Continued from Part 1…
I was lucky when it came to fitting the cupboard doors under the bed as I’d sized the frame and the doors to fit and for once the plans and reality closely resembled one-another. With hinges fixed to the doors, they quickly and relatively easily screwed onto the frame. I then used twin roller catches at the top of the doors to hold them in place.
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| From Barn Conversion 2011 |
With the under-bed cupboard doors in place the next step was to add the second end to the bed, the one that would lie in the middle of the whole construction between the bed and the thermal store.
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| From Barn Conversion 2011 |
I’d already built the end frame and I simply attached it to the wall by a single hollow wall anchor cavity fitting and screwed it in one place to the bed frame. I wanted to ensure that the bed remained easily removable in case full access to the thermal store and associated equipment was required at a later date. (As a slight rather dull aside, I used piranha branded anchors which are excellent but I can no longer find – if anyone knows where to get some then please let me know.)
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| From Barn Conversion 2011 |
Next I worked across the front of the thermal store, preparing the frame for the large wardrobe doors that would close off the area. On the left I placed a vertical upright screwed to the stud work of the internal wall running up the full height of the door to the bottom of the boxed-in header tank. Then with a horizontal bar I married the wall attached vertical to the middle frame / end-frame of the bed and screwed and bolted it all together. Wherever possible I used coach bolts to fix the frame together, I bought some long, thin ones that allowed easy fixing through double layers of the 4×2’s. I prefer the finish that the rounded stainless steel coach bolt heads give over what are comparatively rather ugly screws.
Some further vertical boards were added to either side of the low cupboard doors to fill narrow gaps that had been left (not shown on the photograph below).
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| From Barn Conversion 2011 |
A final vertical upright was screwed into place to sit behind and between the two cupboard doors. I screwed the cupboard doors onto the frame, one fitted perfectly, the other not quite so well and will need some remedial work to conform to my exacting standards (hehe!). I then placed a further horizontal board to fill the gap between the frame and the wardrobe doors (not shown on the photograph below).
That completed the main structural work, leaving mainly cosmetic additions – I’ll cover those in part three.
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