Man cave: Day 17

Today we had carpenters (Mase and Callum) working on the bench and shelves and so on.

I designed this all with a 3D model and had taped it all out on the bare walls before painting, so had a very clear idea where everything was going.

One wall is work bench, 4.75m long, 616mm deep, 40mm thick, solid oak. We got some serious worktop brackets that are meant to hold 400kg per pair.

Above the bench is a floating shelf 4.75m long, 308mm deep, 40mm thick, solid oak. This was more of a challenge. There are some nice floating shelf brackets which are designed to fit within the shelf and be invisible, the fixing is two screws (left and right) of a rod that goes in to the shelf. It is hard to see how there is any leverage to hold a shelf at all like that. The spec is about 25kg which is not a lot. However, because the back of the fixing is less than the thickness of plaster board we were able to fit these vertically, fixed direct to the stud work, which actually provides some leverage to hold a shelf and will make it massively stronger. We then used 9 of these to hold up the shelf. The end result is a shelf that I can hang from! The decorator needs to fill in a few bits of plasterboard.

It was quite fun with the laser level - using a washer to adjust the level, it was possible to get shelf very level indeed. I was quite surprised - you can see from this shot that the laser is visible on the front edge of the shelf and the back on the wall, so the shelf is level to the thickness of the laser!

Even so, with a heavy box the front edge does drop a millimetre or two, which is not surprising.

So, I want to get the decorator working on staining and oiling the worktop as soon as possible, as the process takes several days - so the sooner we start the sooner I can actually start using it.

Tomorrow should make progress on the bar and sink, and maybe some of the other shelves. Hopefully by Monday we can have the fiddly bits of skirting board and door stop and so on sorted. Still need lots of decorating work and external window and door. But next week should be a lot less happening until air-con installed on the Friday. I can really see the end of the tunnel now.

I did have some fun yesterday though - I have been watching a lot of NCIS, and so I cut some letters to go on the wall :-)