2 Day Nightstand Build || Mid Century Made Easy

this video was sponsored by Squarespace Craig didn't show up for work this morning which is weird because he usually shows up for work and when he does it at least he calls and tells me why now you might not know this but Craig's also my next door neighbor so naturally when he didn't show up for work I decided to walk next door and see if he was okay but I went over there and I knocked on the door nobody answered and I looked in the window and everything seemed dark like nobody was home now Craig did give me a spare key and he said only to use it in emergencies but if there was ever an emergency I think this is it I don't know where Craig is so I let myself in and I started looking for him in my own way I mean sure I might have made myself a snack and sat down on the couch and started watching TV but I was getting to it I was gonna look for him and then I pulled out my phone and looked at my calendar and that's when I remembered Craig's on vacation all week silly me I mean he did tell me I just wasn't paying attention so now that I knew Craig was okay of course well I was gonna leave but I was pretty sleepy from all the hard work of looking for him so I made myself a cup of warm milk and I decided to take a nap the couch is all sticky leather couches they're not good for taking naps so I decided to go take a nap in Craig's bed and I was just about ready to snuggle in for a good night's sleep and I took my warm milk and I was gonna set it on the nightstand now this is where the story gets really weird [Music] there was no nightstand I know I bedroom doesn't have a nightstand so I figured since Craig's gone and I have access to his house well I might as well do the neighborly thing finish my nap and then try and make him some nightstands now Craig doesn't know about this nor does he know that I'm spending this much time in his house while he's gone so hopefully he's happy and not upset that I took a nap in his bed but hopefully the nightstands will make up for that anyways let's get to work [Music] thank you [Music] now if you're building nightstands for somebody whose house you broke into so you can't ask their opinion I would imagine the best thing to do is to go with the most expensive wood you can get your hands on so I grab some Oregon black walnut and I got to work first thing I did was have to Mill down all of my roughs on Lumber so that it was nice and flat and square and I could actually do something with it now the nightstands I had in mind had a box on the top with kind of an intricate base on the bottom the Box on the top is going to be made up of solid walnuts the first thing I had to do was glue up some slabs that I could later cut down so that I could you know make my box out of them so after Milling all my pieces I added some glue I stuck them in clamps I whacked them a couple times with a hammer and I squeezed them real tight now all I have to do is wait for that to dry and while that's happening I'm going to start working on my legs now the legs for the nightstand I'm gonna make out of this eight quarter solid black walnut so instead of running this entire piece through the jointer and planner I decided to cut it down into more manageable pieces then I went over to the Joiner I joined it on the face and the edge I ran it through the planer bringing it right down to an inch and 5 8 and then I went over to the table saw and I trimmed it down and a nice little leg shaped pieces zip zap Zoop but I didn't trim it down exactly to the right size because I wanted to fine tune it over on the planer once I got all the pieces rough cut so after trimming them down to an inch and 5 8 I went over to the planer and then I planed them down so that each individual piece was exactly an inch and a half oh ah look at that sexy leg I mean you can't see them because the camera doesn't show my lower half but anyways I have sexy legs by the time I was done trimming down on my legs my slabs were all dry so I took them out of clamps and I set them aside we'll get to those later for now I want to keep working on this base now that I had all my leg pieces exactly an inch and a half by an inch and a half I went over to the miter saw and I cut them all to a uniform length now I'm leaving them a few inches longer than I actually need them because I want a little wiggle room now I designed this mock-up on SketchUp of what I generally want the nightstand to look like but I kind of hate it I actually hate these straight cross pieces that go across the front I think it's ugly and uninteresting I decided I want to do an X cross brace on the top and on the bottom but instead of redesigning the whole thing so I had exact measurements I decided just to take the measurement on SketchUp from corner to corner and wing it I mean I'm not one for plans anyway so winging it is kind of my thing so after getting those measurements I went over to the miter saw and I cut down some cross pieces that I'll use to connect the legs to the legs and and I cut them roughly to what I thought was the right length next I need to add a mortise into the end of each one of these brace pieces for that I'm going to be using the Domino Joiner but the thing is all of them have to be exactly identical and they all have to be mortised in the very center of each one of these pieces so because I have to do eight pieces total I decided to throw together a little plywood jig so I grabbed a little scrap plywood I grabbed some CA glue and I started building out a jig that would perfectly hold the Domino Joiner in one place and allow me to get repeatable mortises that were all identical once I had plywood to hold the Domino Joiner where I wanted it I needed something to keep the Walnut from sliding back and forth so I grabbed this little pressure clamp thingama Bob I found in my scrap drawer and we had a working jig all I had to do was slide my Walnut in there lock it down mortise in one side it looked something like this perfectly centered and then I just had to flip it around and do the exact same thing to the other end and when I was done with one piece well I had seven more I had to work my way through but don't worry I won't make you watch all of those at least not in real time pretty soon I had all the mortises cut in my brace pieces and now I had to start thinking about connecting them to my legs so I kind of laid out exactly how I wanted that to work brace piece on the bottom brace piece on the top and I cut some little scrap blocks that were the exact height that I wanted those brace pieces to sit up from the floor and I used that to Mark where I needed to add mortises into the legs and then I used this little square with the adjustable stop to Mark where I needed the mortises to go on the top of the side table and then I grabbed the Domino jointer and while I just started mortising like nobody's business and pretty soon I had all the mortises cut in the legs and all the mortises cut in my brace pieces and I could start slapping things together now at this point you might be thinking how are you gonna get that to turn into an X and join into another set of legs well just like this I'll just stick it through here and then boom voila no actually I do have to figure out a way to half lap these two brace pieces into each other at exactly the right angle and exactly the right distance so that everything is even imperfect and fits into my legs exactly how I want them that's gonna be tricky so I disassembled all of my pieces and I marked dead center on each one of my brace pieces now this is very important you have to mark the exact dead center this has to be perfect then I went over to the drill press and I drilled a quarter inch hole halfway through each one of my pieces right in the center then I brought all my pieces back over and I inserted a quarter inch dowel into that hole and then I flip over my other piece on the top and now I know that both of these pieces are pivoting right on the center of each one of those brace pieces they might be asking why is this important well this is going to allow me to figure out the exact angle for that half lap and make sure that everything fits together well the way that it should dare I say x marks the spot with all of my cross pieces held together with that pivoting dowel system I hooked everything back together with the legs and I set it up on my workbench now because of that dowel I can pivot the entire thing but I know while it moves it's still staying perfectly centered so once I got it splayed at the right dimensions you know the right Span in between leg the leg that I wanted I put a clamp on to lock it in place now that I have the dimension and the angle exactly how I want it it's as simple as coming in with a pencil and just marking where I need to cut my half laps I mean it seems like it should be more complicated than this but I really don't think it is after marking everything taking it apart my cross sections look something like this I just have to cut halfway through each brace piece exactly at that angle lucky for me I have the Rockler cross cut sled which has adjustable angle gauge on it so cutting that angle really isn't that big of a deal I put a dado stack that's the exact thickness as my brace piece and my dado saw I added one of these custom bourbon moth stop blocks available on my website and I started cutting my half laps I cut one examined it it looked okay I stuck my next piece in there I flipped it around making sure I cut through where I drilled that hole I cut my second half lap and if all is how I think it should be these should fit together in a perfect half-lapped X and become my you know Table leg brace section area thing my Bob and what do you know as far as I can tell that is a perfect half-lapped X at the exact angle and distance that I need it to be for my table base setup to make sure I took my two x's over to my work table and I started throwing on my Square legs and I was very happy to see that they all fit together nice and tight there were no gaps and everything looked well exactly as I plant man every once in a while a plan really comes together after doing all these cuts to one I did the exact same thing to the other and now I had two x bases for my nightstands but I really didn't like that they were so square with such sharp Corners so I wanted to give the legs a nice round profile so I inserted a three-quarter inch round over bit from bits and bits into my router table and using a feather board to hold my piece down firm against the router table surface I started running my legs through the router table rounding over each one of my four corners until I pretty much had an almost perfectly round leg now it's really important to note that you can't do this until after you do your joinery which is why I did all my joinery beforehand because you need those nice Square surfaces to reference off of but once you get all your joinery cut well you can round over whatever you want so with all my Square legs now perfectly round I started cutting them all to length cutting off that little bit of excess that I didn't round over then I had to sand now the real problem with building a piece of furniture for Craig is that Craig's usually the one that does all the freaking sanding and now that he's gone and I'm doing this for him I have to do all the sanding what the heck Craig after sanding all my pieces and rounding them over we had a slight problem because my brace pieces were Square they didn't want to line up on my round legs there was a little bit of a gap so I needed to round over the inside of my brace pieces to match the profile of my legs so I went over to my oscillating spindle sander and I just added a little half moon shape on the end of each one of my brace pieces I didn't remove any length I just removed a little bit of material on the center of the brace piece now as you can see it fits tight along that rounded profile and I was ready to glue up my X base pieces well with a little bit of glue and when I say little I mean very little because I didn't really want any squeeze out once the X's are glued together it was time to glue everything together now I was very very careful doing this glue up to use a very minimal amount of glue because the last thing I wanted was a bunch of squeeze out all over the place that I was gonna have to sand off later because those round legs were a pain to sand to begin with so I just use a very small amount of glue but you know enough glue on each Tenon and I hooked everything together I did have a little squeeze out in a few places but I quickly wiped it up with a very wet cloth and hopefully there won't be too much cleanup when all is said and done after getting all my legs and Brace pieces glued together with my dominoes I stuck them in clamps and I set them aside and waited for them to dry and with that our table base is were done what are you doing I am designing my tattoo why I'm gonna put this on my lower back because sometimes when I bend down my shirt comes up a little bit and then people see this on my lower back and it's a list of all the things that I sell so wait you're gonna put that on your lower back instead of just getting a website well first of all I don't know what a website is well everyone should know what a website is it's 2023 and if you want to build one and you don't know what you're doing you just get on Squarespace you can create a website you can put all your products on there and you don't have to do that well let's just say for argument's sake that I do want to get this tattoo and people do see the things I sell but I also have them on my website and they just want to purchase from me right there is there a way that I can just take their money and they don't have to go online uh yeah Squarespace actually has their own point of sale so you can take credit cards directly from people if you see them in person and the cool thing is it's linked up to your inventory on your website so if you sell something in person it automatically changes the inventory on your website well as you can see this list is pretty long is there a limit to how many items I can put on my online store literally it's unlimited you can have as much merchandise as you want on there you want a million products have a million products if you want to put hugs and smiles put hugs and smiles smiles hugs my business is always changing sometimes I want to go one way and sometimes I want to go the other way so what if I spend all this time and I create a website and then you know a few months down the road I want to change it a little bit they have flexible templates so if you choose one template and start building your website and then later you decide you want to go a different direction all you have to do is edit your template or change it all together I'm interested but where do I go what do I do how do I sign up you go to squarespace.com and you sign up you build your website when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com bourbon moth Woodworking and you get 10 off your first purchase of a website or a domain you know with the money I save signing up for Squarespace I might be able to get two tattoos with our two nightstand bases done it was time to start working on the boxes that will sit on the top now this is going to be the actual night stand piece you know that you can set your warm glass of milk on or a book or your reading glasses or last night's Pizza whatever so the first thing I needed to do was grab those two slabs that I glued up at the beginning of the video and run them through the planer after that I gave them a light sanding and then before I did anything else I had to get the exact measurements off of my bases so I knew how big to build my boxes I wanted the boxes to sit about a sixteenth of an inch in from those legs so they didn't rub once I knew my Dimensions I used my track saw and a square guide and I started cutting down all the parts and pieces to make a nice box now as I'm cutting out all these pieces I do want to think about grain Direction although this isn't going to be a mitered box I do want the grain to somewhat match as it goes from the top and on to the sides so after cutting down as many pieces as I could with the track saw and shrinking down that slab to a size that I was comfortable running it through the table saw I went over to the table saw to complete all my cutting basically the box is made up of a bottom two sides and a top there is this big hole on the back that we have to do something about so I took some of the off cuts from my other slabs and I glued them together so that I would have a long enough piece with the grain going in the direction that I wanted to fill in that hole on the back once that glue was good and dry I measured how long I needed that piece to be I went over to my miter saw I cut it to that length and I wedged it in there now we have all the pieces needed to make up our box so after making sure it fit exactly how I wanted I went over to my work table and I started gluing all these pieces together I'm not going to use dominoes or anything like that to glue this together because it's long grained a long grain and just a little glue will be plenty strong while I wait for that glue to dry I thought it would be kind of cool to add some secret wireless charging into the top of each one of the nightstands so I bought these wireless chargers and under mount brackets on Amazon I traced out the shape of the bracket and charger and then using the shaper Trace which is this cool frame I took a picture of it and that gave me an SVG file I then took that SVG file I stuck it on my shaper origin and I started carving out that exact shape on the underside of my nightstand top pretty soon I had the entire thing hogged out and my charger and mounting bracket fit perfectly right in there with only about an eighth of an inch of Walnut above it so hopefully that'll be thin enough that your phone will still get that Wireless charge I free handed a little slot for the cord and then I decided to test it out yep works perfectly Craig won't even know these are in here and I'm not going to tell them for at least five or six years and then one day I'll be like hey did you know there's Chargers in those nightstands and they'd be like no I'd be like yeah let me show you and then I'll show them and then it'll be really mad that I didn't show him earlier yeah what a loser I needed to do a little cord management so the drawer wouldn't hit the cord when it was hanging down so I took some of these quarter inch dowels and I just hammered them in that Groove to keep the cord out of the way I know it's simple but if it works it works then I just taped up the cord so it wasn't flopping all over the place while I was trying to glue these boxes up by the time I was finished playing around with the wireless charger setup my glue up for the sides of the box was dry so it was time to start hooking the tops and bottoms to the sides so I kind of assembled everything and I marked out for a few dominoes to really align everything while I glued them up once I had it all marked out I grabbed my Domino Joiner and well I used it like a domino Joiner and I drilled out all those little mortises I mean what else would I do with a domino jointer now before I glue this whole thing up I wanted to give the Box a little bit of a rounded profile to match the legs so I just clamped on a little piece that would give me a wider shoulder to run the router on and I rounded over all the edges of the sides of my box so that it would have well a rounded Overlook I mean what else would I do with a round over bit make it look Square I don't even think that's possible then there was one final thing I wanted to do before gluing up these boxes and that was add a rabbit to the edge of both the top and bottom of my sides now if you don't know what I mean by that you'll see here in just a second using a rabbeting bit I just add this little lip and what that's going to do is create this nice shadow line once I glue the top on it's just a little detail that I think makes the transition from the top of the sides look nice do you need to do this no but the devil's in the details I can't find them yet though I keep looking I'm like Devil where are you but he hasn't responded but people always say that he's in there so I'm Gonna Keep Looking until I hear a I'm over here and then I'll step on him because he's the devil and he should die and then after I kill him everyone's Gonna Be Like You Killed the devil and I'll be like yeah and then we'll go have celebratory beers anyways with my rabbit cut creating that nice shadow line I clamped on my top and bottom and I set it aside while I waited for the glue to dry on my two boxes I threw together these drawer boxes that will go in the top of the nightstands but I'm not going to bore you with how I made those because I've showed you a million times how to make drawers so just go back and watch one of my other videos once the glue was dry on the boxes I pulled them out of clamps and now using the rounded profile of the sides as a router template I rounded over the corners on the top to match the sides look at that nice and round and soft and fun looking ooh ah and then I sanded everything down because Craig's not here to do it even though they're his flipping nightstands with my boxes all sanded and smooth and looking sexy I went over to my bases and I set them in place just to double check and make sure that they still fit like they should which they did and they're looking pretty darn good if I do say so myself and then I had to figure out a way to attach those boxes to the base so I set the boxes upside down on my work table I set the base on top of them and then I marked out an even distance from each leg and I drew a center line on each one of my brace pieces then I grabbed a 5 8 inch forstner bit and I just drilled a little recessed hole about an eighth inch into the bottom of each one of those brace pieces then I grabbed a quarter inch drill bit and I drilled all the way through the brace piece until I made contact with the box underneath then I removed the base and using those holes left behind by the quarter inch drill bit I drilled some bigger holes and I inserted some threaded inserts with a little CA glue to lock them firmly in place I don't know why I left such a long clip of this I guess just so you could really get the idea oh there's more wonderful yep that's me installing threaded inserts then I sprayed on a little the activator to make sure the glue is dry and I sanded everything down so it looked nice and clean and you could just see the threaded inserts then I put the base back on and I inserted the corresponding bolts and I screwed them in there the foreman stopped by just to check my work and say how's it going and just like that my base was securely fastened to my box on the top and although you're never going to see it unless you stick your head under there it looks pretty nice and clean next I needed to install my drawer slides so I set those in place and then quickly realized that that cord is going to be in the way of me shutting the drawer so I measured and marked the exact center of the back of each nightstand and I drilled a little hole right in the center so that I could pass those cords through the back and get them out of the way I once again taped them up not that you need to know that but I did and I inserted my drawers click and wait for it satisfying click and the drawers were installed then I cut down some very simple drawer faces just out of solid three quarter inch Walnut and I inserted them making sure there was a perfect three thirty seconds Gap around all four sides and then I realized you know what I gotta do something for a pole on the front of these I did have these leftover off cuts from cutting down my legs so I decided to go over to the lathe and just turn some simple little knobs so I chalked up those scrap pieces in there and before long I had managed to turn well this thing that I actually really hated it was just too traditional so I chalked up another scrap piece in there and I decided to go much more simple and a little more mid-century just a very elegant tapered solid Walnut knob that looked something like oh I guess I'm I'm still lading here you'll have to wait for the final reveal ooh look at that finesse that detail work this guy must use the lathe at least once a year and boom a very simple mid-century inspired knob I quickly made another one that was nearly identical although not quite and then I had to figure out how to install them so I went over to the drill I drilled a hole dead center in each one of my knobs and I figured I had these threaded inserts laying around from installing the bases I might as well just use those so I threw a threaded insert into each one of the knobs and screwed on a bolt then all I had to do was install my drawer faces so using a little double-sided tape and some playing cards to get everything spaced nice and even I inserted my drawer face and I stuck it firmly against that pizza double-sided tape and tell it stuck then I measured the dead center of each one of my drawer faces I drilled a quarter inch hole I removed my spacer cards and I screwed on my freshly made custom Walnut drawer pull the nice thing about the double-sided tape method is that if your reveals are just a little bit off you can kind of fudge it a little bit after it's stuck on there pretty soon I was happy with the reveal all the way around so I secured the drawer face on with a few screws and boom the nightstands were completely built now if you know anything about woodworking you know that as soon as you complete something the next thing you do is you rip it all apart you just disassemble everything because as soon as you completely build something well then you have to flip and put finish on it probably my least favorite part of the entire build because it's all messy and gooey and I just spent all that time building something and now I gotta take it apart but whatever to finish these two nightstands I decided to use Rubio monocoat Walnut because well this wood is Walnut so I just figured that made sense so I grabbed that Rubio and I smeared it all over the place kind of hated myself for putting this little Shadow line in here because that was a pain to get Rubio in and out of but I got it done eventually now I know that Craig didn't ask for these and maybe he didn't even want them maybe they're the type of people that don't like nightstands maybe they're minimalists oh but I gotta say I think they look pretty darn nice on either side of that bed I mean yes breaking and entering was part of me building these but I did install these wireless chargers so they can't be too mad and I guess if they really don't like them I can always just take them to Goodwill [Music] Ah that's better well hopefully you enjoyed that video the funny thing is Craig and Hillary aren't going to be home for like three or four days so you guys all get to see the finished product before they ever do is he going to be mad I mean I hope not I think they're pretty cool he might be mad that I've been sleeping in his bed every night that he's gone though yeah whatever check the video description down there for links to products and tools that we used if you're not signed up on patreon well you're missing out we show a ton of behind the scenes footage over there we got Live question and answer every week we're running a contest right now where you could win a chance for me to come build a project with you so make sure you check those links down there I'm going to finally finish my nap and wait for Craig to get home four days ah I can nap that long wouldn't be the first time [Music]

Channel: Bourbon Moth Woodworking

Views: 182,289

Keywords: mid century modern, furniture flipping, diy furniture, modern furniture, mid century, furniture restoration, do it yourself, how to, mid century modern furniture, how to tie a tie, how to use chopsticks, bourbon moth woodworking, bourbon moth, I Broke Into A House and Made Furniture, Mid Century Made Easy, furniture, woodworking, make money, night stands, nightstands, side tables, mid century side tables, fine furniture, woodworking tips, woodworking tips and tricks, woodworks

Id: h1uGsPOrNsA

Length: 31min 54sec (1914 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 12 2023