I designed and built this piece to hold miscellaneous toys, books, etc. in the little one’s bedroom. I love using 3DS Max to model these things before I even pick up a single tool – it makes doing the real work that much easier (and enjoyable).

Basic stuff here… 1/2″ plywood for the main carcass. And I ripped down some pine into 1×2’s and 1×3’s for the face frame, putting it together with pocket screws first, then tacking it to the front of the piece.

The initial sketch:

A clay rendering in Max:

The finished piece:

And in use:

This is one of my design ideas for a new build I’m building Emma.

Yesterday I put the final touches on the distressed finish of the trundle bed, added the handful of hardware components, and put her all together. I’ve been working on it over the past four weeks or so and am very happy with the results. I was really focused on building this thing, and not documenting the process so most of the pictures I have are just of the completed project. Here they are…

A closeup of the headboard design:

The extended trundle:

A detail of the arched design in the footboard that I carried through to the trundle:

The distressed finish I used throughout the piece:

On Friday I finalized the designs for a trundle bed I’m going to start work on this month. I based it on a few different references I came across and that were provided to me, but for the most part it follows a typical panel style. I was asked to make it so that it supports a full mattress on the top, and a twin for the trundle.

I haven’t gotten around to posting anything in a while and wanted to quickly put up a shot of the completed cabinet. I finally got around to painting and staining it a few weeks ago. The top drawer is very sticky so I picked up a pair of drawer slides that I’ll install at some point this week. But anyway, here it is:

So our neighbors/friends recently asked me if I’d build them a new laundry cabinet.  

I was going to sketch something out for them tonight, but instead decided to use Max to create something that not only would be able to show them what the piece would look like, but would also help me figure out all my lumber sizes, joints, etc. 

I’m realizing this method might save me some headaches during actual construction of these kinds of pieces. I can take the time here in this 3d environment, placing all my pieces where they need to go, figuring out what kinds of joints I need to make and where, and be able to see it from all kinds of different angles. – something a traditional sketch would never allow.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve come up with for this new project:

The piece will have two fixed shelves, where the bottom shelf has two pull out drawers, allowing for easier access to stuff. Since this will sit over top of a washer and dryer there’s a need to be able to easily reach often-used items.

Tonight I finished up the top, added a couple feet to the base, tacked on the rear panel, and finally constructed the doors.

The raised panel bits that I had picked up a while ago that are used to create the stiles and rails worked out really well… The panel bit however caused me some grief. It simply was too large for my router table and even the router’s face plate. Against my better judgement I hand routed the panels, without the router’s face plate, but just taking off a little bit at a time. It took a while, but in the end seemed to work out well.

I screwed up royally too… I cut the stiles to the wrong length (somehow missing that, even when I checked them prior to routing) and went through the whole process of routing all four of them before I realized they were too short. I couldn’t figure out what I had done, until I realized I simply read the wrong measurement off my papers. Dummy.

One of the doors:

Now it’s finally looking like something:

Since the family is away for a few days I’ll be able to spend some time in the garage and finish up construction of the cabinet. This evening I worked on the drawer. It ended up being a bit deeper than I thought, which is a good thing. I was afraid it was going to end up too shallow and unusable.

Assembly was pretty straightforward. I think the trickiest part was figuring out how to create a set of guide rails so that it 1) had something to rest on and 2) wouldn’t tip when you pulled it out. And here’s what I came up with:

This week’s progress on the cabinet includes trimming out the left and right sides of the carcass and creating the face frame.

For the trim on the sides, I ran my 1×2’s through the router to give them a simple Roman Ogee design and then mitered the corners.

I ended up cutting a series of half lap and cross lap joints to bring together the 1×3 and and 1×2 boards for the face frame. I’ve never attempted this before, but it seems to have come out pretty nice. The glue up is still in progress for this:

This weekend I started work on the buffet cabinet. I focused primarily on the carcass and was able to get it pretty close to completion. The top front and rear rails were joined to the sides with some biscuits, while the drawer support in the front and the fixed shelf down towards the bottom half are set inside of stopped dados – both sets of these dados were a bit of challenge. The ones for the shelf were fine, but I made the mistake of not turning the sides around to cut the set needed for the drawer support. Before I realized what had happened it was already too late – there’s now an extra set of unnecessary dados cut into the sides, towards the back of the carcass. I’ll probably leave them alone, since they’re out of sight and sit behind where the drawer will be. If I feel inclined, I could probably cut out a couple filler pieces and glue them in place.

The other flub I made was when I routed out the V grooves in the sides. I had the depth of the bit too far out from the base of the router and because it was trying to cut such a deep groove, it ended up burning the wood a little. I didn’t like how deep it was, so since I’m going to be painting this portion of the cabinet anyway, I just filled it back up with some puddy. I reset the depth of the bit and was able to make a lot cleaner cuts on both sides. They give the plywood the look of being paneled, which is exactly what I was trying to accomplish.

Oh, and the new pipe clamps are working out well.