Building a Window Seat with Drawers

in this video i'm going to show you how to make a custom length drawer bench like this using just basic tools we have this space in our dining room that would be perfect for kind of a window seat drawer bench and i could use the extra storage it's about 10 feet between the beams it's really hard to find something that fits perfect and looks built in so i went over to shelf help which is a service that i created that custom cuts your plywood for you and ships it to you with the front edge edge banded this is all three quarter inch thick pure bond plywood so really the best of the best i only ordered one shelf per bay because i'm adding drawers in there so it doesn't need that shelf underneath it with just a couple of clicks and i had it all ordered up in the meantime while i was waiting for it to ship i downloaded the pdf drawings that come with it and this is kind of cool because if you don't know how to use a 3d program or it's time consuming to use a 3d program you can just use the 3d drawings that come with the shelf help pieces to kind of create your cut list and all the other pieces that you need and gather those while you're waiting so the shelf help also comes with a front elevation so if you're trying to figure out drawer sizes and drawer faces that sort of thing it's easy to do as well we're just trying to give you a couple of different options whatever your preference might be what's really cool about this shelf help is i actually needed just over one full sheet of plywood if i was to rip it myself so i would have to buy two sheets of plywood but because i ordered it from shelf help i only pay for what i'd need i didn't have to pay for a bunch of scraps that are going to sit around in my garage and take up space so i'm using a pocket hole jig by craig to make my joints i've been using this system for about 10 years and have been very happy with it you can use a hand pocket hole jig like i'm doing here these run between 100 and 150 dollars and they work awesome this exact craig jig i've had for about 10 years and it's still going strong and hasn't failed me yet so i couldn't recommend it more besides drilling the holes for joining plywood together the kreg jig is great for like edge to edge joints say you're making a table top or something like that all right time for assembly so this project the pieces looked really small when they came in the mail but it is gigantic so i had to do a little bit of strategic thinking about how to make it all work out on my small workspace i'm using one and a quarter inch pocket hole screws and i'm just hiding those on the underside of the bench so if you will this bench is upside down and i'm building it upside down with the pocket holes hidden underneath it'll all make sense i promise [Music] okay so that there is just half of the drawer bench if i could do this again i think i would have built this in two separate pieces and then just set them next to each other because it was a lot easier to handle but i made it work and honestly it was an awesome feeling to be able to tackle such a gigantic project all by myself so the plywood is really nice because it's super square and it's easy to work with it's really precise cuts the front edge is already edge banded so i don't have to worry about a face frame and i don't have to worry about like 1 by 12 boards cupping on me or not being deep enough is it's designed to work this way this is how a professional cabinet maker would make a drawer bench like this for you okay so i gotta find some more room in my shop it's not every day i make a project this gigantic but i could definitely see making some like big built-in bookshelves which would take up a lot of room and space as well so it's pretty exciting to see a project like this go together so quickly literally to this point i just had to drill the pocket holes on all of the shelf ends for per end and then attach it to the ends and the dividers super simple to this point okay so now if you think about the plywood as say the skeleton you still need like ligaments or tendons to tie everything together so i call them base supports and they're exactly the same length as your shelf boards and i just screw them in for some rigidness and to tie everything in it's kind of like the framework that is going to give some lateral support keep your project square and sometimes it can be used decorative too so you might see it as a footer or you know a header in the front of your piece and i just pocket hold all these together so another reason i love using the pocket holes is see how i'm joining those boards in kind of like a t shape how would you do that if you were just screwing or nailing it's very difficult to do without the kreg jig so i highly recommend it and once i added these base supports it really created some rigidness in the project and made it very solid so the cool thing about the shelf health system is you can just make a project as big as you want like you're no longer limited to an eight foot long piece of plywood because of the way that we join the bays together you can just keep adding more bays and make it larger and then increase the top or stack them on top of each other it's really unlimited all right i felt like the seat since this is upside down need a little bit more support so i'm putting these one by twos underneath the seat with just i'm using the pocket hole screws again and this is going to provide some additional support for the seat remember everything's upside down here all right time to add some drawer slides so i always think in terms of where the screw is going to go on my drawer slide not necessarily where is the drawer slide going to go but where are the screws going to go [Music] so i'll draw a line on my project where i want to start my screws and line it up see notice the drawer slides all the screws are in a line i have a really good video on installing drawers and i was like 12 minutes of talking about drawers so if you want more information on that i'll leave that link in the description i cut my drawer sides usually to the same length as my drawer slides so i think these are 20 inch drawer slides so they should be 20 inches long i don't know why i cut these a little longer maybe i was getting a little bit greedy about my storage but notice i'm installing the cabinet member of the drawer slide inset three quarters of an inch this is to allow the drawer to be inset three quarters of an inch after i install the drawer i'll put a drawer face on it that'll sit flush to the front [Music] i do my drawer slides a little different for the first one i'll attach the drawer member just to the side without actually building the box and make sure everything's sliding good and i'm happy with it and then i'll take a measurement between the two drawer sides to get my drawer front and back box measurements go ahead and cut that and fit it and make sure it all slides and then attach it there's definitely faster ways of doing this but i find this method gives me a really nice sliding drawer slide on the very first try and if you're you know frustrated with math what happens if you are using an off brand drawer slide and it needs a little bit less or a little bit more clearance or you know using half inch plywood for your drawer box you know it can all get really confusing really quickly so doing it this way takes all the confusion out you literally just cut and measure as you go and then once you get the first drawer built you can go into production mode and build all the remaining drawers given that the spacing in between is the same which is true in this project so the first one always takes a little bit more time and i want to make sure it works good there's nothing worse than a drawer that doesn't slide quite right and once i got it sliding right i'm going to add the bottom on it so i'm using quarter inch plywood and you can cut this on a table saw if you have one another way is a circular saw on a piece of foam or raised up on a couple of scrap wood pieces cutting quarter inch plywood is super simple because it's so thin it just cuts so easily and um and you don't have to be perfectly accurate here because it's just a drawer bottom it's not like the framework of your bench i'm going to start working on the baseboard here so i'm just using five and a quarter inch tall base board molding that's left over from my house just cutting it to fit right now and i've got everything turned on upside down so i'll figure out how to flip that over and get this baseboard on i like to scribe my baseboard instead of just measuring it because i want it to be perfect it really is impactful on the project this was probably the hardest part of this whole project is getting this 10 foot long piece of baseboard on the bottom of this project by myself and make sure it looks good and isn't sagging anywhere is completely square all the way down okay so the end pieces are really easy i just kind of cut that 45 miter on the front scribe the end and nail it in place i like a tall baseboard because that means when you open the drawer up it doesn't hit your foot and it's easier to clean around and then if you're not using a drawer i also like a tall baseboard because it elevates that bottom shelf up so you're not reaching down quite as far but it does take up some space so you do lose some storage so there's always a trade-off [Music] all right the drawer faces are just 1 by 12's and i'm just gonna nail them a couple places tack them in place with the ancient gap all the way around and then pull the drawer out and further secure with some screws and yes you can use the crank screws here too [Music] all right so i'm going to put primer and paint on it after a good sanding and then drill the holes for the handles and uh figure out someone to help me haul this up the stairs [Music] so i don't even want to share with you how grace and i managed to get this in place but this thing is huge i think this is one of the biggest pieces of furniture that i've ever made entirely by myself so i'm super super proud of how it turned out there's a ton of storage in there and we just think all this was on my dining room table a couple days ago now it's all neatly hit the other kind of cool thing is if you could build your base to fit a cushion say you wanted a day bed with drawers under it you could build this to fit the day bed size so a lot of different options on how you want to top it as well but we're super excited about it glad that we can share the how to i'm glad that we can provide the shelf help service if that's of interest to you make sure you click the link in the description for more details on how i built this and how to fill it yourself thanks guys for watching we'll see you next week [Music] you

Channel: Ana White

Views: 831,414

Keywords: anawhite, ana white, woodworking, build, wood, plans, project, howto, how to, how-to, diy, doityourself, do it yourself, do-it-yourself, easy, simple, 2x4, free plans, make, tutorial, drawer bench, window seat, bench with drawers, window seat bench, dining room bench, banquette, seating

Id: APdNwNgSqE0

Length: 13min 46sec (826 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 01 2020