Add Drawers To Your Project Easily | Basics of Building DIY

[Music] a lot of people avoid building projects with drawers because they think that jurors are hard to build but we're here to show you that they're really not a drawer after all is just another type of box with a front and back two sides and a bottom the drawer box fits into an opening in your project and then a false front will get applied later to cover up the gaps and create a finished look even sizing a drawer isn't difficult if you're using drawer slides like these they're always a half inch thick so as long as you make the total width of your drawer an inch narrower than your opening you'll be good to go and speaking of hardware just because you're building DIY doesn't mean you can't have high quality hardware these drawer slides are available in any Home Center and they're not expensive they ride on ball bearings so the actions really smooth and they're called full extension slides that means they open far enough you can get complete access to the drawer without having to reach inside these even have a soft closed mechanism just like you'd find on a high-end kitchen cabinet so we'll get to installing the hardware in a bit but the first step is to build the drawer box a lot of times drawer boxes are built from half-inch thick material using half-inch material allows more space inside the drawer than using thicker 3/4 inch material would so you get a little bit more space and like other box construction building a drawer is a straightforward process just cut your front back in sides to length and then you can put them together using pocket hole joinery you'll just drill pocket holes in both ends of the front and the back to drill the pocket holes in the drawer box we're using a Kreg jig accessory called the micro pocket drill guide it creates a smaller pocket hole than the standard guide and uses a smaller screw that's great for seating down into half-inch thick material all you have to do is clamp the drawer front or back into the jig and drill the holes so that takes care of the drawer front and back the bottom is made from half-inch plywood I've gone ahead and cut that to size so while the jig set up I'm gonna go ahead and drill those pocket holes - you really just need a few along each edge [Music] so the potholes in the drawer box are in the bottom of the drawer box will go in the underside that way they won't show from inside and you can see too that I've drilled the pocket holes in the front in the back of the drawer instead of in the sides and there's a reason for that this way with the pocket screws going this way it adds a lot of strength and when you pull the drawer open you've got more strength in that joint so you don't have to worry about your drawer box ever coming apart just like when you're building any kind of box clamps are really handy and these corner clamps hold the pieces together at 90 degrees while you drive in the screws with the first screws in it can pop the clamps off everything stays in place and you've got access to the other pocket hole a nice thing with building drawers this way too is with the pocket holes in the front and back of the drawer box they won't be seen the false front will cover the ones in the front of the drawer box and the others will be on the back side of the drawer so when you look inside you won't see those sometimes when you pop the clamps off things might move around just a little bit but the other screws holding the joint together so it's easy to just tweak the position a little bit and drive in the last screws now you can install the plywood drawer bottom and it needs to sit flush with the bottom of the drawer box if you just try to set it in place it won't stay and it's gonna be hard to hold it there while you drive in the screws the trick is to use spacers spacers can be really handy in projects I've just cut some to length from scrap wood the drawer sides are three and a half inches tall and the drawer bottom is a half inch thick so I made my spacers three inches long just put one in each corner and then set the drawer box or the drawer bottom in place in the box now it's held solidly while I Drive in the screws even though I'm using the spacers I like to go a little bit gently and get one screw in on each side for each edge and that pulls things together and then it's easy to just drive in the remaining screws with the bottom in place you've got a solid drawer box and it's just made from half-inch boards and a piece of plywood when you're building a furniture style project with a face frame like this one usually the outside edge of the face frame is flush with the outside of the box it looks great but it does mean there's a gap inside and if you're installing a drawer you won't have a surface to mount it to you can easily get around that though by just cutting someone buy stock putting pocket holes at each end and screwing them inside the cabinet so that they're flush with the inside of the face frame these just go from front to back and attach to a brace that's pocket holding at the back and with those you've got a surface where you can mount your drawer slides when you're installing drawer slides it's a two-step process because the drawer slide has two pieces one that gets installed inside the box and another that gets mounted to the drawer when you're trying to mount the piece inside the box you need to try to hold it in place and keep it straight and level and drive in the screws all at the same time and that takes more hands than any of us have thankfully there's a solution once again using a jig a drawer slide jig is just a pair of brackets that get clamped inside the cabinet with the jig in place you can set your drawer slide in position and it sits nice and level and straight and stays stable so you can concentrate on driving in the screws your drawer slides will come with instructions for just how far inside the cabinet it should be positioned usually it's around 3/16 of an inch so once you've got it in place using the jig you can concentrate on just driving in the screws with the inside portions of the slides mounted the next step is to mount the drawer box they grab it and for the drawer to work properly it also has to be aligned and straight the jig once again makes that easy because you can pop the brackets out and flip them around these little tabs make sure that it lines up now you can reinstall the drawer portion of each slide sometimes you got to wiggle it around a little bit to get them in place now with the brackets in place on the outside it makes aligning the drawer box easy just set it in place and I'll line up the front edge with a couple of marks here on the jig takes just a little negotiation but you'll get it there and then open the slides back up now you can slide the drawer box out and position that portion of the slide just where they'll get put varies a little bit depending on the slide manufacturer these go right at the front now the drawer box is held in place and you can drive in those screws [Applause] got to kind of locate where the back screws go by just kind of playing with the halves of the slide with the screws in the drawer box you can pop the jig rackets out and close the drawer sometimes the slides are a little bit stiff at first but they'll come around now they work great but if you notice even with the jig the drawer box is a little bit low on this side that's fine though the mounting holes are slotted so all you need to do is loosen one screw adjust the position and you can take care of that misalignment the final piece to add to the drawer is the false front it goes on to hide the hardware and the gaps around the drawer box here are a couple of simple tips to make it easier to align it first I like to use a spacer and I want a half-inch between the doors and the drawer front so I've grabbed an extra piece of my half inch material second to align it from side to side I know what I want the offset to be so I've set my multi mark to that and I just align it with the spacer holding it I can clamp it down then you can go ahead and attach the false front with a couple of pocket hole screws driven from the inside and with that this cabinet will be ready for its last piece of hardware the drawer pole after you've gone to the work to build a drawer and add a nice front to it you want to make sure that you get the hardware position correctly usually that means having it centered from side to side and from top to bottom on the drawer front getting everything aligned and drilling the holes accurately would be very difficult by hand especially on a pole like this one that has two holes the solution and a way to make sure you'll be successful is to use a jig this cabinet hardware jig will automatically position the holes and allow you to drill them nice and straight but to do it you first got to get it centered on the drawer and that's easy just measure the width of your drawer front in this case twenty-one inches so I know that half of that is at ten and a half now I'll just draw a little line using the multi mark to make sure it's square I've already adjusted the drill guides on the jig to match the hole spacing of the pole and I've set the fence so that the distance from the fence to the holes is half the width of the drawer front now you can align the jig with the center line you drew on the drawer front using the zero mark or the little window and then clamp the jig down then you're ready to drill the holes the guides make sure that the holes are nice and straight [Music] pop the jig off and got two perfect holes now I'm not worried about the alignment mark that's drawn on here it's one of the reasons I always like to install hardware when the project is still raw I'll go ahead and sand and get everything ready before applying this final stain and finish but for now we'll test fit the hardware and you can see that thanks to the jig it's going to line up and look great you you

Channel: Kreg Tool

Views: 1,320,051

Rating: 4.8435054 out of 5

Keywords: Kreg, Kreg Tool, Kreg Jig, pocket hole, pocket hole jig, Kreg Joinery, building, wood, woodworking, DIY, DIY Project, project plan, project plans, Home Depot, Lowe’s, DIY home décor, home décor, DIY furniture, DIY build, DIY idea, DIY skill, DIY skills, DIY tool, DIY tools, stepback cabinet, stepback cupboard, drawers, drawer, cabinet drawer, cabinet drawers

Id: C0bVRQbQIzI

Length: 17min 6sec (1026 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 18 2018