Paltrabinet; Part 1

So we're working on the Paltrabinet in two sections, just like a Welsh Dresser. So far in two days we've nearly completed the base of the unit - and I say we because I can't take all the credit for this one, it's been a joint effort with help from Jim, my partner in crime, and our friend Hovis.

Day 1

Starting the thing was a bit of a spontaneous decision, as are most of our adventures. One of us normally says hey, why don't we do this? And the next thing we know we're doing it, usually without much planning. But I like it that way. Planning is all well and good but there's only so much you can plan for, and sometimes it's better to just jump straight in, or if not better at least it's character building! Maybe we wouldn't have been so gung-ho if we weren't after that rustic look and the wood wasn't so free!

So the plans (which we deliberated over for a good 15 minutes) went a bit like this;

As you can see they're not particularly detailed, but when you're working with reclaimed wood sometimes this is better. It gives you the freedom to work with what you have and to modify designs, styles or sizes as you go along to match what's available, rather than getting frustrated when all those crappy old nail holes in your free wood don't line up beautifully with that super modern LED strip lighting and the marble worktops you'd planned for.

So after the design stage we set about destroying some pallets. This is a mission in itself! Especially when you're after long lengths - for short lengths you can easily jigsaw bits off, but luckily we've honed our skills and now have  about a 75% success rate for keeping the timber intact.

And I'll tell you what, you don't half pull out a lot of nails from those things...

Oh and while we're on the subject of claw hammering, be careful with those cheap hammers kids! Cheap isn't always cheerful...

But on a nicer note this is one of the happy accidents that happened when we jigged off smaller lengths rather than prying off the whole plank from the frame... Ready made planters!

So we've done the designing (loosely speaking!) and we've broken down some pallets. Now we can get on with constructing the frame. The frame design was already tried and tested on a much smaller scale when Jim made a pallet bedside table last week (blog post coming soon)...

It turned out to be really really solid, so we took the basic concept and upscaled it...

Once we had two frame sections, one for the top and one for the base, we could start to add lengths to the sides...

 After the sides were timbered up we added a central section for stability, and to divide the inside into compartments.

Before we went any further we wanted to make sure we saved some of our best wood for the worktop surface. I'm not sure why we rushed to do this quite so early - we had pleeeeenty of pallets - but it gave us some piece of mind to know we'd chosen some nice sections and put them to one side.

The next step was to add some edge sections near the corners...

And then we fitted the wood which would act as a base.

After adding the base we wanted to get the shelves in. We decided to do half size shelves because I really wanted to build doors that had window box shelves on them, like a proper pantry, so we needed to leave space in the unit for these doors to close on fully without bashing into the shelves. The idea behind the main compartments was that we could have small baskets on the top shelves with our vegetables in, then other taller or stackable items could live underneath, on the base of the unit.

You'll be able to see in this picture above ^ that we also stuck on a kind of trim (this picture was taken before we cut down the trim - we left an overhang to allow for the rest of the panels and worktop to be added, then we cut it down flush once we knew where everything was coming up to). We added some more of this along the sides on day two of the build, and it really started to give the whole thing a more professional looking finish.

After the trim was on we finally got to add the top, and I'm not going to lie, we were all pretty excited about this part...

 
We called it a night after the top was on. We did all of the above in one solid day, knocked on the head at about 10pm. Bearing in mind we didn't start it till about 11am, having only decided to do it at 10:30am, I think we did pretty well! 

Day 2

So today we cracked on with the doors. I prepped some wood for these yesterday so that we could crack straight on with them today. Good job too because we got held up this morning when a lovely chap from Western Power came to change our service head at short notice, so we didn't really get going until lunch time.

The first thing we did was measure up and plan out the doors. One of our first pallet projects for the house was a new back gate (blog post to come!) which we only built a week ago, so I guess we had a bit of a practice in the door making department, albeit only one gate, but hey, it works!

I picked up these really nice gate hinges for £3.50 a pair from Dayman's, our favourite independent DIY store who is luckily just around the corner, and they sell literally everything.

Once we were happy with the doors...

...we started to think about the box shelves for the inside. After a bit of chinwagging I decided I'd quite like one big deep shelf on the left door, and two smaller shelves on the right door. The left would be big enough for tall or deep things like bottles of pop or loaves of bread, while the right side would be good for smaller things, like bottles of olive oil, soy sauce, salt and pepper. Although conveniently the lower shelf on the right door is also tall enough to fit wine bottles in, so that was a double win ;)

And it turned out the relaxed approach to blueprints wasn't such a disastrous idea after all - the door boxes fit perfectly into the main compartments without coming too close to the shelves inside. I'm not saying don't measure, you still need to measure! But measuring as you go seemed to work ok for us!

Finally before we called it a night on day 2, we decided to squish some clear drying PVA glue into the very small gaps in the worktop. We're fine with gaps, it gives the unit that rustic, shabby chic vibe and it's beautiful to see the uniqueness of all the wood. But the idea for this paltrabinet is that our coffee machine will also be sitting on it, so if there's going to be any hot water spillages we don't want it seeping down into the goodies below!

 
So we've PVA'd up and have left it to dry until the morning. Then I'm going to head out and fit some closers to the doors and start the mission of sanding down. That's when she's really going to come into her own. Finally we need to cut some holes in the doors (I think I'm going for 4-finger hole slots rather than handles), then I can start prepping my wood for the top section...

Why a Paltrabinet?!

Wow, what a couple of days... I wanted to post yesterday but this pallet destruction/reconstruction malarkey is exhausting!

So this idea started about a year ago when I first got the house and was daydreaming about kitchen possibilities. The bank wanted a pretty sizeable deposit off me, so by the time I actually moved in there was no money left and daydreaming was all that could happen - and when you see some of the pictures of the kitchen you'll understand how depressing that was! Having a nice bedroom and living room is one thing, but your kitchen is where so much happens and it's soooo difficult to refrain from spending money you don't have on making it functional and looking nice. And like every other renovation project, there's 100 other jobs that need to be done before you can even contemplate cabinets and paint colours.

The current kitchen is basically a freestanding jobby not designed to be a kitchen. It's badly made, has no doors, and looks like something from a garage workshop that someone's just dumped a cheap chipboard worktop on. And just to give you a taster for the kitchen, here's a sneak peak from an upcoming post which shows the only part of the kitchen that did have doors - the old sink unit (which had no floor underneath it, it was literally sat on soil when I pulled it out!!). In case you couldn't work it out, it's the hideous white thing next to the nice new unit we made out of old shelves from the front room...

So I was daydreaming away about modular solutions which a) I could build cheaply and b) could be moved when I came to doing the important stuff like electrics, flooring and plastering etc. I desperately wanted something with doors on to store plates and pans in, but especially food, food was the priority.

I'd seen some cool pantry cabinets (or pantrabinets as I like to call them) on Google. They were chunky freestanding units with the type of doors that have shelves in, so there's a whole bunch of storage in there. I liked the look of these but it would take a fair amount of wood to build, and wood's expensive so that idea quickly went on the back burner. As much as I wanted a build project like this, putting it to the back of my head wasn't entirely difficult because we were about to start replumbing the whole house, and that kind of DIY is pretty much all consuming. Unfortunately it was full of lead piping which isn't particularly good for you, and when the pennies are few health and safety always needs to be first on the priorities list (I'll tell you about that one in another post, it was the sort of adventure that saw us enjoying some rain in the kitchen, and there's videos to show the carnage!).

Anyway, fast forward about 10 months and I'm wandering around a beautiful antique furniture store up in Sheffield with my father in law. I saw some amazing Welsh Dressers and changed my mind completely. By this point I'd done a lot of projects in the house, and sometimes we all have a dark moment where we think to ourselves 'I should just buy something, it'll be easier'.

Luckily I didn't have the cash(!) so that idea didn't last long, and a couple of months later here we are, right in the middle of my pallet adventures. I had no idea where the pallets would take me when I first got my hands on them, but I'm so glad they've bought me here!

So the decision was made; I'd make a Welsh Dresser style pantrabinet out of upcycled pallets, and it would be known as the Paltrabinet! And that would be the start of my pallet kitchen challenge.

The ultimate goal is to build all the kitchen units out of free pallets. We've already made a pretty stunning belfast sink unit for the bay window from old shelving in the front room, so I'm really excited to think we could have a whole new upcycled kitchen made from beautiful reclaimed wood, without spending a penny...

Little bits of history

So before there were pallets, there was just the house. Getting the house is a whole other post in itself, so we'll leave that for another time... Now I might be bias, but I think this place is pretty special. It's a three storey, four bedroom (well, now it's a three bedroom but we'll get to that later...) Victorian terrace with original sash windows, fireplaces, quarry tiled hallway, wooden floors and staircase, built in 1902 - and we're only the third owners, if you can believe that!

The last owner was kind enough to send me the coolest little package of history that he'd had stowed away. He was also looking to restore the place, but plans change and in the end it sat here with tenants in for a few years, and not much work being done.

Amongst a bunch of other documents in this package was a copy of the deeds from when the land was originally sold for development...

I've got to admit, I haven't read it all yet - it's pretty illegible in parts, but a great piece of history to have with the house. And if I'm not mistaken, it says the land sold for £46, with a stamp duty of £1.15, 178 years ago - and that's for a huge estate. I'm sure if Mr Bramley was about today he'd be pretty gobsmacked to hear what I paid for just one little house!

And while I'm sharing old pieces of loveliness... This next cheeky find came a bit later when we were reattaching the cast iron fire surround that had come away from the wall in the back bedroom. I saw a bit of card which must have been on the fireplace and fallen behind it as the gap between the fire surround and the wall started to get bigger. After a few attempts to fish it out, this is what I found...

The postcard, sent from Deal in 1966, reads;

Weather glorious, we are lucky with our week, been somewhere different every day. Will write when I get over my sore feet (don't usually write with them of course). Love from Pete, Bill & Jim

What more could a girl want?

25 double pallets. And not just any pallets, free pallets. And dry ones at that...

Now I haven't just filled the front room with a ridiculous amount of rescued timber for no apparent reason. I do actually have plans for this stuff. Watch this space as updates (complete with photographs and how-tos) are imminent...