Alcove Furniture WIP (install)

Cont’d as part of Week 3 … The cabinetry is transported and fitted over two days.

Day One (left alcove)
The left alcove is prepared. Wall batterns are levelled and fixed to height to support the media cabinet top and upper book casing.

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Alcove Furniture WIP (Week 3)

Cont’d from Week 1 and Week 2 …

The last part of the workshop process is the finishing. It is very important to put the preparation in before applying the finish. This involves scraping off excess glue, sanding out any saw marks, pencil lines, scratches and steaming out any knocks before keying or prepping the surfaces through the sand paper grits to a 180/240 grit finish.

Here we can be seen the MDF face frame components and the two beech frames (behind) being prepped. I like to apply two coats of WB (water based) acrylic primer one after the other and allow to dry overnight so the MDF edges go nice and hard. The primer is knocked back flat with 240 grit on the faces and 180 grit on the MDF cut edges. I am often asked how best to seal the MDF edges. The important thing is to harden them off so that when rubbed back you stop that perpetual fluffing or flowering of the surface. There are many ways to do this… wallpaper boarder adhesive, PVA, shellac sanding sealer, polyurethane varnish, acrylic varnish, wood stopping fillers… It’s all about binding those fibers so you can knock off the nibs (denib) to leave a smooth edge.

Alcove Furniture WIP (Week 2)

Cont’d from Week 1…

Once cleaned up the Beech doors are hung and the rebates are measured for the toughened 4mm glass and ordered along with the 6mm toughened, polished edge shelves. These will take a few days to be manufactured and BS stamped at the glass factory.

With the doors in place the locks are marked out and fitted.

Alcove Furniture WIP (Week 1)

This post is going to follow the WIP (work in progress) of a built-in alcove project from the drawings to installation and completion.

Once reaching stage three of the Commissioning Process I can place an order for the timber, sheet stock, hardware and finishing materials. First to arrive is the sheet stock. 4 Oak veneered and 4 MDf standard.