Tuesday 21 October 2014

The Big Cut

In too deep!

Well having read up on fitting the Smev to a worktop, it certainly didn't inspire me with confidence. It doesn't come with a full scale fitting template, and instead just shows a very small diagram with lots of confusing measurements in the instruction book.

I searched online for a better diagram, all I could get was an A4 size one which was at least legible.




So armed with this, I set out to draw it onto cardboard for a first attempt, and after measuring it all out and checking it, I cut out the hole to which I thought the Smev would fit....



Except it didn't, not even close.. the corners should be straight not curved and it doesn't account for the 4 hinges either... so I did a 2nd attempt which was a bit better but still needed sorting.



So tweaked a few of the measurements and then decided to try it out on plywood as the cardboard was just a bit too flexible to get it accurate. 




It needed to be pretty much spot on due to the position of the 6 screw holes being very close to the edge of the cut out.

Once I was happy with the shape of the hole fitting round the unit, I then set out to cut the worktop by securing the ply down with masking tape and carefully using a drill to get in the corners and then using the jigsaw to go round the shape. 




You can see the laminate has came off the worktop where I drilled through, wasn't too concerned about it though as the Smev will overlap that and hide it.

So after the first fitting, I placed it in and it was a bit tight, which was ideal as long as it wasn't too big!




So after several attempts to shave a little bit off at a time, and re-try it.. I eventually got it sitting pretty flush, leaving it at that as I don't want to go in any further and put the screw holes in jeopardy.





All that remained was to sand it down a bit to get it sitting straight in the hole, and then fix the 6 screws to hold it in place which get covered by little black caps.





Am quite please on how this has turned out, now just to design and build the rest of the unit so it houses the oven and fridge... hopefully the weather won't delay that too much!



No comments:

Post a Comment