Painting and painting

Painting in tight spaces is never much fun.  Painting with two-part polyurethane in same is far worse.  I am told - quite rightly - that I should wear protection when using this paint, so that I don't inhale the fumes.  Unfortunately, any that I have tried has caused my glasses to steam up, and as I need my glasses to see what I'm painting ...  I console myself with the fact that I'm getting old anyway, so what the hell.  And the shed is more than adequately ventilated!  However, I would never do this for money and I have completely abandoned using the epoxy primer, because I could still taste it, each time I exhaled, the following morning.  I was only using it to build up the colour, but now that I'm using the locally-made Carboline, I'm finding that it coats very well.  Considering that it is the stuff made for industry, it's going on surprisingly well with a brush.

I painted the inside of the locker and then both sides of the shelves.  I had to leave some parts unpainted for the glue, of course, but I still reckoned I'd save time - and fumes - doing them all separately.  Here there's the stack of shelves waiting to be fitted.

I glued in the first one and then masked it off and filleted it.  Again, it made sense to do as much as possible before putting in the next shelf and reducing the space available to work in.

Once all the shelves were fitted and filleted, I could go around and touch up where the fillets where, or the parts where I'd been a bit too generous with the masking tape.  This didn't take too long and, while probably not strictly necessary - who spends time gazing at the paint job in their lockers - gave me a feeling of satisfaction.

Another thing that gives me satisfaction is making my own beer.  I hardly touch it in the winter, but I really enjoy it for lunch or on a hot afternoon in the summer.

So space has to be found not only for the brewing barrel, but also for a good supply of bottles that can stand in peace, so that their contents settle.  Oddly enough, if the bottles can't move, the sediment remains undisturbed, even after a good beat to windward.  I made some interlocking pieces of plywood to keep them located. 

Of course, all these shelves are going in behind a bulkhead, the openings of which will provide the necessary fiddles.  So the next job is to cut out the doors.  I hate doing this.  I can't cut straight enough with a jigsaw and the multi-tool saw won't make a thick enough cut for the jigsaw blade to go down.  I tried it for one, then gave up and resorted to my Japanese saws.  The took longer, probably, but produced better results.  You are supposed to be able to 'plunge cut' with the smaller one.  Well, maybe.  But even sawing the cutouts by hand, they are far from perfect. 

Doors that are obviously just cut out from the plywood don't look that nice either, so I'm going to put a 'beading' around them.  This also gives the door something to land on and, while everything will be painted white, I think it will look better. 

 Ideally, I'd have made the doors and then routed a nice round over the inside of the framework, but they would need to be made of about 25mm stock for that to work.  You can't round the wood over in advance,either, because it all goes to custard in the corners.  So I just took advantage of epoxy's fantastic gluing abilities and carefully set up the beadings pushed together.  As long as they hold together long enough to be routed and sanded, that will suffice.  Once they are glued to the doors, they won't be going anywhere.