#110- Taking a Stand

So lately I've been mentioning my need to scratch #110 off The List and build some night stands for our near empty Master Bedroom.  And by mentioning, I mean annoying you all and talking about it obsessively.  So this weekend, I finally got an entire weekend off (I've been working some crazy hours at my day job and in about 23 days I had just 1 day off), and I decided to get-a-rockin'.

I used this plan from ana-white.com to match the bed frame and head board that I already built.  As a reminder, here's what we have so far:

I followed Ana's instructions to the letter, and lucky for me the good people at Home Depot were willing to cut my plywood pieces into sections in the store to make it much easier for me not only to get the wood home, but to cut it to my exact lengths when I got home.  As with my couch building project and my headboard building project, I won't walk you through ever step of the building process as Ana's instructions are more clear than my rambling will ever be.  I'll just share with you my highlights. 

First I built my boxes, and tapped the backs on:

Then I installed the feet/base:

Then I built the drawers:

Hanging out in the garage with Big Blue, which is waiting for a dumpster.

And cut the notches in the drawer faces.  Free handing it with the jig saw is not one of my greatest talents, but after a lot of sanding to even it all out, I'm pretty happy with the result.

The only thing that I wasn't thrilled about with Ana's plans, is since the outside frame and the drawers were built with plywood, it meant that I had a whole bunch of exposed, plywood composit edges.  Like this:

I spent a couple hours applying wood veneer around all 4 drawer faces and all around the base cabinet.  Not that it's tricky, its basically just ironing it on.  But there was a lot of surface area to cover.

The Hubs actually came out to help me for a bit (and snapped the photo above.)  It was one of those magical moments when it was an usually warm Fall day, the Hubs and I were working together on a project, and the Lil' Man was running around in the garage with his own toy tools.  The sort of magic I dreamed about back when we were waiting 6+ months to buy The Lodge.

The problem with iron on veneer though, is even once you get it all applied, the edges are still rough.

Which means even more time spent sanding down all the edges of all 4 drawers, and then all the edges of the two base cabinets. But eventually, hours later, well after the Hubs and Ry had given up on me and retreated back to the house, I had this. 

 

Once all the sanding was done I thought I was in the clear.  Pop in the drawer tracks, attach the faces, and bam- done.  Right?  Wrong.  Super wrong. 

I don't know if any of you have ever attempted to attach drawer pulls before, but I had no idea how tricky they can be.  If your front is just 1/16th higher than the back, or the left side just 1/16th lower than the right, the drawer won't close.  I spent more hours than I care to admit after Ry's bedtime trying to get 2 drawers to go in, and after 12:30AM took the walk of shame back into the house without a single moving drawer.  It taunted me in my sleep.  I considered throwing the whole thing in the fire and dancing around the flames.

The next morning I woke with a little more clarity, and headed to the interwebs for some tips on installing drawer tracks.  That's where I found the I-can't-believe-I-didn't-think-of-that solution, using a block of wood as a guide while installing the track.  I just measured the distance up from the bottom of the cabinet, and from the top of the first drawer that my track needed to go, cut a block of wood to that width, and rested the track on top of the drawer when installing. 

In far less time this time around, I had all four drawers in.  Cue Carlton-esk celebration dance in the driveway.  Sorry neighbors.

All that's left is the drawer faces.  I pulled the drawers back out and drilled pocket holes with my Kreg Jig.

Then I placed the drawers back in, applied glue to the front edges, and placed the drawer fronts on exactly where I wanted them to go.  I used some spare tiles left over from Bath Crashers to weight the drawer front down.

Once the glue set a few hours later, I returned to carefully pull out the drawers, and screw on the faces using the pocket holes I had already drilled.  That. Just. Happened.

 

I've got some staining to do this week in the same dark color as our bathroom closets and the headboard, but I can't wait to get these babies up into the bedroom.  

What about you guys?  Any big projects this weekend?  Small projects?  I'm happy to say that even though this was a time consuming project, I still had time to fit in a trip to the apple orchard with my fam, a couple of nice long runs, and a yummy batch of homemade pumpkin pancakes on Sunday morning.  Epically great weekend.  Happy Monday

P.S.- Fast forward to the finished product with Part 2 of the Nightstand project here.