Easy Part Over

 

Above it the wall where my former sheet of peg board has hung for nearly a decade and a half. It served it's purpose well but I never really liked it from the moment I hung it up. The hangers that inserted into the peg holes always had a tendency to fall out whenever I removed a tool requiring me to locate it and find the location where it went all over again. The tools that hung on the peg board were always coated in dust which was fine for some of them and not so much for others. Then there were other tools that I use frequently that ended up in various drawers that required rummaging around to find. So after some inspiration and a desire to try something new, I decided to make a cabinet with hand cut dovetails to house all those hand tools I would like to keep dust free. After removing the peg board, I was left with a clean slate above.

I assembled the final doors onto my cabinet and oiled it with a coat of some leftover tung oil which I had leftover from some project a long time ago. In order to mount the cabinet, I removed the doors I just installed and screwed a board to the wall that lined up with the bottom edge of the cabinet. This allowed me to fairly easily lift the main body of the cabinet in place and set in on the board fastened to the wall until I could get the cabinet fastened securely to the wall itself. 

I then unscrewed the board to the wall and using clamps, attached it to the underneath side of the front of the cabinet so that it overhung one side. This allowed me a place to lift the doors in place and set them on the overhanging part of the board until I could run the screws into the hinges. I repeated for the other side and had the entire cabinet hung up in a fairly easy manner.

Above is one more shot of the cabinet doors partially opened to give a sense of all the room I will have for the hard part of this project, arranging all my various hand tools in an organized manner. For now, the tools that were on the wall are on my workbench until I can find homes for everything.

A couple of notes about the project. You may notice some slats still screwed to the wall on the left sides of the first and third pictures. Those are what I fastened my pegboard too and allowed the pegs to be inserted. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with that space yet and so left the slats that I didn't need to create space for the cabinet. I'm thinking about fastening a piece of plywood to the wall to arrange all those tools that I don't mind getting dusty and rarely use like long levels, steel rulers and drywall square. But I'm not going to commit to that yet.

Secondly, only upon admiring my work, did I notice that the cabinet now partially blocks the access to my attic door access. During the course of this project, that never crossed my mind. So I may have to put up a ladder still and make sure I can get up there if needed before I get all carried away with filling the tool cabinet. I may have to move the cabinet over a few feet which would require rearranging all the tools along the wall, not something I really want to do.