Building Simple Cabinet Drawers

Face frames cover plywood edges.

Building simple cabinet drawers.

The sides and back of the drawer should be 1 2 or 5 8 thick. To make things easy and give me plenty of wiggle room i measure up from the bottom of the cabinet about 1 higher than that drawer front so 13. In general the drawer front should be 3 4 thick unless it s a drawer with a false front false front drawers are a simple drawer box with the front screwed to the box. Wider shelves and drawers tend to bind or rack as you slide them in and out.

These diy drawers are quick to make are very strong and you can even make all the cuts with a circular saw. Decide the dimensions of the drawer box. Then i do the same for the next slide above it just add the two fronts below it plus an extra inch so 12 12 1 25. Overlaps on the sides let you fine tune the cabinet width during installation.

Wide consider installing two narrower rollouts side by side rather than a single wide one. Assure they are level and mounted 1 4 above the bottom of the opening. I ll show you how to build a drawer in 6 easy steps. Nonetheless there s an easier way to build a drawer without using a table saw or router yet results in a beautiful sturdy assembly just the same.

Inset drawers are more difficult because of the precision required to get perfect lines around the drawer front. If the drawer front are inset the draw box will need to be recessed the same depth as the thickness of the drawer front. Begin with the right cabinet dimensions. I am assuming you are using thick stock.

It s a handy way to fit drawer fronts in projects where the drawers run on metal slides. You have to take into account the size of the drawer slides and decide the width accordingly. Kreg tool is sponsoring this post and their pocket hole jig makes building these diy drawers an. I ll use a pocket hole jig to easily build these drawers specifically my kreg k4.

How to build a sliding drawer using kreg jig. Mount the drawer slides to the sides of the cabinet. If the cabinet is more than 30 in. Then place a 1 4 shim along the bottom of the opening and set the drawer on it.

That s where i mount the next slide. Read this post to understand more about choosing inset or overlay doors. This means some extra building work and buying more slides but the smaller rollouts will operate more smoothly and easily. The sample base and wall cabinets shown below have these features to make building them as simple as possible.

The 3 4 plywood case eliminates panel jointing planing and glue ups.