Okay, next installment - finally the cabinets were delivered yesterday. Why is it when you get a day for delivery, and it says "between 7am and 7pm" do you just KNOW that the only way to avoid the delivery being made at 6:59pm is to g out of the house until 6:30pm... Yep - last delivery of the day for the guys... in fairness to them, they admitted that their transport manager hadn't allowed them out of the yard until 11:30am, because the other truck the delivery company were using had almost been tipped over in the gales. I know I wouldn't have fancied driving a curtainsider with a light but bulky load in the weather we had yesterday, so can't really complain I suppose.

Anyhow... I've had a bit of a go, and installed the main cabinets. There's another section (well - it's a shelf really) that goes over the 'fridge, at the same height as the cabinet top, but that's going to a) require me to move the 'fridge so I can get in and build the supports, and b) require the actual shelf to be "scribed" to the profile of the end wall - because despite the fact that the plaster is now straight, it's not square - the underlying walls are pretty much all to *kitten* - i'm sure that the house is actually parallelogram in plan view, because there isn't a 90° corner in the entire building. Makes things a nightmare for fitting carpets, built in furniture, tiles, you name it. Makes you get good at DIY though...

anyway, enough waffle - here's the pictures...

Doors Closed


Concealing all this crap.


And with the 'cross bike in place...



(remember where we started...)

certainly an improvement

Right - now i've finished the "storage wall" side of things...

BikeCave Storage Complete.jpg by The Big Yin, on Flickr

needed to put an inordinate amount of faffing into that shelf over the top of the fridge to be honest - it's supported on 2 feck-off heavy duty cantilevered brackets, just in case the storage boxes over the top end up getting something heavy in there - the actual shelf is also reinforced with a couple of battens and the front trim piece to stop the shelf itself flexing under stress.

Now if only the people who make that "Bulls Head" rack would get their fingers out and get some new stock in, so I can actually get one of the bikes on the wall, and it'll pretty much be finished I think.

The more observant of you may have noticed that the photos are also getting a little better as the project continues. There's a reason for that - when the place was full of brick dust, or plaster all over the place, or even wet paint / emulsion there was NO WAY I was going to be wandering round the building site with my Canon 7D and a couple of grandsworth of glass. So, we got "happy snaps" either on the iPad or a cheap compact camera. As things have reverted to being part of the house, the proper camera came out...

amazing what a couple of sacks of plaster, a wardrobe and a couple of bits of laminate flooring can do, isn't it

Still waiting on the Wall hangers - pretty much set my heart on one of those "head of a bull" ones, but the manufacturer is in the process of getting in new stock - they're a fairly small startup company, and just don't have the backing to have on-going production I guess, so just work on a "build a containerload, sell a containerload, repeat" kind of cycle...

well - it arrived about 10 minutes after I posted my last update.

First Impressions - Not 100% sure about it's longevity - the bit around the pedal spindle is already marked while hanging the bikes on to set up the wall-plates for the wheel.

Also, I'm glad I bought a single unit, rather than a pair, because the longer wheelbase, coupled with the different bottom bracket height means that the CaadX hangs further away from the wall than the Dolan does. No great problem, apart from the fact that being a little longer at the rear, even with 25mm road tyres and no mudguards, it actually fouls the back door, so letting myself in would result in knocking the bike, potentially taking it off the wall and landing on any other bike. So, the CaadX is going to remain leaning by the wall instead of getting racked.

Not a problem per se with the actual unit, just a problem related to my pretty tight space for storing the bikes.

Anyhoo... time for some pictures I guess...

The Bikes...

DSCF2749.jpg by The Big Yin, on Flickr

and, the "trainer storage corner"...

DSCF2750.jpg by The Big Yin, on Flickr

verdemujer wrote: »

Nice! Interesting hanger. Can't see it very well with the bike on the wall. What type is it? Not sure I would be crazy about hanging my bike from the pedal only though. I tend to want to know it's not coming down.

Have a look here - http://cycloc.com/cycloc-features-Hero.html - its probably easier to see - I deliberately got the white hanger to try and make it disappear on a white wall...

it's actually pretty secure, and there's a couple of little "shelves" under the wheels too, which keep the bike on the straight and level.