Cabinet Reshuffle

This weekend I finally, totally and completely finished the rear cabinet.  Honest.   Back on the 15th January this year I first started to plan and design my rear cabinet and bit by bit I've built, adjusted, improved and tweaked the design and build till I am where I am today.  

When we last saw the cabinet it was "finished" but I still wanted to cover it with a wood effect veneer.   I'm a big fan of oak furniture and my local B&Q had some fablon in light oak which looked a good colour to me, so I snapped up a few rolls.  After reading about Darran's self built kitchen pod I realised I had to also pick up some MDF primer as apparently fablon doesn't stick to bare MDF as the wood soaks up all the glue.

So I got home this weekend and cracked straight on with priming the cabinet.   Not too difficult with suitable application of masking tape and an old curtain to shield the floor.  Only took a couple of hours including drying time.

Then it was on to the fun stuff - applying the fablon.  Mrs Blakey is a bit of a wallpaper whiz so I have to admit I let her do most of the tricky stuff. 

We did it all properly - taking all the speakers out, the coat hooks off, and the power sockets unscrewed so we could get all the fablon underneath all these bits.

This fablon covering means that the cabinet now looks more like a real wood box than a plywood box, plus it covers up all the screw heads that were showing, and on the sides where we had two pieces of ply and a miniture gap between them it now looks like one consistent bit of wood.   I'm really pleased with the final results.

So is Mrs Blakey.

Whilst I was there I took the chance to reshuffle the interior of the cabinet as well.   I took the mains charger out of its spot in the top cabinet and moved it into the bottom section where I bungeed it in place against the wheel arch.  It's not neat in there particularly but it is out of the way and stored with all the other electricals.  Additionally we can now easily read the charge reading on the battery and have easy access to the on/off switch.    Also into the lower cabinet I moved the AC/DC transformer we picked up.  This means we can now run the 12v fridge off this 240 power source when parked up on a mains hook up or run it off the 12v battery when we have no such luxury.

Moving the charger 'downstairs' freed up a space that was begging for use so I have put the 12v kettle and tea/coffee stuff in there for now.  

Whilst I was at it I got some fablon sticky shelf stuff and added it to the removable shelf. Oh and I also cut the shelf out of MDF to replace the plywood version we had in there earlier - simply to make it a little more strong.

All in all I am chuffed to pieces with the cabinet.  It looks good, does all the things I wanted it to when I first designed it, and its all built and designed by me (with a little help from my friends!).  Very pleased!