mybigadventures.com

February half term has arrived at last! We finally settled on a mini break in Edinburgh so headed up here yesterday on the train. We had looked at flights but they were quite a bit more expensive and were either really early or quite late in the day. Either way the difference in travelling time wasn't huge by the time you factor in transfers to and from the airport. We bought the two travel together railcard as it saved quite a lot on the journey and four and a half hours later we're here! We're stopping in the Hilton close to the station and just a hop skip and jump away from the royal mile. It was a bit rainy when we arrived yesterday so we had a little sloth in the room before getting some dinner at Pizza Express. After dinner we had a little wander to get our bearings before calling it a night. Hopefully the weather will pick up a bit of the next few days. We haven't got anything special planned for today, but are visiting Hollyrood house tomorrow and Edinburgh castle on Wednesday. Here's hoping for some sunshine! 

We had another busy day today on the storage project. We started off early at B&Q again getting some more wood cut. We had MDF cut for the doors and also some MDF sheets to make a shelf across the sop of the units. The shelf had been a last minute addition to the project, it had the benefit of adding a new place for the many books we have, and the added benefit of bringing the height of the sides down to a point where we could fit 4 to a sheet.

After a productive morning at B&Q, we set to work. We made ourself a jig to help us with cutting the holes for the hinges. It's the first time we've used cabinet hinges in one of our projects and we were a bit anxious about getting it right. We started by making a demo up on some MDF offcuts and then when we were happy with it, we turned the demo into a jig. With the template in place, we got the hinge sockets drilled quickly and then spent the rest of the day getting these fitted onto the units. Although the whole unit has to come apart again for painting, we wanted to check and see the doors would all fit as planned and get the holes in place, so we don't have to ruin any painted surfaces later. 

The hinges ended up being so much simpler than we had anticipated and by the time we had finished the day, all doors were in place, perfectly aligned and part of the shelf was measured up.   

Today we made a start on the shelves inside the new cupboards. The shelf supports we bought from Screwfix are the same sort that you use inside kitchen cabinets and are designed to be adjustable. I liked the idea of being able to set the shelves at different heights so in order to drill the holes inside the cupboard we made another jig out of some spare wood. Once complete we set about drilling the shelf holes.

This worked really well, and in no time we had holes drilled in all four cupboards. 

Now it was time to start painting. We stopped by Screwfix again to buy undercoat paint for all of the MDF, then took the doors off the units and got started. Dani made a start with the white emulsion, painting the ceiling, whilst I made a start undercoating the doors. The doors took two coats of undercoat on each side and with 8 doors to paint for this unit alone, it was looking like a big job.