Building Drawers And Cabinets

The word drawer followed by dados and dovetails is surly enough to scare off many a diyer.

Building drawers and cabinets.

Attach the drawer face leaving 1 8 gap on all sides using wood glue and finish nails and clamp it well. Also i make all my drawers using plywood for the box and plywood for the bottom. Inset drawers are more difficult because of the precision required to get perfect lines around the drawer front. Overlaps on the sides let you fine tune the cabinet width during installation.

For this drawer my opening was 7 1 8 wide so i subtracted 1 1 8 and made my drawers 6 tall. This means some extra building work and buying more slides but the smaller rollouts will operate more smoothly and easily. I m building these drawers for my diy dresser. If the cabinet is more than 30 in.

How to use a kreg jig. I like to use plywood to build my drawers because then i don t have to worry about twisted or warped boards causing me issues with alignment. Begin with the right cabinet dimensions. Read this post to understand more about choosing inset or overlay doors.

Although i am using a kreg jig to build this drawer the basic principles are the same using any other joinery method. Wider shelves and drawers tend to bind or rack as you slide them in and out. If you re using dimensional lumber you ll just go to first size that is under 1 of your opening. The 3 4 plywood case eliminates panel jointing planing and glue ups.

Attach the drawer slides to the drawer box and the cabinet frame. A whole lot of making installing and building drawers is making sure things are lined up and square. Face frames cover plywood edges. Wide consider installing two narrower rollouts side by side rather than a single wide one.