DIY Fitted Wardrobe Build - DRAWERS & PAINTING - Video #5

welcome to video 5 of my wardrobe build in today's video i'm going to be running through construction of the drawer unit side frames why we need these and how to plan yours filling and sanding the wardrobe frame and caulking the fascia to the wall priming and painting which rollers and paint brushes i've found have worked best and i promised to tell you which primer out of zinza's bin and bullseye 123 i prefer building and installing the drawers the draw runners i'm using and why and as usual i'll be highlighting some pretty epic mistakes that i've made during this stage of the project so that you can avoid making the same mistakes yourself [Applause] now in the description below this video you will as usual find the entire tool list for this build so far but the following will feature heavily in today's video my urban plunge saw my ryobi random orbit sander with trend sanding discs connected to my henry vacuum i arrive a quarter inch shank trim router my old bosch jigsaw my sliding bevel miter saw two part wood filler and some continental filler knives paint brushes and roller sleeves sourced from a small shop on ebay more on which in a bit these drawer runners source from irmongeri direct zinza bullseye 123 and acrylic eggshell top coat from johnston's and the other present safety equipment for protection with all that mdf dust flying around so let's start with the drawer frames and someone please let me know if there's a more technical name for these but why do we need these well partly so that the drawers have decent clearance from the doors but also so we can get our hands in to disengage them from the mounting plates if we want to take the doors off i could have used traditional butt hinges like these but i like the fact that the euro hinges are hidden their soft close functionality and also the fact that you can adjust the side depth and height once the doors are in position more on that in the next video so i decided to make the frames to these dimensions my wife being particularly keen that there was plenty of clearance from the doors the exception being this single door wardrobe where there are no hinges on this side so i've minimized the depth for the spacers and bought them forward as otherwise it would have been a nightmare to paint in the gap and to maximize the storage space i've left just 10 to 13 millimeters clearance between the front of the drawer and the doors when the doors are shut obviously you'll need more if you plan to put knobs on the front of your drawers rather than the more minimalist design that i've opted for and i've got to say there was a bit of trial and error here i somehow made the first frame too short meaning i had to add some additional fillets to the back of the frame to bring it forward to the desired point i cut the frame itself using my plunge saw and as the front edge of the mdf would be on show i decided to add a pine edge which again i cut with my circular saw from some off cuts pinned and glued into place and then trimmed flush with the mdf using a trim cutter on my router recessing the pins with a punch so that they can be filled later on and i found placing two frames together gave me a really secure base to run the router along again i cut the spacing strips that fit behind the frame with my circular saw and then glued them in position using miter fast whilst it has its limitations i'm getting quite into this stuff it sets incredibly quickly in under 10 seconds and perfect for this job as ultimately i'll be mechanically fixing the frame in place and whilst not strictly necessary i also attached a diagonal strip to prevent any internal flexing of the frame and then mechanically fix them into position with these 100 millimeter quicksilver twin thread wood screws it's important to get the internal measurements of the drawer frames as accurate as possible front and back top and bottom to prevent the drawers jamming on the runners but also to make your life as easy as possible in terms of having consistent measurements to make your drawers to this involved quite a lot of trial and error with the spirit level the most useful tool to tell me how far off the vertical the spaces behind the frames were and therefore what i needed to play off with my electric planer you know i'm going to get this completely right and i am a millimeter or so out in places but you do have a bit of tolerance on the runners and there are other tricks that you can do to make sure your drawers run smoothly as i'll come on to in a minute okay this section is as important as it's tiresome to do if you want to achieve near perfect professional results now someone quipped in the comment section this week that filling hides a multitude of sins and of course it does but i don't hide behind this or pretend that my facial joints were all bang on because a lot of them weren't however with a brilliant two-part filler like this there are lots of these on the market and they all do a similar job you can achieve near perfect results the key is to mix up a very small amount each time so that you have minimal wastage when it starts to set and the setting time depends on how much activator you put in you want to put in as little as possible but typically you have about three to five minutes to work on the joint before it starts going off the second point is it's really important to use decent tools when you're using two part wood filler and i love these little continental filler knives and you want to tool just enough filler into the gap or the screw or nail hole to leave it slightly proud of the surface to minimize the amount of sanding you need to do in case you're wondering why i didn't miter these two beaded edges properly i just couldn't visualize what they would look like before i made them and so i got the miters wrong but the wood filler came to the rescue and a final tip if you set to work with a razor blade like i did here as the filler is going off rather than waiting for it to set hard you can shape the filler pretty well saving valuable sanding time and speaking of sanding i've always sanded everything either by hand with a block and sandpaper like this or i've used this old boss sander but as i have a lot of ryobi batteries i recently upgraded to one of these random orbit sanders and it's been a revelation both in terms of the power and effectiveness of removing quite substantial depths of wood like i had to here where the glue had set too quickly for me to line up the fascias properly as well as for sanding filler these mesh sanding discs that trend kindly sent me free of charge have been superb and the other revelation has been how when plugged into my henry vacuum using this attachment that comes with the henry there's literally been no sawdust which i've never experienced before perhaps because i don't use perforated sandpaper often enough but this is so handy given that i've been doing all of this work in our bedroom so we're on to the painting and caulking there are so many primers out there both specifically for mdf and more generally for all types of wood and i've used all of these that you see here apart from the leyland which i know gosford handyman in particular is a big fan of to be honest with you i think they're all much of muchness and i've had as good of results with the armstead on my daughter's wardrobe you saw earlier as i have with any of the other ones however i've pretty much replaced all of them in favor of zinza bin over the last few years because i love the coverage and the lightning quick drying time but i thought for this job i'd give zinser bullseye one two three ago because a lot of you over the years have recommended it to me in the comments section have i found it any better than the others well to be honest with you no i'd say the coverage is slightly inferior to the shellac-based zinza bin and the johnstone's acrylic eggshell top coat i'm using doesn't knit to it any better than it does to any of the previous primers i've used as you can see here after the first coat but i have appreciated being able to wash my brushes in water which you can with this water-based version whereas obviously with the shellac based bin you've got to use methylated spirits or zinza's brush cleaner and of course with this you can't use it in the heat of the summer because it dries before you can get it off the brush i have enjoyed working with this but it won't replace this as my main primer picking the right rollers and brushes has been quite interesting for me on this job you tend to stick with what works best for you and in the past i've favored simulation mohair or wool roller sleeves for jobs like this or perhaps even foam for the top coat but i was contacted back in october last year by rich a decorator who runs a small shop on ebay link will be posted in the description below having previously used johnston's fat hog and hamilton brands he's these days a big fan of axis decor and he was keen to send me some things to try out including those continental filler knives you saw earlier and i stress he's not paid me anything for this shout out how can i refuse and that's got me experimenting with three different roller sleeves for the primer and the eggshell top coat in the base of the wardrobe and the lime series won hands down both in terms of the smoothness of finish but also the ease and speed of applying it both for the primer and also top coat although i was a bit rough forcing it into the corners rather than cutting in with a print brush as i should have done which led to the foam coming away at the end i had some pretty wide gaps to fill and after a success on my skirting video check out the link on screen now i decided to use the solvent free save nails gap filling adhesive again rather than decorators cork the save nails tools just like decorators cork and i don't think shrinks as much whilst being overpaintable like decorators cork it should not however be confused with the solvent version which is just like grip fill really and would be a complete nightmare to tool now a few people pointed out on my skirting vid that i should have primed the skirtings before caulking and i've got to confess i forgot to prime the side of these fascias before fixing them in position which was an error however i made sure to pipe in plenty of the adhesive and tooled it with as you probably guessed my kramer profiling kit going for a 90 degree flat bead rather than a diagonal because i thought it would look neater a word of advice though if your bead does shrink below the surface as mine did in a few places it makes it very very hard to cut in a neat paint line so it's advisable to apply a second coat of cork or adhesive before you start cutting in to ensure you've got as flatter surface as possible where the gap was and maybe if i had primed the side of the fascia before caulking shrinking wouldn't have been such an issue now for cutting in there are a wide variety of specialist brushes available on the market and after experimenting with a few of these on this job in the end i settled for this non-specialist 51 millimeter brush you've just got to experiment and find out what works best for you and so on to the draw box construction which could be seen by us diys as one of the most daunting parts of a wardrobe built but it doesn't need to be because i've come up with a really simple design over the years which does away with any sophisticated draw joints and therefore specialist tools and equipment my draws are constructed from 18 millimeter mdf at the sides front and back with a 12 millimeter base all joints are butt joints glued and screwed together with those brilliant spat screws i've been using throughout this project i think this is marginally stronger than having a full width drawer front screwed into the sides and you don't see the side end grain because the drawer box is finished off with a front face the front face which i made 10 mil higher than the front of the drawer box can then be precisely lined up and then glued and screwed from behind to the draw box and for the base again rather than routing a groove and embedding the base in the sides i go for the much simpler approach of screwing the base to the underside of the drawer this has the advantage that provided the base is made perfectly square which you can check by measuring its diagonals when you screw it to the underside of the drawer it trues up the draw box leaving that perfectly square too the disadvantage i suppose is that you might see the base from the sides when the drawer is open but with careful painting this won't be obvious and i think the benefit of this design outweighs this minor drawback and for the draw runners i was tempted on this project to use concealed draw runners as you see here on our kitchen drawers but was put off by the cost when compared with the runners i've used in the past although actually there are more reasonably priced alternatives to blum so maybe i should have given this a go and of course you've got to factor in that recessed design onto the base so i decided to stick with the double extension ball bearing runners i've bought from iron mongrel direct for all my wardrobe projects over the years this time in a black finish to blend in more given the dark color of the wardrobe more on these in a minute we decided to copy the style of these drawers i'd seen on a project in my old day job albeit mine requiring the additional front face to extend past the drawer frame to hide the drawer runners as usual all elements of the drawers would cut from sheets of mdf with my herb our plant saw for the curved handle in the top drawer and the curved sides of the drawer boxes below i decided to create a jig to guarantee uniformity of the cutouts which i shaped with my old boss jigsaw and some new blades recently bought from amazon fine-tuning with the trim cutter bit on my router and some sandpaper and with the jig prepared i could then quickly and fairly crudely cut each curved section knowing i could then trim it to the perfect shape with the triple fluted trim cutter bit on my router i angled the back of the bottom two drawers in each wardrobe to match the angled back of the wardrobe carcass again to maximize storage space and strive to get each draw box millimeter accurate with careful alignment on the sliding bevel saw and plunge saw but the real trick here is to get the width of your draw box bang on given in my case each draw runner takes up 12.7 millimeters so to work out your draw box width you got to take your total carcass width to duct two lots of 12.7 millimeters and a little bit of leeway for three coats of paint and this my friends is where we come onto the biggest error so far of this week's build because whilst i carefully painstakingly constructed each one of these drawers individually without gluing it together and as a consequence completely nailed the width of each draw consciousness i hadn't done a video for two weeks and the fact that i was running behind i decided i had to streamline my processes so i took my measurements for the last two wardrobes and hastily made eight sets of drawers on tuesday this week only to find that i've messed up my calculations and made every single draw two millimeters too wide and you can imagine how i was feeling about this on tuesday evening particularly given that all of these drawers are now glued together but all is not lost because i've realized that all i have to do is take two of these frames out and shave two millimeters off the spacing bars at the back and these are not glued in they're just mechanically fixed so that'll be the first thing that i do next week but my point to you is proceed with massive caution double triple check your measurements make each draw individually to make sure you've got your measurements correct before you start mass producing your drawers and gluing them together now a couple of final points before we've finished i've got two lengths of draw runners on this project shorter 450ml for the bottom two drawers where you've got those sloping sections and a longer 500 ml at the top i've always in the past gone with these standard drawer runners but unfortunately they were out of stock in the longer width so for those i've now got these soft close runners which i thought would be interesting to try out but you do have to be a little bit careful with these mainly with the way the soft close mechanism engages at the back because if you make your drawers too narrow remember that point i've just been making about drawers being too wide you will find that this metal clip here doesn't engage properly with the net result that your drawer doesn't soft close like it's meant to the good news in this situation is a couple of washers like this or perhaps glazing packers behind your drawer runner and you resolve the problem the other thing i can't quite get my head around is that even though these draw runners seem to be identical in specification grades of metal and the like the soft close version that has a 25 kilogram weight capacity whereas the standard version has an increased 45 kilogram weight capacity so it remains to be seen whether i have an issue with that with my drawers and i should finally point out that whilst i've been a customer of i'm hungry direct for years they've kindly provided me with the draw runners for this project free of charge but i'm not being paid in any other shape or form for mentioning their products in this video and so given that i've been swearing by these draw runners for years now i hope you will forgive me for accepting this little freebie two other small points you might have noticed that i've rounded off the inside edge of these drawers it just makes it more pleasant when you put your hands on them to pull them open and finally if you've been wondering what these marks are all over the drawers that's another little error on my part these drawer runners are they slide beautifully ball bearing runners but they do come with a small coating of grease on the internal edges of the components you can see some there and inevitably you get some of this on your hands and when you're taking the drawers in and out as you're fine-tuning the measurements as you see here i've managed to deposit it on the drawers so i will have to degrease those prior to priming so it's a much better idea to get your priming and glossing done before you start attaching the runners all the more reason to get your measurements absolutely spot on this isn't the easiest thing to do when you're trying to fine-tune measurements but at least i've highlighted the problem so that you can decide how best to solve it in your case and once you have got your draw runners in the right position make a jig that way it'll be really easy lining them up in the next wardrobe so that's it for today and what i hope will be the final video of this series because i think six videos is probably enough for you to sit through i will have all the drawers in and painted the shelves in and also the doors constructed and fitted and that will probably be in a couple of weeks time given the amount of work they'll be involved i hope you found today's video useful if you have it'd be great if you could give it the thumbs up below and if you're new to my channel as i always say it would be fantastic to have you subscribe you can do that by clicking on the link here and do make sure you click on the bell notification icon so you get notified of all my future uploads see you soon

Channel: Charlie DIYte

Views: 45,240

Rating: 4.9847112 out of 5

Keywords: diy fitted wardrobe build with basic tools, fitted wardrobe, how to, diy wardrobe, fitted wardrobe installation, built in wardrobe, fitted wardrobes designs, fitted wardrobe frame, klug drawer runners, zinsser bullseye 1-2-3 primer-sealer, carpentry tips and tricks

Id: cn4G4CQWpqQ

Length: 17min 29sec (1049 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 28 2021