Bathroom valet

[Frederick Skelly]

My bathroom counter was a mess, piled with keys and misc other loose items stuffed in an open tray, or just sitting on the counter itself. So I made this. The case is 1/4" thick poplar, dovetailed together. The drawer faces are 1/2" thick poplar with 1/4" thick sides and back, all dovetailed. Finish is multiple coats of wipe-on poly.

I hadnt done inset drawers before - learned some lessons. I also hadn't done dovetails in 1/4" thick softwood before. It was a little more tricky than working with a thicker board. After reading the archives here, I used 14* for the dovetails. After a practice run, I found that to get a tighter fit, I had to cut the tails very slightly wider than my knife line. When I did that, the material compressed and gave me a tight fit. (I only split one side, one time, by doing this. :) )

Nothing earth shattering, but it was fun to do.

Fred

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[Phil Mueller]

Looks great Fred. Great way to get organized. Nice work on the thin material.

[Jim Koepke]

Well done Fred. The thinner the material the trickier the dovetail. My cheat is to use a fine rasp or a file to 'finish' trim the fit.

jtk

[Mark Rainey]

I like it, clean lines. I could use one for organization also.

[Frederick Skelly]

Phil, Jim, Mark - Thank you guys!
Happy New Year!
Fred

[Mike Allen1010]

Well done Fred – nicely executed and super practical! Thanks for sharing.

[Mel Fulks]

That's nice. The thin wood and dovetails are are just right, and that was the hard part. Don't like the really big knobs...
and that would be the easy part to change.

[Frederick Skelly]

Thanks Mike! Thanks Mel. Yeah, I debated the big knobs a couple times. But I wanted simple and easy to grip and these are what I could find locally. I found some smaller ones at LV, and of course as you said, they're easy to change out if I come to dislike them.

Fred

[Curt Putnam]

Well done sir! Doing new stuff keeps one happy.

[Frederick Skelly]

Thanks Curt!

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Very nice and clean.

The only problem is that you will fill it up and then need to make another one next year, which I guess is tomorrow. :D

[Frederick Skelly]

Thanks Andrew!