Removing A Window & Replacing With Alcove Oak Shelving

[Music] in this video I'll be replacing a window with a shelving unit we are in the process of having our kitchen renovated and if you want to find out more about that you can check out my recent patreon exclusive video where I talk about all of the changes we're making to the bungalow as well as some of the future woodworking project ideas - there'll be links on my patreon page in the description box below anyway in the kitchen there's a window in what was once an exterior wall and it doesn't really serve any purpose because on the other side of it is a lean-to which is our utility room so it doesn't really let any light in when we designed our new kitchen we basically decided that that entire wall is going to be covered over by the new kitchen that we're going to have fitted and rather than putting in some stud work into the window opening adding plasterboard and then getting it plastered we decided to instead use the alcove to accommodate a shelving unit accessible via the utility room which we can use to store things like cat food and litter first I measured up the opening to figure out what size to make the unit and at this point I decided I would allow about 6 to 8 millimeters tolerance to make sure that the unit would fit inside the opening easily because usually walls and window openings aren't perfectly square or straight and I knew that I could always use packers to fill any gaps when fitting it later on for this build I'm going to be using some of these reclaimed shelves that came from an old library bookcase I've had these in storage for a while and I've used them in previous projects like these bedside tables and these shoe and coat racks at my old home I don't have many of them left now but I knew I would have enough to get this job done these shelves are made up of oak veneered MDF with a solid oak face trim and the first job was to remove the oak trim pieces I could then start ripping down the MDF pieces at the table sort of the depth I wanted by shelving unit 2b which was a little bit less than the depth of the opening itself and that's because I'm going to be having a back panel to it later on I then cut the pieces to length at the miter saw and here you can see evidence of the biscuits that would have originally been used to align the solid oak trim to the MDF I could then start assembling the panels and I'm using my plywood squares with a couple of F clamps to help keep everything square the bottom and top panels got secured to the side panels with screws and here you can see the moment where I decided to drill a larger pilot hole than I would ordinarily because MDF endgrain has a habit of splitting usually I'd countersink these holes but it's not necessary here as none of these screws are going to be seen on the final piece next I measured up the inside diameter so that I could start cutting some shelf panels to length at the miter saw I decided to double up the thickness of these panels because I wanted my shelves to be big and chunky looking as I thought that would probably look better alongside the trim pieces that are going to be added later on I'm using regular PVA wood glue for this and making sure that the nicely finished faces of the veneer are oriented up and down so that the unfinished faces are the ones that get glued together as that way the wood glue will adhere much better I piled on some heavy weights and clamped around the edges once the glue has set I did a bit of cleanup to the short edges using a block plane just to make sure that they were nice and flush and I did a quick dry fit to make sure that they were the right size and they looked good I wanted the spacings between each shelf to be equal so I asked Google to help me with the math what's 141 divided by 3 the announcer is and then I marked up where the shells would be on center I fixed the shelves in place with screws and again no need to countersink originally I had thought about rebaiting these shells into the side pals but I decided that as it was just for the utility room I didn't need to get too fancy with this build and also I needed to get the project done quite quickly then I could start ripping down some of the solid oak pieces that I removed earlier which I can use to trim the MDF edges you can see here that some of the pieces of oak broke and splintered as they were being removed which was a shame but I can still get enough out of this piece for what I need I then mitered the corners of the trim so I first cut a 45 degree angle to one end of each piece of the oak offered it up to where I wanted it and then made a pencil mark for length and then aligned to indicate the direction of the miter just so that I don't get confused and cutting the run wide I can then make the next cut just shy of that line just so that I can trim away more if needed until it's a perfect fit I used glue and Brad nails to attach the trim these nail holes will get filled later on and won't be noticeable once finish gets applied later and I removed glue squeeze-out with a damp cloth after trimming the short edges I could then do the same for the long edges and I like to do the short edges before the long edges because that way you can sometimes kind of bend the longer pieces to fit perfectly so you can get them under a bit of compression which helps to keep the motor to it's nice and tight I then looked around for any gaps and added some F clamps just to close them up where necessary I used a block plane to ease over the outside edges of the face trim being careful at the end to avoid splintering the wood [Music] next I used some oak wood filler to fill all the nail holes I decided that the trim I would use for the shelves needed to be thinner otherwise there would be this ugly gap where the shelf trim met the small round over on the trim pieces that I had already added so I got my thickness a set up I'm cleaned off about three millimeters from the thickness I then needed to match the round over homes of the edges that I'd cut at the table saw and I didn't have a small round over bit that matched the radius of the one that was originally used on these so I did it with a block plane instead and it's actually pretty easy to get it looking good here's the original round over and here's the one I did with a block played the shelf trim could then be marked up and cut to length and fitted in the same way I had a few burn marks on the edges of the oak from where I made the cuts at the table saw so to get rid of those I used my carbide scraper which takes very fine shavings and after a bit of sanding they disappeared so the next job was to remove the window and I'd never done anything like this before so please don't laugh at my efforts first I removed the top window which simply unscrewed from the frame and then I removed the beading which was holding the glazed panel in place on the bottom panel I removed any of the nails that were poking out using some pincers and the panel did not want to come out so I tried to score around the edges to cut through the putty and then eventually it came loose then I could remove the frame and that gave me access to the screws holding the window frame into the wall but they did not want to come out and most of the heads broke off the screws as I was trying to get them out so I fitted a metal cutting blade to my oscillating multi-tool and they used that to cut through the screws sometimes I don't know what I would do without this tool and that worked pretty well it did take a while but eventually it came out on the kitchen side of the wall I needed to get rid of the protruding edge of the window sills so I used the chisel for that and then I could offer up the shelving unit to see if it would fit it seems pretty good but when I looked around the back side it looked pretty tight down the bottom initially I thought I hadn't left enough tolerance but actually it hit in place nicely and I was planning to use some sort of fielder's adhesive here to glue this in but it really doesn't need it because it's such a tight friction fit I do need to patch up a few areas which I'll probably do just with some cement this was just going to be a drive fit but now it's in I think I'm just going to finish it in city his how it looks on the kitchen side you can see this in there really nice and tight now that it's in I can also see how thick I want my back panels to be I've got probably eight or nine millimeters there so I'm going to try and find some nine millimeter ply I found some salvaged plywood from my collection of wood this is 9 millimeter and it looked like it would do the job nicely so I kept it to size using my track saw one side was painted but it was in rough shape so I sanded it all smooth using a 120 grit disc and then added a new top coat of white emulsion [Music] next I needed to add finish to the unit and blend in all of the bare wood with the existing finish the old finish on the oak had quite an amber color tone to it and that meant that it would have been an oil-based finish that was used originally after doing some experimentation with different finishes on some scraps of the oak to try and match the finish the best solution I found was to use some of this shellac French polish first I did some light hand sanding at 120 grit just to smooth over any of the areas where I had added filler earlier and also to cut through the existing finish I then hoovered away all of the dust using a brush attachment one of the things I really like about shellac as a finish is that it adheres to pretty much any other finish so I could use this on the bare wood areas as well as the areas that already have finish applied I applied it with a brush and shellacque dries really quickly so it's important to not overwork it you basically just need to apply it get it even with the brush and then not touch it again the shellac also added color to the filler which helped to blend it in with the oak really nicely as you can see here [Music] then I could add the back panel first I made some marks on the wall to indicate where the shells were so that I knew where to add my screws and then I could secure it in place and for the final touch-ups I mixed up some sand and cement mortar to patch in those bits of brickwork that came loose when I removed the window once that was dry added some filler over it mainly just to enable me to get a smooth finish so that I can blend in the paintwork when we redecorate and finally I masked off the edges of the unit and applied a bead of decorators coal to fill the gaps between the wall and the trim that's it finished and you might be wondering why I chose to use oak when it's surrounded by dark hardwoods like on the doors skirting and architrave in the room I know it looks out of place right now but we're going to be completely decorating this room eventually we'll be getting rid of the hideous turquoise walls and painting all of that dark hardwood white I know it is a bit of a shame to paint over hardwood it's not something I like doing but in our situation the whole house is full of either dark red hardwood like mahogany or more frequently pine that's been stained dark red to look like mahogany and the easiest way to help clean up the look of all that and to make the rooms feel less dated is with a bit of paint I wish I could show some pictures of how the room will look when it's finished but the utility room is one of the lowest priorities on our list right now at the moment we're concentrating on the kitchen obviously after that is the bathroom and then it'll be on to the rest of the house I've been getting a lot of questions recently about whether I'll be covering the house renovations on my channel and I will be filming anything that's woodworking related like this video but in terms of non woodworking house projects I'm not going to film those in detail because I don't really have the time to film and edit those videos in addition to the woodworking projects that I'm doing and also my channel would suffer if I were to start showing non woodworking stuff here because not everyone wants to see that stuff and that means that the YouTube algorithm tends to stop promoting new videos after a video performs badly why he gets less views and I don't want my channel to lose momentum and I can't really start another YouTube channel either because again I just don't have the time alongside my woodworking projects and working a day job but what I will do is to continue to post patreon exclusive videos share the renovations and progress and I may include some time-lapse footage of the works we're doing and that kind of stuff on those if you're interested in that stuff there's a link to my patreon page in the description box below I have received some hateful comments recently about the fact that I'm releasing patreon exclusive videos and I'll post my response to those on screen now I really want to reward my patreon supporters because they're the ones keeping the channel going and this is just one way I can do that I'm still releasing weekly woodworking videos on YouTube so there's no change there the patreon exclusive thing is just bonus content that's there if you want it I hope you enjoyed the video please subscribe if you haven't already for more weekly woodworking videos and thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Rag 'n' Bone Brown

Views: 26,031

Rating: 4.8893161 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, uk, british, youtuber, rag, 'n', bone, brown, keith, salvaged, reclaimed, wood, make, making, how, to, ragnbonebrown, diy, removing a window, how to remove a window, replacing a window, making shelves, making a shelving unit, alcove shelves, alcove shelves diy, window shelves, window shelves diy, oak, diy shelves, diy shelving unit, diy shelving ideas, shelf ideas, shelf unit, alcove, window alcove, window opening, woodworking projects, renovation, house renovation, home renovation

Id: qwiGChWBKWg

Length: 14min 56sec (896 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 22 2019