Upcycling, Ikea Hacking, space saving money spending and stress making!

Oh looks who's back......... Yes its me oops haven't blogged in forever sorry.

In the last few weeks months (I started this post a while ago and didn't finish it) Mark and I have been working on making the best use of the space we have which is not a lot! (watching "George Clerks amazing spaces" has nothing to do with this cough cough). 
So, new wardrobe for storage and getting rid of old stuff and clothes and what not.

We now have two shelving units in the living room and we have bought storage boxes from Ikea to go on them. However they didn't fit, so now we have storage boxes waiting for a use. We then went and got a different style of box which do fit. Although its not very attractive to look at, so we started coming up with ideas to cover the fronts of the units.

The Shelving Unit

Lots of ideas came and went, we could maybe put doors on but that will end up costing the same as a new unit so decided against that idea. So in the end we thought fabric would be good.
So may be just curtain style, or perhaps stuck on with velcro but after doing some research and thinking, I didn't like any of those ideas.

I decided on making small frame doors wrapped in fabric for each section so thats 6 doors per unit. Simple right? I made a projector screen a few weeks ago, same principle just smaller and add some hinges piece of cake.......................


WRONG!!!


So I go back to what I said a few posts ago don't get ahead of yourself.
Plan!!! Then plan again!! 
Measure 350 times cut once!!
learn how different types of hinges work for your project.
Don't staple your fabric on (multiple times) unless you are sure the frame is right first!!!! 

So we made an early start on Saturday morning bought our supplies (which worked out the same price as new units) 

Fabric and Hinges 

Hinges and wooden battens from B&Q (we were 4 short so had to go back on Sunday) 

Fabric- Wow has the price of fabric gone up since I last bought some. Although I've never tried to buy fabric in a St Albans fabric shop before, so I don't know if those were just St Albans prices.  Then went on to Dunelm I would of course prefer to support the independent business over the massive chain shop but I was on budget and they just weren't fitting in.
Well Dunelm isn't much of a money saver either. After what felt like years of our lives we settled on a fabric we both liked and bought what we needed. 

We measured and got to work, first frame cut and constructed in a few short minutes. Wow this look good and that was quick and easy this will be a breeze. We should use a staple gun for everything!   

                 

  I then began stapling the fabric onto the frame it looked great. Now to attach the "flush" hinges. Again no problem there attach to the shelves ahhh here's the problem the door won't close all the way, it seems to be being stopped, perhaps the fabric has bunched up too much in the corners so its obstructing the door? I'll unpick that bit, and cut off any excess fabric and we'll try again nope that wasn't it.
Here we come to a problem, as we made these units back in September and I didn't write this all up straight away, I've forgotten what else happened. Now  I know it was a nightmare and the doors wouldn't close and then they wouldn't meet and it was horribly long winded. We wished we had just bought new cabinets and eventually it all came together but unfortunately I can't tell you how. I never was any good and doing my homework on time. 

So I will just Show you the finished-ish product we haven't got round to putting handle on and probably never will.