A simple cupboard/enclosure for a hallway

 A friend asked me to build a simple cabinet for them to replace one the was falling apart. They delivered the old cabinet for me to use as a template and I started by doing a simple drawing using Graphic. I've tried Sketchup but never really got on with it for some reason.

Here's the basic idea I developed.

As you can see it's a simple double door cabinet. The challenge was to make it to the same dimensions as the original but because I was using 18mm MDF, the internal dimensions were the critical ones as long as there was space around the outside.

I decided to follow the original as closely as I could because I didn't know what it was covering (some electrical stuff I was told).

The cupboard was only 65mm deep.

I didn't want the rails and stiles on the doors to be too wide because I thought that would make the panel too narrow so I decided on 40mm and that seemed teamwork out okay.

Here's a picture of the cupboard with the doors clamped in place as a test fit before painting.

I think the proportions look okay. 

The next stage was sanding everything down and then preparing it all for painting.

I used a water based primer/undercoat, lightly sanded between coats. The client was doing the final painting, so I did there coats to get it to a reasonable finish. 

Once I was happy with the finish I added the hinges and door knobs. The hinges are simple flush hinges, but that's not the whole story. Initially I went to my local DIY store and got some hinges. Ther problem with them is that they are not that well made and some of the screws do not sit fully into the countersink. In fact so poorly made were these hinges that some of the countersinks barely cut the surface. 

The upshot of which is that the doors don't close properly.

The solution was to buy better quality hinges, sourced from a company specialising in ironmongery. Theres were thicker and far superior quality that the ones from the DIY store.

The inside of the original doors had hooks for keys. This posed a little bit of a problem because the inner panel was only 6mm thick and I had planned to put in some extra pieces into which the hooks could be mounted. Unfortunately 12mm wasn't quite enough to ensure the hooks didn't come through the other side, so I had to add an extra layer. In hindsight I could have designed this better, but I'm not sure how.

The final touch was to add a magnetic catch for each door and the job was done.

The panel doors came out okay. I cut the rebate for them on the table saw rather than setting up the router table. I think next time I'll probably use the router, the table saw was ok but it's a bit fiddly to to get the set-up correct. Still, it worked and the client is happy.