When you come down the stairs to the basement from the entry hall you’re greeted by these doors. To the left the laundry room and straight ahead my closet.
Lurking behind the door to the laundry room is the fuse box cabinet. I still have old school fuses and as with a lot of old houses the contents of that cabinet has been added to over the decades.
Not a pretty sight with all that junk hanging down below the cabinet. And to add insult to injury the previous owners built a rickety shelving unit underneath. HAD. TO. GO.
The space behind the door is actually pretty useful and I’ve had the second littler box there for when Bonus used to take refuge in the basement but I’ll show you what I did with all that in a separate post.
Anyway, before painting all the doors and trim in the basement in fresh coats of paint I added a little to the fuse box cabinet. Again this was one of those, I-have-no-idea-how-to-do-this-so-I’ll-just-wing-it situations as there wasn’t a whole lot for my new addition to hang on to. I ended up screwing the front to the underside of the cabinet and gluing the side section. It’s not my best work but for what it is, a fuse box cabinet it work for me.
And as you can see it’s now all contained in there. There’s still no bottom so air can circulate but at least I don’t have to look at the mess.
I love the little chrome frame with the old instructions for which fuse is which and I added the little containers (simply screwed them into the back of the door) with the extra fuses, which I took out of their boxes. To know what’s what I labeled the fronts with the Amp. Love how this turned out.
Witty and neat solution :)!
Posted by: amycapdet / May Zaragoza | July 19, 2012 at 08:06 AM
I know this is a weird comment, but here we go: my husband is an electrical contractor here in Australia, which means I'm fairly aware of all things electrical. To this end, may I say that it's interesting to see what a Swedish switchboard looks like - ours are very different! See, told you it was weird! ;)
Posted by: kim | July 19, 2012 at 08:20 AM
Ah, is switchboard the correct term?! Learn something new every day! This is the old school version. New ones actually have switches so when the power goes off somewhere the switch goes up (or is it down?) and you just turn it on again.
Posted by: Benita ~ Chez Larsson | July 19, 2012 at 08:41 AM
I love simple tweakings like this!
Posted by: Chiara | July 19, 2012 at 09:37 AM
I think the cabinet is rather cute. Love the old sign and the containers for the fuses are really convenient.
Posted by: Leena | July 19, 2012 at 10:01 AM
We had a similar thing with the boiler in the kitchen of the house back in the UK. All the pipes below the boiler was an eye sore whenever you walked in the kitchen. My husband built a box out of chipboard that we could slide in front of all the pipes which made any maintenance really easy. We painted it the same colour of the tiles behind the pipes so that it would all be nice and seamless. Ingenius idea with having the spares attached to the inside in boxes! Must "pin" that for future use...
Posted by: Out of Ours | July 19, 2012 at 12:07 PM
Such a Nice solution! It looks really great, thank for sharing your great work! Have a happy and beautiful Day.
Posted by: Monsterscircus | July 19, 2012 at 12:11 PM
Perfect!
Posted by: jja | July 19, 2012 at 01:30 PM
You and your blog are amazing! Thanks for being so inspiring!
Posted by: Fabra DiPaolo | July 19, 2012 at 01:31 PM
I just love how you ALWAYS come up with simple solution that are both very practical as well as visually appealing. Am full of admiration.
Posted by: Bonnie | July 19, 2012 at 02:19 PM
Great little containers. You mention that the bottom addition is screwed in and glued on permanently. Don't you need to get to that white thing that looks like a charger in a socket, from time to time?
Posted by: Zosia | July 19, 2012 at 03:11 PM
I always enjoy posts like this the most for some reason. I love tidy utility areas! The switches are called "breakers" in the U.S., so we call the box the circuit breaker or just the breaker box. Most municipal codes require you to update electrical when doing any major renovation, so fuses are becoming rare (outside of cars).
Posted by: matchbookhymnal | July 19, 2012 at 03:27 PM
I know the kind of boiler you mean! Great solution!
Posted by: Benita ~ Chez Larsson | July 19, 2012 at 04:12 PM
I just love how you come up with ways to organize everything!
Posted by: Pine Tree Home | July 19, 2012 at 04:28 PM
You have such a fantastic eye for detail! Love it!
Posted by: Lisa Flaherty | July 19, 2012 at 05:10 PM
you make everything beautiful! x
Posted by: elisa | July 19, 2012 at 05:32 PM
You are such a genius it blows me away. I hope you keep blogging forever.
Posted by: KariMc | July 19, 2012 at 07:38 PM
You have a talent for making things simple, attractive and easy to use (i.e., organized.) I'm inspired!
Posted by: Laura in Seattle | July 19, 2012 at 09:06 PM
You are a brave woman, i would never ever ever get anywhere near fuse box cabinet!
Posted by: Marcia Lavanda | July 20, 2012 at 03:09 AM
Jag kikar ofta in här på din blogg Benita, och vet du? jag blir såååå otroligt imponerad av dig. Du är inte en kvinna som ger upp och tittar åt ett annat håll och du törs ge dig på saker som jag aldrig skulle ge mig på!
En massa kramar till dig!
/Jenny
Posted by: Jenny | July 20, 2012 at 01:15 PM
We were able to buy fuses with a reset button right in the middle - so much easier
Posted by: Shelley | July 20, 2012 at 01:26 PM
Oj, tack :)
Posted by: Benita ~ Chez Larsson | July 20, 2012 at 01:36 PM
the container is cute... i can adapt it EVERYWHERE. Thanks for the idea.
Posted by: Sandra | July 22, 2012 at 08:06 PM