Keeping Busy

Jan said to me, “We have room in the laundry.  Do you think you could make some storage shelves?”  I replied, “Shelves aren’t difficult.  But would cupboards be a better option?”

So it was to be cupboards!   Whilst pricing the required materials for the task I noticed the local hardware had a ‘run out’ discount on some 1000mm long two door cupboards in white melamine.  I couldn’t buy the materials for the discounted price of the kitset cupboards.  It took some hunting to find them in the store.  Only three packs left and they were all looking rather battered.  I purchased the best two packs hoping the content were not damaged.

By the time I’d managed to get the packs into my man cave the contents were starting to fall out.

Each pack contained one internal shelf which would be fixed in the middle position.   That seemed rather inflexible.  Jan would probably have jars and other storage containers of varying heights.  She might require more than one shelf. 

I decided to modify the kits to allow adjustable and multiple shelves by drilling rows of vertical holes in the side panels.   To ensure the holes all lined up I made a template from ‘stuff you might need one day’.  The template would then be clamped to each of the four side panels  

The melamine panels are 16mm thick and the holes needed to be 12mm deep as they would need to go through the 4mm thick template and 8mm into the melamine.  If I accidentally went too deep I’d drill through the panel.  To avoid this I made a block that fitted onto the drill bit. 

 

Then I drill two parallel series of holes in all four side panels.

Assembling the kits was relatively easy.  The difficult part was mounting them on the wall.   Too low and banging your head on them was a risk.  Too high and they would be hard to reach.  Once Jan had decided on the height I made two temporary stands from scrap timber to rest the cupboard on and level it.  Once it was level I drilled pilot holes in the back panel to mark where the anchor points on the wall would be located.  The cupboard was removed and the anchor plugs set into the wall.  The cupboard was placed back on the stands and fixed to the wall with screws.  When both cupboards were secured to the wall I fitted and adjusted the doors before adding the internal shelves.

There is a simple principle involved with these cupboards.  “Stuff expands to meet the available space!”   Living on a narrowboat meant the available space couldn’t be expanded and we learned to not accumulate “stuff”.  A house is a different matter.

Bridgetown Trip

I participated in the WD Club trip to Bridgetown this weekend.   Seven member of the club met at a quiet public reserve approximately 20km SE of Bridgetown.  The distance from Perth is about 280km  and took me 3½ hours towing the trailer.

An appointment on Friday morning meant I didn’t depart until 11AM and was the last to arrive at the reserve.  Apart from some slow and heavy traffic on the southern freeway (motorway) it was an easy drive.

The reserve was on the banks of the Blackwood River whose source is hundreds of kilometres further inland.

  

It was a very pleasant location, apart from the ‘March Flies’ who are large, hard to kill and have a bite so strong they can draw blood.

On Saturday morning the Trip Organiser led us on a convoy drive around the local native forests staying mostly on unsealed roads.   Much of this area used to be covered in native Jarrah trees.  A very hard wood.   Over the last 150 years most of it has been logged and I read somewhere that many of the stately homes in London have (had?) Jarrah floorboards.   The land has been left cleared as farmland or replanted with other species of native trees.  I noticed several plantations of Blue Gum.

We had a late mid morning rest stop beside a river where the bridge was a reinforced Bailey Bridge.

The original Double Single Bailey Bridge had been raised and additional large steel H beams added to increase the load carrying capacity.

The day trip took us back to Bridgetown for our last stop.

It’s an attractive town

Art Deco style Town Hall and council chambers

 

Sunday morning I packed up the trailer before saying my goodbye’s to those club members staying and headed home.

Upon reaching home I realised I’d dogged a bullet when I saw the state of the TREG Block trailer hitch.  The poly block had split in half.  I doubt the trailer would have separated from the vehicle as the vertical coupler pin is situated behind the horizontal hinge pin.   Bit it would have been very noisy if the poly block had dropped out.   I probably shouldn’t be surprised as it’s a cheap Chinese articulated coupler.