Contents
According to an old tradition, things that could not be found in the apartment are stored on the balcony and loggia. And so that these small-sized rooms do not turn into a dump, a good storage system is needed. The most practical option is a built-in wardrobe on a balcony or loggia. Often all that is required is to make construction sites on which shelves will be held and put doors. With such a task, you can easily cope with your own hands, even with a minimum of skills.
Materials and constructions
The design of the built-in wardrobe can be divided into two parts: a frame and doors. Sometimes, if a side stand is needed, there is also a sheathing.
What is the frame made of
Racks for the cabinet are most often made of timber. Section approximately 40*40 mm or 50*50 mm. The option is not bad, but there can be high humidity on an unheated balcony. And wood is a material that changes size depending on humidity. There is one more point: timber is not cheap in all regions.
There is another option – to assemble a frame on a drywall profile. Any sheet material such as chipboard, plywood, etc. is perfectly attached to it. If you take galvanized, then no problems with humidity are terrible.
What to make shelves
The easiest way is to cut the shelves to size from sheet material. This is still the same chipboard – plain or laminated, thick plywood, sometimes OSB can be used, but shelves for weights should be desired on a wooden frame.
You can mount them on the places prepared on the frame – installed bars or on self-tapping screws. There is an option – corners directly to the wall. But it is good if the walls can be drilled with self-tapping screws right away, otherwise it will take too long to put each shelf on the dowels. Then it is easier to assemble the frame and attach it to it.
There is an even easier way to make shelves on a balcony or loggia: use metal rails and brackets for them. These systems are used in stores, but for this case they are more than convenient: the height changes easily with a fairly small step. Just hang the brackets on other holes.
With such an organization, all that is needed is to put doors. So the closet is ready on the loggia or balcony.
By the way, you can do something similar from wooden bars: recesses for shelves with a certain step. You can make cuts with a saw, and then remove with a chisel.
Often shelves are made from cut pieces of boards. Since the width of the balcony is usually small, all sorts of trimmings come into play. Only in order for them not to lose their appearance for a long time and to be easily wiped off, they need to be covered with something. And although the glazed balcony and loggia are more related to interior spaces, take paint and varnish products for outdoor work, as well as protective impregnations. They contain substances that protect against ultraviolet radiation. Without them, in a couple of years, the wood will look miserable.
So that when working in the apartment it doesn’t “smell” too much, you can take a water-based varnish. It does not create a film, but dirt is not absorbed into the surface.
What are the doors
Three types of doors are made in a closet on a loggia or balcony:
- ordinary swing;
- sliding – by the type of wardrobe;
- roller shutters
All these doors can be the entire height of the cabinet, but it is more convenient to divide it into two or three parts, and hang your own doors on each.
The most inexpensive are swing doors. You need the doors and hinges themselves, and it’s easy to “put” them in place on your own. Sliding systems are more expensive. We need guides – top, bottom and side, as well as a system of rollers that is installed on the door leaf. But this option is attractive because it saves space.
The most expensive are roller shutters. But they are attractive because they come as a ready-made kit, and the installation is basically “attached” to the purchase.
Watch the video on how to assemble sliding doors for a balcony cabinet. Much will become clear.
How to make a balcony cabinet on a wooden frame
First, cut 4 racks to the desired height of the cabinet. If you plan to make it to the very ceiling, measure each one separately, and do not cut the same ones. The height is often quite different. The cut racks are attached. The distance between them determines the depth of the cabinet, but most often depends on the available space. How much is, so much is used.
If there are three blank walls, there is no problem. The bars are attached to dowels. They put the bar against the wall, check its verticality, drill through holes for fasteners in the right places. The bar is removed, plastic plugs from dowels are inserted into the holes in the wall. After setting the bar in place, screw it to the wall with screws.
If you make a closet on the balcony, one side is attached to the wall, and the second – to the frame elements or only at the top and bottom – to the ceiling and floor (we use reinforced metal corners).
Another option for such a case – if you need to close the window glass with something – put a wall near the window (for example, from chipboard), fix it at the bottom and top with corners to the floor and ceiling, and then attach it to the wall (and to the flow and floor) frame bars.
Then transverse bars are nailed to the racks. They give the whole system a high degree of rigidity and the shelves will rest on them.
In order not to “walk” a place near the glass, this part is also occupied by shelves. Since the width of the furniture is different, they often make two separate small cabinets: on the lower and on the upper halves. Often they also differ in depth: the bottom one can be made wider and more heavy and bulky things can be hidden there. The upper cabinet in this case can be made less deep. In this case, the top of the lower cabinet can be used as a countertop.
Further, it’s just a matter of what and how to make doors. The best option is to make sliding. Their diagram is in the figure. There are a lot of spare parts, but you can figure it out.
Corner wardrobe on the loggia: photo report
At first, the loggia was lined with clapboard. Immediately after that, a cabinet was made from the same lining. It was decided to want a corner, so as not to close the window so much. On the opposite side, the closet occupies almost the entire width, slightly short of the balcony door.
Racks were not attached. They nailed the bars on the ceiling and to the floor, to them the walls. They turned out to be short – three planks. Planks were nailed to the lining of the walls, on which the same lining, cut out according to the resulting cabinet shape, was laid.
At the top and bottom of the doorway, a clapboard was stuffed across the opening. We measured the remaining distance, subtracted 1,5 centimeters for inaccuracies, and cut the lining on the door of this length. They needed six. Shot down with the help of four cross bars shot down in the door. Hung using regular hinges.
In the free space between the cabinet wall and the balcony sheathing, two shelves are nailed. A little later, they added a little higher with rounded edges. At the last stage, they nailed the plinth under the ceiling and on the floor (to close the cracks), then they polished the lining with sandpaper and painted it with wood stain.
Drawings and diagrams
It is impossible to talk about any standards regarding wardrobes for balconies. And the size and configuration, and the glazing is different for everyone. Therefore, even with the size of the shelves, it is necessary to determine “in place”. But here are a few examples that you can change as you need.