue with the foundation of the frame. The kitchen carcass was made with MDF and the top weight was not getting transferred to the ground. 

Vertical planks of the frame were fixed to horizontal planks with a wooden dowel. Adjustable leg supports were placed under the horizontal planks. The entire load (of the kitchen cabinet, its contents and the granite top) was getting transferred to bottom plank thru the dowel pins. The dowels tore thru the plank and the kitchen just collapsed. 

Some ways which could have prevented this outcome when the project was executed:

• adjustable legs should have been placed below the vertical members, so that they could have transferred the load directly.
• the whole assembly could have been placed on a plywood base to give it more strength

We decided to make a plywood base and discard the existing bottom. Plywood would be able to take the load of the complete kitchen. Blockboard strips would be pasted to the base, exactly below the vertical members.

Material : 

• 22" wide stripts cut from a 19mm thick marine ply
• 2.5" Blockboard Strips to support the plywood platform
• Fevicol
• 2" screws
• Bosch GSB 500 drill kit
• Bosch GDC 34-M Cutter 

We marked the places where vertical planks were present and pasted the plywood strips under the plywood base. After assembling the base, we assembled the top boxes of the modular kitchen cabinet on top of the base and slid it in place. This was followed by replacing the top plywood and granite top.

It took us about 3 hrs to get the main structure in place. Finished structure looked as below.

We called in the professionals for gas plumbing and re-fixing the hob.  Doors and drawers would be installed after cleaning the structure and doing pest control.  That would be another 2-3 hrs of work with a screwdriver.