Adding drawers to a bathroom vanity - Help please!

[Mike Manning]

First time poster here. I know this is probably rambling but I gotta get it out here to get your thoughts!

My wife wants me to add some drawers to her bathroom vanity. I've done some things with dimensional lumber in the garage and my "shop" (3rd car garage). This spring I made a box using hand planes and my first hand-sewn dovetails. Very satisfying. My only experience doing anything with drawers was doing a few repairs in the kitchen where the rear screws holding the cheap slides in the particle board cabinets had pulled out. Anyway, SWMBO wants 'em and I figure I can save a lot of money doing it myself. I also think I may do as well as whoever we'd hire but I need some advice. I don't know the right terminology so please bear with me.

I've included a couple of pics (below) of the vanity as it exists today. I definitely am not up to doing face frame drawers on this. I thought I could just do drawers that were equally spaced (vertically) using low-end HD slides attached to the sides (edge) of the cabinet opening and attached in the rear to the cabinet. Knowing how poor the materials are for these cabinets I already expected I should beef up the rear before attaching the slide sockets. The height of the cabinet behind this right vanity door is appx 16 3/8". I was thinking of 3 drawers appx 4 3/4" tall with appx 1/2" space between each drawer. I'm going to make them out of 1/2" Baltic Birch plywood with 1/4" floating drawer bottoms. The depth of this cabinet is appx 20 3/8". I've already bought some lower end 18" drawer slides at HD.

I figured I would attach the drawer slides to the front edge of the cabinet and at the rear to some solid wood skeleton (pine 2x4? or poplar). I hope appx 16" deep drawers would all align flush with each other as long as I get the slides aligned when I install them. I'll have to add some additional pieces to the edge of the cabinet for the hinge side slides in order to make sure the drawers clear the hinges. I've done all the measuring and those hinges stick out appx 7/8" from the front edge. I figured add a 3/4" strip to the current edge of the cabinet. Once the slide is added there that 3/4" plus the 1/2" for the slide should allow the drawers to clear the 7/8" protrusion of the hinges.

I'd like to just do a round over on the drawers, sand well and then use a clear finish. I have no experience (beyond jr high 50 years ago) with finishes so your advice would be very useful. Do I finish the bottom and drawers separately so they don't stick? What clear finishes are best? I'm hoping to get a good router out of doing this work. :-) I'd like to know what bit would round those 1/2" drawers? Also, there isn't a lot of space in here for me to work and I'm a big guy 6' 3" 250 lbs. So building the drawer boxes in the shop and basically just minimally trying to attach slides into this cabinet was what I was striving for.

Your thoughts on what you'd do, things to know about doing drawers/using drawer slides/etc, better, easier ways to get this done,... would all be appreciated!

PS.
- Using the cheapo slides because she's just putting cosmetic kind of stuff in these drawers.
- Tools at my disposal, Delta contractors TS, Delta mid-50s BS, most basic WW'ing hand tools, etc.

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[Andy Giddings]

Mike, are you going to put the drawers behind the door or are you getting rid of the door altogether? I would recommend keeping the door as you won't have to worry about matching the exterior.

Your drawer materials are fine - I've built something very similar for the kitchen and loaded them up with heavy pots/pans so strength should not be an issue. For finish, you can assemble the drawers and then apply a water based clear finish - I like General Finishes, a bit pricey but you get a great looking finish even with a foam brush.

In terms of fixing the slides, you can take the approach that the original manufacturer used - block out the rear of the cabinet and use angle brackets to fix the slides. You're not talking about a lot of weight in the drawers so strength should not be a concern. Blocking out the sides would also work but would require a frame as one side seems to be open

[Dan Friedrichs]

Mike, sounds like you're planning to leave the door in place and just put drawers behind it? Sounds like a good plan. There's nothing rocket-sciencey about attaching slides to a cabinet carcass - whatever it takes to secure them. Screw the front to the face frame and pad out the back (if necessary) to support them. I've never seen a drawer box with a rounded over top (I assume that's what you're referring to?) - it will look funny where the rounded-over side intersects the front and back pieces. I'd just build the boxes square and soften the edges a bit with sandpaper.

Re: finishing - if the bottom is plywood, I wouldn't bother finishing it separately. If it's solid wood, might be a good idea to prefinish to avoid some wood movement leaving you with a visible unfinished gap around the edges.

[Mike Manning]

Andy, I am putting the drawers behind the door. I will look into General Finishes.

Dan, I really appreciate your thoughts on NOT rounding over the top edges. I had already given some thought as to how the corners would come together. In my mind it seemed like they really wouldn't exactly.

Thanks for all the feedback from both of you. Exactly the kind of stuff I was hoping to hear!

[Andy Giddings]

Mike, on the rounding of the top - you can do it if you want to. I've used a full rounded edge on both the inside and outside of the top for front, back and side pieces. Agree with Dan that it will look and feel odd if you don't do all parts of the drawer top. There is some manual work to make the joint blend in but its minimal with birch ply

[Jim Becker]

FYI, if you're going to put the drawers behind the door, you need to be able to fully open the door so that it doesn't interfere with the drawers. That shouldn't be a problem since you have an overlay door, but for folks doing similar with inset doors...in some situations, it presents a challenge.

[Lee Schierer]

Your drawer design and materials are going to work just fine. As far as rounding over is concerned, an 1/8" radius roundover bit should work just fine. Wait to do the round over after the drawer boxes are assembled, then your corners will get rounded over as they meet. I round over the top edges of all the drawers I make.

You have accounted for the hinges as far as getting the drawers to slide past them, however, the hinges will also be across the fronts of the drawers when the doo closes. You will need to set the drawer fronts back into the cabinet far enough to clear the hinges when the door closes.

Depending on your drawer height, you may need to scoop down the center front a bit to provide a hand hold to get the drawer open or else attach a drawer pull that will not interfere with the door closing.

[glenn bradley]

As Jim observed, clearance will be a factor in your design. If the door hinges don't allow an opening that will give you a clear shot for a drawer box 1" narrower than your opening you may need to account for that with stand-offs on the hinge side or some other method. These (https://www.fastcap.com/estore/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=44&idcategory=0) will keep you door from getting scarred on the inside face. You're basically talking about 'pullouts'. If you do a search on that term (http://tinyurl.com/gostl4p) I think you will find some good examples that may give you some ideas.

[Mike Manning]

Lee, I'd thought about the drawers having to be offset back a little for the door but I'd overlooked the hinges thus far in my planning. I don't know what type of hinges these are but the "pocket" has about at 1/8" protrusion on the inside of the door that I'll have to account for. Thank you for bringing that to my attention! I had already considered getting the drawers open and I was considering a "notch" in the top middle of the drawer fronts to allow one to get a purchase to get them open. I'm planning on having 3/4" space between the 3 drawers which I think will be enough room that the "notch" isn't necessary. Thoughts?

Pic of a hinge below...what type are these?

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[Mike Manning]

Thanks Jim! I'll checkout pullouts. I had not searched on that although I've heard the word and what comes immediately to my mind is exactly what I'm doing!

[Wakahisa Shinta]

Hi Mike. Are you trying to do something like these?

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If so, the cabinet doors must clear the inner edge of the face frame in order for the pull-out shelves/drawers + slides to operate.

[Jamie Buxton]

In the interest of simplifying the project, you might consider buying the drawers. Shops exist that just make drawer boxes to your measurements. Western Dovetail is one example -- www.drawer.com . They do a good job, and aren't horribly expensive.

[John TenEyck]

I just did some drawers that fit behind doors. The drawers completely fill the cabinet opening, so I made hand cutouts in the drawer fronts. I added filler strips inside the cabinet so the drawers would clear the door hinges. The drawers ride on side mounted soft close slides by K&V. The drawers are Baltic birch plywood with 1/2" finger joints; very solid. The finish is GF's EnduroVar over Sealcoat shellac.

John

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[Mike Manning]

John, I watched several videos on youtube this afternoon on making a box joint jigs. These look very nice. Could I trouble you for a pic of your filler strips? Are they on the edge of the cabinet just inside the door? I'll have to do something similar on the hinge sides to make sure there is sufficient clearance. The jpgs are so small I can't really see the finish. Thank you for sharing!

[Mike Manning]

Thanks Wakahisa! I'll be doing something similar but the drawer faces will only have 3/4" space between them. Thanks for responding!

Jamie, I looked at a couple of places but I'll enjoy doing it myself and will do it a bit cheaper. Thanks for mentioning it.

[John TenEyck]

Hi Mike, Sorry, I don't have any pictures of the inside of the cabinet. But it's very simple. All I did was measure from the inside wall of the cabinet to the end of the hinge where it projects into the cabinet when the doors are open. I think it might have been around 1-1/4". I filled that space by first screwing two 3/4" pieces of plywood vertically inside the cabinet, floor to top, near the front and back. Then I screwed two pieces of 1/2" plywood, about 2-1/2" wide, to those spacers, front to back where the shelf slides needed to be mounted. I used side mounted slides and screwed them to those cross pieces. I measured the distance between the spacers and built the drawer to fit that dimension, following the guidelines for the drawer slides I used (1" less).

You could use the same concept with rear mounting brackets.

I love finger joints with Baltic birch plywood. I think they look good, they are incredibly strong, and they are very easy to do with either a home built jig and dado blade on the tablesaw, or with my original Incra jig on my router table. I built these with the Incra jig. One big advantage of the Incra jig is that you can gang like parts together and cut them all at once. When you need to make a lot of drawers this is a huge advantage. Of course, if you goof, all your parts will be bad.

What I like best about finger joints is that you don't have to calculate what the length of the parts should be, as you do with the sides of dovetailed drawers, or the front and back of rabbeted drawers. You cut the parts to whatever length the outside dimensions of the drawer needs to be, add maybe 1/32" to 1/16" for trim after assembly, and cut them to those dimensions.

John

[Jamie Buxton]

..What I like best about finger joints is that you don't have to calculate what the length of the parts should be, as you do with the sides of dovetailed drawers ..

Well, to be fair, if you're cutting through dovetails, the parts run the full length or width of the drawer. That's analogous to finger joints, which are also through joints.

[John TenEyck]

Well, to be fair, if you're cutting through dovetails, the parts run the full length or width of the drawer. That's analogous to finger joints, which are also through joints.

Right you are. I didn't think about them because I never use them. I don't have a jig that can easily do them, and I'm not cutting them by hand for anything but a period piece.

John

[Andy Giddings]

Dovetails with birch ply can be hit and miss due to tearout of the face veneer. Climb cutting helps but still tricky. Finger joints are good, I prefer lock miter joints which are also strong, but show no joint as such

[Myk Rian]

This works well.
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[Mike Manning]

Does it work well with plywood?

[John TenEyck]

Mike, you can use any joint you like if you use Baltic birch plywood. If you use plywood from HD, Lowes, etc., however, something like what Myk showed above is a better choice because it tends to tear out when you try to cut finger or DT joints. It can be done, but you have to use backer boards on both sides. The locking rabbet joint Myk showed is easy to make with nothing more than your table saw.

John

[Mike Manning]

Well, I am planning on using 1/2" Baltic Birch plywood for the drawers/pullouts. I haven't used that joint but it definitely looks easy enough with or without a dado blade. Luckily I've got one and can use some practice getting familiar with it as I've not had it that long. Looks like a good joint as well.

Realizing as I'm typing this I have a concern with that joint. These drawer boxes won't have a face on them. I wanted to do a floating bottom and if I use this joint it seems as though it will require some additional handwork with a chisel to keep the dado for the bottom from showing on the sides. So I thought that I should just use a rabbet joint to join the drawer boxes which would hide the bottom dado. Am I wrong in that or is there another way?

[John TenEyck]

Mike, the dado for the bottom won't show on the sides, only the front back. (In the photo Myk posted the front/back is the horizontal piece.) This type of joint is really only used with a false front drawer. If yours won't have a false front you should choose another type of joint. You could use a stopped dado so it won't project through the front/back, but you would still be looking at the end grain of the sides which wouldn't be very attractive.

l'd use finger joints.

John

[Mike Manning]

John, don't I still have the issue of the dado for the bottom exposed on the sides using finger joints? A little more reading and I think the answer is the bottom dado would be exposed. Only way around that is stopping short and cleaning them out with a chisel or doing half blind dovetails. Not sure if there's a half blind box/finger joint. Given that I want this to be quick and easy, I think going with rabbet joints for boxes that are going to hold cosmetics and the like should be sufficient.

However, it does make me wonder how people are attaching the bottoms to the boxes/drawers/pullouts/etc when using exposed dovetail/box/finger joints. Do you know?

[Lee Schierer]

However, it does make me wonder how people are attaching the bottoms to the boxes/drawers/pullouts/etc when using exposed dovetail/box/finger joints. Do you know?

I use half blind dovetails and you can't see the 1/4" dado. Most likely your drawer slides will hide the dado on the outside of the drawer if the slides are located near the bottom of the drawer. A little planning and the dado will end up in a finger not a slot and would only be visible on the drawer side and not the front.

[Mike Manning]

I use half blind dovetails and you can't see the 1/4" dado. Most likely your drawer slides will hide the dado on the outside of the drawer if the slides are located near the bottom of the drawer. A little planning and the dado will end up in a finger not a slot and would only be visible on the drawer side and not the front.

Lee, good thought on the drawer slide hiding the dado on the outside. Yeah, I'd already figured with some planning I could limit the exposure to the sides. Thanks for the input.

[John TenEyck]

No, the dado won't show on the side IF you locate it so it's under one of the fingers. These drawers were made with 1/2" BB plywood, including the bottoms, and 1/2" finger joints. 1/2" BB is just under 1/2" so if you center it carefully on the finger it won't show on the side, only the front/back. The back doesn't show so who cares, and the front gets covered.

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John

[Roger Feeley]

I used to use General Finishes water-borne poly from Woodcraft. But I've become a big fan of Vermont Natural Coatings PolyWhey. I think it brushes on easier and dries harder. In my experience, the GF seems a little soft. When you tap the PolyWhey with your fingernail, you get a nice click.

[John TenEyck]

I used to use General Finishes water-borne poly from Woodcraft. But I've become a big fan of Vermont Natural Coatings PolyWhey. I think it brushes on easier and dries harder. In my experience, the GF seems a little soft. When you tap the PolyWhey with your fingernail, you get a nice click.


Roger, which specific GF product are you talking about? I've never found any of their water borne products to be soft, and I've used HP Poly, EnduroVar, and Enduro Clear Poly. All are hard. But Enduro Clear Poly is the hardest and also very abrasion resistant. Either you used a different product from those I've, though I can't think of which one it would be, or you put it on a soft substrate, or you didn't apply it where the temp. was high enough for the product to cure correctly. If the PolyWhey is harder than the GF products then it's one hard product.

John

[Mike Manning]

Roger, which specific GF product are you talking about? I've never found any of their water borne products to be soft, and I've used HP Poly, EnduroVar, and Enduro Clear Poly. All are hard. But Enduro Clear Poly is the hardest and also very abrasion resistant. Either you used a different product from those I've, though I can't think of which one it would be, or you put it on a soft substrate, or you didn't apply it where the temp. was high enough for the product to cure correctly. If the PolyWhey is harder than the GF products then it's one hard product.

John

I was at Woodcraft and I picked up a can of Arm-R-Seal Oil & Urethane Topcoat from General Finishes. Is this what I should be using for finish these drawer boxes? Anyone used this and will it work for my bathroom vanity pullouts? The Woodcraft salesman recommended this.

[John TenEyck]

I was at Woodcraft and I picked up a can of Arm-R-Seal Oil & Urethane Topcoat from General Finishes. Is this what I should be using for finish these drawer boxes? Anyone used this and will it work for my bathroom vanity pullouts? The Woodcraft salesman recommended this.

Mike, I would not use an oil based varnish for drawers inside a cabinet. It will stink like varnish for weeks/months - really. Arm-R-Seal is a great product for the outside of cabinets, but not for the insides, especially any that you want to put clothes, towels, linen, etc. in.

The most durable product I've found for drawer boxes is GF's EnduroVar; that's what's on the drawers in the photo I posted above. I put a coat of Sealcoat shellac on first, and then two coats of EnduroVar. In a week or so, the odor is completely gone. GF's Enduro Clear Poly is another excellent choice.

John

[Andy Giddings]

+1 on John's advice - another GF product that I like and is very durable for drawers is High Performance. Its a clear finish so won't give you the slight amber tint that you get from Endurovar

[Mike Manning]

Andy, John,
Thanks for the advice on the finish. I'll return the Arm-R-Seal to Woodcraft and check out the other options you've mentioned.

[Mike Manning]

I just wanted to follow up on this project for SWMBO. I'm one of those guys who feel we have to have the details all worked out in our heads to get started. So between that, another volunteer at The Gila, and the holidays I didn't get started in earnest until January and finished last week. I want to thank everyone for the advice. It was very helpful and much appreciated. I love the GF High Performance topcoat! This was the exact finish I was hoping for. These aren't perfect but only you and I know that. SWMBO is absolutely delighted. Now she thinks I'm a cabinet maker! ;-) More tools and wood for projects coming my way!! I ended up making the box joint jig from William Ng. Took a couple of tries to get it right but I love it. It's repeatable and spot on! And now, some pics...Thanks again!!!

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