Advice required from Jasonb re wardrobes

[andrewdavies33]

Hi Jason,

i hope you dont mind me requesting help, its just that i find it quite hard to find people that a) can actually offer relevant, helpful advice, and b) actually have the experience to backup what they are saying, and going by the pictures i have seen of your work, i would be more than pleased if you could help me in any way!

I am looking to replace some old fitted wardrobes in my bedroom and replace them with sliding wardrobe doors (the easy bit!!) I was after some advice on how / what to use to create the carcass of the wardrobe. I have read a few of your posts after serching the site, and see that you basically suggest making a number of "boxes" to fit inside a bigger box (a liner that covers the walls and floor?? or ceiling aswell?). I was wondering if you could provide some help or advice on the actual construction of these "Boxes" ie - how do you fix these together?
You mention using only MFC (where is the best place to source this? or is this a "best find a regional supplier thing"?), but do you cut this to size yourself, if so i assume that you would put all cut edges to the back of the wardobe, butting up to the back wall?

I am looking to fill a (roughly) 4m wall to wall space, and so divide these up into 1 metre "boxes" as you suggested. Do you think this would be too much of an expanse? as from looking at your pictures - (very impressive by the way!) it would seem as though you tend to keep the distance between these "boxes" quite small - i pressume to reduce the wobble factor that is so apparent with flat packed furniture!!

Although not a professional joiner by any stretch of the imagination, i would say, that i feel pretty confident of making a half decent effort of this little project, with a little help!!!
I would really appreciate any advice you could offer, and would be made up if you could answer any of the (many) questions ive asked above!!

Any other help you could provide would be much appreciated

Kind Regards and Thanks in advance

Andrew Davies

 

[Jasonb]

Hi Andrew

I was not ignoring your message, just a bit busy yesterday and I also took the opportunity to take a photo of a carcase today to help illustrate my construction methods.

The reason I use "boxes" is two fold. 1. As I generally use hinged doors I need a reasonably substantial structure to hang these from. 2. The boxes are usually one door wide (5-600mm) as much over that and you can start to get sagging in the hanging rails, although the oval section tube is not as bad as the round and a centre bracket helps.

I use MFC most of the time as its reasonably priced and requires no further finishing. I have suitable means of cutting the boards which are cut on all sides, the edges are then finished with matching Iron on edging. You could use the "conti board" from the sheds or a specialist panel supplier will have better boards in a larger range of grains/colours and matching edging. There are companies that will cut and edge for you but a good circular saw or cut & trim with a router will also do the job along with a household iron.

I join the boards with biscuits for strength & alignment and carcase screws to hold it together, see pic.

For sliding doors you could get away with single vertical members to divide up the space and support shelves/rails. These would only need fixing top & bottom and a few at the back to stop flexing.

Jason