Time to look back at the first post work task.
For many years I’d had a desire to build some wine racking and now had the time to set about it. We have a suitable cool cellar and had a mix of various racking collected over the years as well as a few unpacked boxes so although a rebuild was not necessary the old view did not please my eye! The sensible limitation was the volume of bottles that were allowed to be stored, and hence the conclusion was to fill just one end wall of our small cellar, rather than an impressive full surround wrap of racking.
In the first instance I had to research possible units to use. There was no chance I would build from scratch, it was not on the cork board and my woodwork tools and skills are almost non-existent (I can knock together some planks in the garden, but nothing very exciting!). Many hours, no days later I landed on some very fine looking units, with a mix of storage styles, vertical, cross and box, and a designs that just about fitted the space perfectly. Winerack-plus.co.uk
I thought I’d found a uk source but as it happens once the order was placed I found it was German, so had a wee wait for delivery. The units on receipt were a good build quality, unfortunately some of the bits were broken in transit. However the process for phoning and asking for replacement parts was really easy and they were meticulous in making sure they knew the exact parts to send out.
It was now that I found a new skill was required. The cellar floor is not level. In fact over the short distance of the wall it fell 5cms right to left and back to front as it turned out, so after contemplating various options, such as the plastic chocks that level kitchen units and building a platform, our friend Stef (a trained surveyor) suggested a self levelling scree – what ever that is I said, before turning to Google and YouTube for the answer. Off to the builders merchant, secure a baton to the floor with very sticky glue to seal any holes, buy a mixing attachment for the drill, mix the scree without coating the walls or me in scree and 2 days later I had a level floor for the units. Quite a satisfying experience.
The cellar had not been Spring cleaned or re-decorated since we move in 14 years ago, so before the units were built, I scrubbed and repainted the walls in the small cellar, but of course once a job like that was started I had to tackle the utility cellar and the linking cellar, with the utility cellar getting some new shelving to help out with the loss of shelving in the wine cellar. Extra space had already been reclaimed from the linking cellar with the long desired extraction of the chest freezer. No mean effort, as the freezer lid and cellar door had to be removed and burly men brought in for the task.
Back to the wine rack. The units were easy to put together and secure to the wall before being stocked with wine. Inexpensive due to canny buying from the local Miserly Wine Co-Operative and not being in the laying down but rather the drinking business.
As a completist, this was not the end, I had to label the wines (much hilarity at my expense) and create a spreadsheet (again work habits die hard) to track inventory and more importantly which wines were worth buying again.
The end result is rather pleasing.
