Entryway Storage Tower

From J:

Since early February, I've been working off-and-on on the next piece of furniture for the entryway set, a storage tower. It replaces our Ikea shoe rack and adds another 2.5 feet of storage above it. This build was big, expensive, and much more complex than the shelf and key rack.

The specs: ~5.5' tall, 20" wide, 18" deep (or so, I'm going off of memory). Solid American cherry and 1/2" cherry ply for almost everything, drawer sides and back are red oak. Mortise and tenon for the carcase (frame) construction, shaker-style inset panels on the sides and back, shaker-style doors, sliding dovetail drawer. Finish is GF Arm-R-Seal Satin polyurethane.

Sketchup plans are crucial!

The most notable thing about this build is how much wood went into it. Of my previous purchase of 47 board feet of cherry, about 32 (give or take) went into this build. I also purchased another board of 8/4 cherry for the vertical supports and an 8'x4' sheet of 1/2" cherry ply. I used almost all of it. If you're keeping score, this is about $500 of wood. Gack. Don't screw it up, J!

Fabrication steps:

• Build a new table saw crosscut sled to portion up the 8/4 cherry into the tall vertical supports and small horizontal supports. Safety first.

This is, seriously, around $100 of cherry.

• Cut mortises and tenons where appropriate. Mortises were roughed with a drill and plunge router and cleaned up with a chisel. Tenons were cut on the table saw. Number of each: 26. 

Tenons.

Mortise.

• Check for fit and fine tune. First dry assembly.

Yisssssss.

It stands!

• Rout stopped slots for the side paneling using the router table.

So functional!

• Make the side paneling: edge glue 4/4 cherry (for the sides), cut to size. Plane and sand flat.

Little blocks that straddle the joint help keep things aligned.

If you ain't making shavings, you're just misbehaving.

• Cut 1/2" cherry ply to size for the back.
• Rabbet the panel edges to fit into the frame slots. Second dry fit, with the paneling in place. A bit more fine tuning.

It still stands!

• Make the panel for the top out of 4/4 cherry, plane flat. Rout a chamfer into the edge to match the style of the other entryway pieces.
• Glue the carcase! First time using epoxy, this gave me a long working time to get things assembled. Used all of my clamps. The tight-fitting mortises and tenons help to give stability. A gave a great assist on this step, as this piece was just way too big for one person to handle.

DON'T SCREW IT UP.

• Pray that you didn't just turn $500 of wood into oddly-shaped firewood.
• First sanding: clean up the rubber mallet marks and epoxy squeeze-out.
• Kreg jig time! Drill holes for the shelf pins. This jig was clutch. 10/10, would receive for my birthday again.

Thanks for the birthday present, Mom and Dad!

• Drawer construction: Select a very pretty 4/4 cherry piece for the front, cut to size. Cut 4/4 red oak for the back and sides. Use the router table again to cut the sliding dovetails. Rabbet the back and cut a slot for the 1/2" ply bottom. Cut the bottom to size. Assemble it and glue it up.

Dat grain, mmmmmm. Lovely.

• Door construction: Cut 1/2" cherry ply to size for the fronts, 4/4 cherry for the frame. Shaker-style construction, so dado slots into the frame and rabbet the face edges to fit the slot. The front face is recessed relative to the frame and the rabbeted edge keeps it nice and flush in the back. Easy and it looks good. Glue them up.

This is a door. The lower door, to be precise.

• Drawer slide construction: take some 4/4 cherry scraps and cut a trapezoidal piece on the table saw. use other pieces cut at the same angle to make a male-and-female sliding assembly. Mount the female portion into the carcase, the male portion to the bottom of the drawer (you remembered to recess the bottom of the drawer to account for the slide depth, right?). Mount a stop in the back of the carcase to set the fully closed depth of the drawer.

• Shelf construction: cut 1/2" ply to size, jigsaw notches in the corners for the interior protruding vertical supports. Rabbet the edges of the bottom most pieces so it sits flush with the horizontal supports (you also rabbeted the edges of a few of the horizontal supports back in the second step to mate with these pieces). For the adjustable shelves, cut a thin strip of 4/4 cherry to size to hide the plywood edge and glue it on (masking tape is an excellent clamp).

The 4/4 cherry edging strip is a little bit lighter than the plywood. I like the light-dark contrast.

• Plane the top of the frame flush.
• Realize that your top and carcase aren't perfectly square with each other. Decide that this mistake might be noticeable to someone. 
• Curse.
• Make very, very careful angled cuts on the top edges to square it to carcase. Thank the Lord you didn't screw that up, because you're pretty much out of cherry and you really don't want to spend more money on wood at this point. 
• Mount the top using figure-8 clips.
• Mount the doors using non-mortise hinges. Don't screw it up, you get one shot at this if you don't want to put extra holes into your precious, precious cherry.
• Final sanding! Take everything to 200 grit. Wipe it down and vacuum off the dust.
• Finish it! Three coats of Arm-R-Seal Satin polyurethane to match the other pieces. Buff lightly between each coat with extra fine (0000) steel wool.
• Admire. Check one more item off of the honey-do list.

Phew. This was a big project.

Project cost: Including hardware and some miscellaneous expenses, about $575. Less than it would cost to purchase an equivalent piece. Pottery Barn sells a piece with similar dimensions made from veneers and cheap-o pine for $800. Something made from solid cherry would run closer to $2000 list price, and that would probably be pocket screw construction (which is fine, just not as good as mortise and tenon). If this was a piece of furniture we would have bought anyway, here's where you can really start saving some money by building it yourself. Assuming your time is free, which mine is (for this).

Project thoughts: On the whole, amazed at how smoothly this went. I'm really starting to feel like I have a good assortment of tools and techniques now to tackle various aspects of projects. I'll shy away from making solid panels like I did for the sides of this, simply because of cost. Quality plywood is easier to work with, cheaper, and still looks good. I learned a few more things on the glueup, recovered nicely from a couple of mistakes, and impressed myself with how good the tolerances were on the final piece. The doors fill their openings well and the drawer fits perfectly. My first substantial piece of fine furniture: check.