mid century dining room

what's going on everybody, i'm johnny brooke,welcome back to another crafted workshop video! in today's video, i'm going to show you howto build this ebonized white oak mid-century modern nightstand. i love the way this came out. the drawer frontreally makes this piece. i actually used my new laser cutter to cut this geometric patternon the front, and i just think it's gorgeous. this style is perfect, kind of built it tothe height of our bed, and it matches pretty much perfectly. i built a pair of these forour master bedroom here and i'm just excited to actually have a nightstand on my side ofthe bed. so let's go ahead and get started with the build!

a pair of nightstands for our master bedroomhave been on my list for a long time now. actually, i’ve been without a nightstandon my side of the bed for about four years, which is kind of ridiculous. how does thesaying go? "the cobbler’s children have no shoes." well, in my case, the woodworker’swife has a crappy ikea nightstand. anyway, i had some leftover white oak fromthe arts and crafts dining chairs i built a little while back, and it was almost exactlythe amount i needed for a pair of nightstands. because most of the stock i purchased forthat project was 8/4, meaning that it was about two inches thick, it meant that i hada lot of dimensioning and resawing to do, since i wanted to use â¾" stock for this project.and that's what you’ve seen me doing up

until this point. if you wanted to build this project yourself,i’d recommend just using a few hardwood 1x8s, you’d save yourself a lot of work. once i had my pieces down to roughly â¾â€thick, i ripped them to rough width at the table saw, making sure to leave a little extrawidth for final trimming later on. with my pieces at their rough size, i gluedthem up into panels, making sure they stayed nice and flat during the glue up. after the glue dried, i flattened the panelsat the planer, evening up the two halves of the panels. since the panels are so narrow,you should probably be able to get away with

this even on a 13” planer. once the panels were planed flat, i passedthem through the drum sander to remove any tool marks or snipe, and to get the panelssanded. these types of projects are really where the drum sander shines, as hand sandingall of these panels would have taken a long time. while i’m sanding, let’s talk about oneof the sponsors of this week’s video, acme tools. my drum sander, the supermax 19-38,was provided by my friends at acme tools, and i highly encourage you check them outif you’re thinking of purchasing any power tools or other items for your shop. acme toolshas served the contractor, woodworker and

do–it–yourselfer since 1948 with a wideselection of tools and equipment from all the major manufacturers. to learn more, checkout the link in the video description below. after sanding, i squared up one end of eachof the panels at the miter saw. this square end will ride against the table saw fencewhen cutting the bevels in the next step. next, i set my table saw blade to 45 degreesand cut a beveled edge on each of the panels, riding the square edge up against the fence.at this point, i wanted to take as little off the panels as possible, as i wanted tohave plenty of room for final trimming later. with a 45 degree bevel cut on one end of eachpanel, i set my fence to 19 inches to trim my top and bottom panels to final length.i made sure to cut all four top and bottom

panels for my pair of nightstands while thefence was set, to make sure the measurement was exactly the same on each panel. after trimming the top and bottom panels tolength, i repeated the same process for the sides, setting the fence to 13 â¼â€. the last cut to make on the panels was a 45degree bevel on the front edge of all of the panels. this is optional, but i think thebevel on the front edge is actually one of the biggest design elements of these nightstands.gives it a really cool look. to help with assembly, i decided to add somebiscuits in the corners of the nightstand carcass. biscuits are extremely helpful whenit comes to aligning the corners of a beveled

cabinet like this, and you can pick up a biscuitjoiner for as cheap as $60 new, and even cheaper used. they also add a good bit of strengthto the mitered corners. after cutting the biscuit slots, i moved ontoassembling the carcass, which went pretty smoothly. i really like to use these strapclamps when assembling mitered carcasses, as they help to hold things in place whilei add clamps. one of the panels has bowed a little bit overnight, and the straps helpedpersuade the panels to lie flat during the glue up. once the glue dried, i removed the clamps,sanded off any glue squeeze out, and then moved over to the router table to cut therabbet into the back of the cabinet to accept

the back panel. i used a â½â€ rabbeting bitand probably should have made this cut in two passes. oak is extremely stringy and lovesto tear out in huge chunks, but luckily i didn’t have any major issues. next, i cut the back panels to size from somescraps of â¼â€ plywood i had on hand, and then rounded the corners with my random orbitsander so that they’d fit into the rabbet. i could have used a chisel to square up thecorners on the cabinet, but i find that sanding is usually actually a little faster. to attach the back panel to the nightstand,i used a little glue and a few brad nails. and, pro tip, it helps to have your air compressorplugged in when using your brad nailer.

once the back panel dried, i chamfered thesides and back edges using my router. since the front edges are already beveled, the chamferbit’s bearing didn’t have anything to ride up against, so i pulled out my trustyblock plane to chamfer those edges. before chamfering, the front edges were extremelyfragile, so i’d definitely recommend doing this. also, chamfering edges with a blockplane is definitely one of woodworking’s greatest pleasures. with the cabinets done, it was time to moveonto the drawers. for the drawer fronts, i wanted to give them an interesting aesthetic,so, after cutting the drawer fronts to size, i drew a little curve that would serve asthe drawer pull.

i cut out the curve on the bandsaw, althougha jigsaw would work fine if you don’t have a bandsaw, and then refined the curve usingmy oscillating belt sander. next, i traced the curve onto the second drawerfront, cut away the excess at the bandsaw, making sure to stay proud of my line, andthen moved over to the router table. i attached the drawer front with the refined curve tothe other drawer front with some double sided tape, and then used a flush trim bit to cutthe second drawer front to match. also, ignore the laser cut pattern here, iforgot to cut this pull cutout prior to laser engraving the first drawer front. we’llget to that a little later. next, i rounded over the top edges of thedrawer front, since this is where your hands

will come into contact with it, and then imoved over to the laser cutter. this is the full spectrum muse, their newhobby laser. it’s got a camera inside that allows you to place your artwork on the pieceyou’re laser engraving with pretty good accuracy. i found this geometric pattern on google imagesand just dragged and dropped it into retinaengrave, full spectrum’s software. after gettingmy settings dialed in, i sent the job to the laser and it got to engraving. this engraving process took about 30 minutes,and i made sure that the artwork bled over the edges so it would be a cool edge-to-edgedesign. since the laser only cuts in a small

focus area, the laser won’t damage the bedof the laser cutter even through it’s cutting over the edges. while the laser cutter worked, i got to workon the drawers. the drawer sides are made of â½â€ plywood and the bottoms are madefrom â¼â€ plywood. i cut the sides, fronts, and backs to size at the table saw. i decided to use hardwood drawer slides onthis build, since i couldn't find 11 inch drawer slides locally, and these drawers won’texactly see heavy use. to do this, first i cut a â¾â€ wide groove into the drawer sidesto accept the drawer slides using a dado stack. the depth of the cut will depend on your drawerslides, but i went with a â¼â€ deep groove.

next, i cut the drawer bottoms to size onthe table saw and miter saw. to assemble the drawer, i kept it really simpleand just used 1” brad nails and glue. this is kind of an experiment, to see how the drawershold up with no other extra fasteners. i have a feeling they’ll be just fine. one little trick to hide the drawer bottomsfrom view is to chamfer the edges so that the chamfer just meets the bottom of the drawersides. it’s a really quick process and makes the drawers look a ton cleaner. something i should have done before assemblywas to cut a portion of the drawer front so that the interior drawer box will be hiddenonce the drawer front is attached. i just

traced the shape of the drawer front ontothe drawer box, cut it out with a jigsaw, and sanded it smooth. the last pieces for the nightstands were thehardwood drawer slides, which i cut from a scrap piece of hard maple i had on hand. theslides ended up at â¾â€ thick by â½â€ wide. now, you might be asking yourself, what aboutthe legs? and that’s a good question. i had actually originally intended to turn sometapered legs on the lathe using some more leftover oak i had. i spent a few hours lastweek getting my lathe all set up, cutting up some leg blanks, and then getting two outof the eight legs turned. after finishing the second leg, i hopped onamazon really quick, just to see how much

a similar leg would cost. $2.50. yes, twodollars and fifty cents. i decided to scrap the idea of turning them myself and just bought8 legs. anyway, back to the project, i decided toebonize the oak and, after some research, found that some people were using india inkfor this. i’ll have a link in the video description to the exact ink i used, and ilove the way it came out. i just wiped on a heavy coat using a shoptowel and let it dry overnight. for the finish, i decided to spray on a fewcoats of a water based polyurethane instead of wiping it on, because i was afraid theink might bleed. to do this, i used my q3 platinum hvlp system by fuji spray, one ofthe sponsors of this week’s video. if you’ve

watched many of my videos, you know that ilove spraying on finishes, and the q3 is an outstanding hvlp system for this. the sheer amount of adjustability in the airflow, fan shape, and amount of material that’s passing through the gun allows you to reallydial in your finishing, and making adjustments when finishing different parts of a projectis super simple. to learn more about fuji spray and their line of hvlp systems, checkout in the link in the video description below. after the finish dried, it was time to assemblethe nightstands. first, i installed the legs. this was pretty simple, i just needed to addthese brackets i picked up off of amazon. i’ll have a link in the video descriptionto the legs as well as the brackets i used.

i marked a center line using a speed squareand measured in roughly four inches, then centered the bracket and added the includedscrews. with the legs installed, i moved on to installingthe drawer slides onto the sides of the cabinet using a few 1” screws. i made sure to pre-drilland countersink the holes, so that the heads of the screws were below the surface of theslides. to make the drawers slide a little easier,i added a little bit of paste wax to the drawer slides. i’ll just reapply the wax periodicallyto keep the drawers riding smoothly. next, i added the drawer fronts to the drawerboxes, using the playing card trick to space the drawer front evenly. the little handlecutout allowed me to get a clamp onto the

drawer front, and then i added a few screwsfrom inside the drawer. with the drawers installed, the nightstandswere done! alright, hopefully you guys enjoyed this one.this was a pretty simple build, i did have a little trouble getting those drawer slidesinstalled but i finally figured out a good method. the beveled front edge really madeit tricky because i didn't have anything to reference off of to get those drawer slidessquare. that was a bit of a trick but i'm really happywith the way it came out. the wooden drawer slides actually work really well and theysaved me $15 per drawer slide so that's a nice cheap option.

the reason i went with the wooden ones wasthat i couldn't find any drawer slides short enough to fit this drawer. hopefully you guys enjoyed this one! if youdid, go ahead and get subscribed, i put out new projects videos like this pretty muchevery week. i will also have plans available for this if you want to build this for yourself. i'll have a list of all the tools and materialsi used in the video description below. alright, thanks again for watching guys and, untilnext time, happy building!

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