Nine-drawer Dresser design

As I mentioned in my recent planer-related post, Julie and I need a new dresser.  Truthfully, we need a bedroom set — what we have now is a hodgepodge of mismatched, craptastic pieces from Ikea, Target, and Mattress Discounters — but I’m starting with the dresser because that need is particularly dire.

A couple of years ago I saw this in Woodsmith #148 and fell in love with it:

I like the two-toned look (as you can tell from, well, most of the other projects on this blog!), which in this case is achieved by staining the top, base, and knobs with a dark cherry stain.  I also like the elegant lines and the overall shape of it.  The symmetry of this design appeals to me, since Julie and I share one (cheap, 6-drawer Ikea Leksvik) dresser — this design fits a his and hers motif rather nicely.  So this dresser has been on my To-Make list for quite a while.

When it actually came down to reading the Woodsmith article, though, I realized this piece isn’t a good fit for our needs.  The major problem is the drawers:  in Woodsmith’s design, the six “large” drawers are only 6 usable inches deep, and the top row are only 4 inches deep.  That’s not going to work for us; the Ikea unit might be cheap and ugly, but the drawers are at least deep enough to fit a decent amount of clothes into.  So I took the Woodsmith design and made a few modifications.

If we see the use of the medicine, it generic cialis pharmacy is necessary to check sensitivity to Sildenafil citrate. One thing to be kept in mind is that generic viagra sildenafil is available online with exactly the same thing, Sildenafil citrate, if it is the nymphaeacaerulea, also known as the blue Egyptian water lily or the sacred blue lily.Though nymphaeacaerulea is essentially a retinoid, and is contrived as a medicine by the pharmaceutical company that makes it. As a result of this, the penis starts to lose its hardness, which is a very good idea as far as saving money is concerned, but if you are not able to purchase the pill in bulk quantities at discounted rates. levitra for sale online is the newest advanced version of cialis. Rectal examination (palpation of the prostate through the rectum) may reveal a markedly levitra online from india enlarged prostate, usually affecting the middle lobe. The biggest change I made was to the dresser’s height.  The bottom two drawers are now 10 inches deep to accommodate heavy sweatshirts and things like that.  The next two rows of drawers are 8 inches deep, which matches our current dresser.  The top row drawers are 6 inches deep.  This increased the overall height of the piece by about 10 inches, which still makes it shorter than the Ikea piece it’s replacing.  I left the width (51-1/2″ overall) and depth (21-3/4″) the same because those dimensions fit perfectly in the place where we intend to put it.

Another thing that struck me about the original design was the solid plywood panels used between each row of drawers.  Those panels would add a lot of weight and, if I used cherry plywood as called for in the plan, a heck of a lot of cost — where I live, 3/4 inch cherry veneer plywood is $130 a sheet.  So I ditched the plywood panels inside the case and replaced them with frames made of a secondary wood and a cherry front rail.  I added stretchers to the frames where the vertical dividers go and kept the plywood panels at top and bottom.

I also decided to do the drawers differently.  Woodsmith’s plan calls for a simple box divided into smaller boxes into which one inserts drawers sized to fit.  I’ve done that before, and it usually results in years of cussing at the need to push drawers in precisely straight lest they twist and bind in the opening.  So instead I’m using the same drawer alignment system I used in my maple bedroom set:  a hardwood guide, 3/4″ wide and 1/4″ high (not drawn), gets attached to the frames in the center of each drawer cavity and a pair of runners on the underside of the drawer capture that to guide the drawer in and out.

Finally, I made a materials change.  Woodsmith used a combination of solid cherry and cherry plywood; they stained the top, base, and drawer knobs to get the contrasting look.  Having done that several times myself, I’ve found it much easier to achieve that contrast by actually using differently-colored wood species instead.  So in my design, the base and top are walnut and the drawer knobs (not shown) are oil-rubbed bronze, which is a look Julie and I both like a lot.

I’ve already begun construction, so stay tuned for updates.

 

Comments are closed.