Kicking out a cupboard door

[Steve Maskery]

I've made a new cupboard to house my electricity meter and associated gubbins. It's high up on a wall, underneath a flight of stairs, so imagine a rectangle 1000 long x 810mm high, with the top right hand corner cut off at 45 degrees, leaving a hypotenuse 1000mm long.

The box itself is just the left hand side and bottom. The stairs is the RH side and the ceiling the top.

I'm planning to use concealed hinges on the LH side, but with a 1000mm swing, I think that there is a good chance that the door will catch on the ceiling somewhere along its swing (ceiling is currently Artex but is being skimmed tomorrow).

I'm wondering if it is feasible to introduce a bit of a kick downwards, by offsetting the lower of the two hinges, so that as it opens, it also drops a little. I was thinking of mounting the lower hinge 5mm in from the door edge rather than 2, and packing out the plate by a similar 3mm.

Would this work? Will it cock up the clearances too much?

Or should I just accept that I need a 10mm or so gap at the top?

 

[MikeG.]

You've probably made a beautiful box, Steve, nice and level. If you had leant it out at the top 2 or 3 degrees, you would have achieved the clearance you are after. You may be able to achieve some of this effect by how deep you rebate the hinges. Could you hinge it at the bottom edge, and have it drop down to open?

 

[PAC1]

I made a similar thing six months ago and hung the doors on the bottom rail of the box to drop down and used a hopper window catch with finger loop as otherwise I would have had the same problem. Plus as Mike said you would not need to be far off plumb to make a large difference to hitting or missing the ceiling. So have you hung the doors or can you switch them around?

 

[Blockplane]

Falling butt hinges?
Probably rare as hens teeth these days.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Oh, it's level all right!
I was planning to use sprung kitchen cabinet hinges, to avoid the need for any sort of catch. But I could use narrow butts, I guess. The carcase is just 16mm MDF, nothing fancy. The door is 18mm and fairly heavy.
I've been thinking about this this afternoon and I think moving that bottom hinge would likely make the back edge of the door foul the front edge of the box. I think I shall have to resign myself to a gap. I'll just have to try to make it as even as possible.
Originally I was going to make a frame with an inset door, but getting the angles right, I mean properly right, is not easy, as there is nothing hard and fast to reference from, and the internal corner, where the underside of the stairs meets the flat ceiling is not a sharp crease, it is a smooth hollow. Well, as smooth as Artex ever is. There is no point to which to measure.
This way it will, at the very least, be clean lines.
Thank you for your contributions gentlemen.

 

[ColeyS1]

Screw a batten on the ceiling and perhaps the right hand side. It'll just look part of the frame/box then.

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[Steve Maskery]

I did wonder about that, but I thought that it might look a bit odd, just half a frame.

 

[ColeyS1]

I did wonder about that, but I thought that it might look a bit odd, just half a frame.

I think it'd probably look better than having a large gap. If you kept the batten the same thickness as the bottom and side I don't think anyone would realise the batten was just there for show. They might just think you've made a 4 sided box and fixed it into place.

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[ColeyS1]

You could nearly have two smaller doors then.

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[Steve Maskery]

At the moment the plan is to have the door as an overlay, but, Coley, I can see how I could have it as an inset door, bottom and left members on the frame, top and hypotenuse fixed to the plasterwork.
Hmm, I shall give that some thought, thank you.
I don't see how I can have two doors unless at least one of them opens downwards, which I do not want.

 

[Steve Maskery]

By the way, how does one spell Hypotenuse? I thought it was Hypoteneuse, but my computer is flagging it up. It it an American/English thing?
I had to reprimand Carolyn Quinn this week for using Historic when she meant Historical. I got a very sweet and abject apology by return, just a few minutes after the show went off air.
One has to uphold standards, doesn't one? Once R4 goes to the dogs we are doomed, I tell you, we're all doomed.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Well I've hung the door and got just the clearance at the top that I want. Very pleased with it.

Unfortunately the bigger picture is not so clever.

Oops. It's obviously going to be one of those weeks.