Friday, January 10, 2014

30 Before 30: #19 DIY Night Stand

Technically, goal #19 on the original list was "Build a TV stand."

But something funny happened in May of this crazy year: we bought a house. And that changed a bunch of our priorities. In the 30 Before 30 Recap that I'm still writing, I use that excuse to explain away my failure to complete some of the higher ticket price items on my list like "Visit a new American metropolis" and "Go whitewater rafting."

But this goal just got changed a little. Instead of a TV stand for the office, a higher priority became a night stand for the bedroom.

So I built this:

 
I am, I will admit, probably a little too proud of how this project came out. The drawers are only marginally functional, since the design I was working off of didn't have any hardware on its drawers, I didn't really think of it until later, and my drawers don't fill the drawer opening vertically as closely as they would have needed to in order to be self supporting. So I wound up going back and inventing in the final stage of the project...

In retrospect I should have disassembled my drawer boxes and cut the pieces down so that there was room for metal drawer slides. Instead, I used a piece of scrap would and a C shaped plastic slider to create a center, under drawer slider.

So the drawers are small (I knew that going in) and require two hands to open. Lesson learned. The piece compliments Carol's night stand pretty nicely (I built mine wider and deeper than the plan, to match the dimensions of the one on the other side of the bed).

And while I was a little sad to paint it black, I'm was happy to bring back some of the cherry that forms the legs and top by distressing the paint job.

So now I take the things I learned in this project, and maybe I can apply them to building that TV stand in the coming year.

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