Fridge Drawer
Yesterday’s hard work and the resulting success seemed to almost propel us forward with the remaining tasks planned for today. We were really hoping to be able to make a start on some of the internals, specifically the kitchen area. With the hob exhaust in place it was now time to implement an elegant solution for our fridge.
Day 2
We’d been discussing with John for sometime how to go about creating a heavy duty sliding drawer for the fridge. Our fridge is top loading so we will need to pull it all the way out of the kitchen unit in order to access the goods inside. It had to be a pretty robust system given that the fridge weighs in at a hefty 27.8 kg unladen. We were pleased to discover that John with his brilliant engineering mind had been mulling over the options and had come up with an elegant solution involving aluminium strips, supported by timber beams. John and Ben had also managed to secure some heavy duty draw slides fit for the job.
In order for the sliding rails to fit the kitchen unit, I needed to take the bottom half of the struts apart relocating some of the existing support brackets and adding additional nuts with which to secure the rails onto the unit. This was a fiddly job and all in all took around an hour. While I was busy working away on this task Ben and John got stuck in cutting the timber support beams for the drawer slides. This task left the guys to get creative, cutting the end of the support beam at an angle, so as not to interfere with the brackets that hold the kitchen unit together. Next up the guys began prepping the aluminium strips for their attachment to the timber beams. They neatly drilled holes and screwed the aluminium strip to the wood. Before bolting the entire assembly to the struts of the kitchen unit.
Happy with the position of the drawer slide, Ben and John set to measuring and cutting a tray from 12mm plywood for the fridge to sit on. After double checking the sizing, drawer slides were then attached to each end of the tray ready for the test fit. The drawer was sliding well but not with as much ease as we’d hoped, after removing the slides and sanding down the tray slightly we then re-attached the slides and tested again. Repeating these adjustments a few times seemed to do the trick as the drawer rolled in and out smoothly. Success!!
