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I always think I have more time in the week than I really do... I was overly ambitious when I thought I'd have all of the lower portion of the built in built in one week. That being said I did get a lot done!
The doors have been made, attached and function appropriately (so, you know major win). And the drawer boxes have been built and installed! Woo! So let's get into how I made each of them shall we? First, I'm going to share a video and blog post for how I learned to do each and then I'll get into exactly what I did.
How to build drawer boxes from Woodshop Diaries
I basically followed both of these tutorials to a tee with just a few material adjustments.
For my doors I wanted the rails and stiles to be thin - so I used primed pine 1x2s. I cut the dados using my table saw, exactly as the video showed and used a 1/4in plywood sheet for the panel. Below is a very quick glue up!
For my drawer boxes: originally I had planned on doing three drawers all the same dimension. As I was thinking through things a bit more and the functionality of it I decided I wanted a drawer that could fit file folders - which translated into it needing to be significantly deeper than the other two.
So to find my measurements I took what I knew my drawer slides were (14 inches), did a little digging on how tall file folders are, and found my first drawer box. *You also need to know the opening of your cabinet, in my case its 49in wide and 34in tall.
I should also mention here, and the blog post does a good job of this as well, that I took 1/8in off the top, in between the drawers and the bottom, as well as the sides to get my final opening dimensions - this gives me a nice even reveal when I go to install my drawer fronts later.
My file folder drawer front ended up being 16in... I also knew that I wanted a smaller drawer up top to use as a charging station so I picked 7in (I think) for the drawer front size. That left me with my final drawer front of 11in. From there I could get my drawer box height, which tends to be about 2 inches shorter than your drawer fronts. Making the drawer boxes shorter than your drawer fronts allows for nice clearance for the drawers to slide in and out while still keeping those small gaps on the face of the cabinet.
After I ripped down my 1/2in MDF sheets to get all the sides for my three drawers... I cut a 1/2in dado in the sides about 1/2in up from the bottom. For the bottom of the drawers I also used 1/2in MDF. For that cut you need to take the dado, or notch, you cut into consideration. I'm still learning how to perfect this but essentially I took the measurement of the inside of the box and added a 1/4in to both the length AND width... it gave me a little bit of wiggle room for the panel to slide nicely in.
With assembling MDF a tidbit of information that will save a lot of frustration - screws do not do a good job with this material. In a past build I tried using pocket holes and glue to attach and the screws split the MDF every. damn. time. So this time I used glue and my brad nailer to hold into place while the glue dried. The glue is the true MVP here and will provide a secure bond.
Next up was installing into the cabinet itself. I used 14in soft close slides and used scrap 3/4in plywood pieces for my spacing. I needed to take into account that I wanted my drawer fronts to be inset, or sit flush with the trim, so that meant I had to install the drawer slides back about 3/4in.
I personally did not use any particular measurements to space things out, but I did use the same amount of plywood between the bottom and middle drawer and the middle and top drawer. I clamped a scrap plywood piece to the sides of the cabinet and made sure it was level, then screwed in according to manufacturing instructions.
I wish I made it to finishing the third cabinet, but I still have drywall to put up in the closet before I can move onto that cabinet. All in good time, I'm trying not to put too much pressure on this challenge and just enjoy the ride.
Make sure you check out what the other participants are up to and go cheer them on! Find the blog here: https://www.oneroomchallenge.com/blog/orcspring2021wk2
And don't forget to follow along on Instagram stories for behind the scenes of the builds!
Until next time!
-xo-
Natasha
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