To the Left is a picture of a clothes washer and dryer nook (A wife's favorite spot). This one is at Shawn and Vanessa's home. Vanessa was wondering if it would be possible to build a table top over both units and have a two drawer cabinet off to the side. The top would be something that you could use to spread clothes on as you pulled them out of the dryer or maybe something to sort clothes on as you are getting ready to put them in the washing machine. Since the units are front loading machines, Shawn had already built the stand for the units so the doors for each unit would be easier to access. The cabinet to the side could have one drawer to store the detergents, bleach, or softener stuff (or what ever one uses when one washes clothes) and another drawer could be for a trash basket (trash I understand). This was going to be another one of those "build as you go" projects since there are no plans designed for this specific idea.
We decided to go with maple as the wood choice since I still seem to have a decent supply of rough maple. There were two purchases that I needed to make. The first was for one sheet of maple plywood. 48 inches wide by 96 inches long. My idea was to make both the table top and the cabinet 24inches wide. Shown to the right is where I laid the sheet of plywood down on some styrofoam blocks and sawed it in half. A 48 inch wide sheet of plywood should make two 24 inch pieces (in my brain). Discovery number one is that the sheet was a small 48 inches wide and when allowing for the saw kerf -that is what the saw blade takes out as it cuts the board - I ended up with one 1/2 of the sheet being 24 inches wide and the other half being 23 3/4 inches wide. (This is when I looked at the fishing pole in the corner and wondered if there was anything biting in the East Fork of the Des Moines river.)
Last update on this blog, I had shown where I made up several 1/2 inch thick maple boards. Some of those boards were the boards that I planned to use to make the drawers. I cut these boards to size and made dovetail joints on all the corners. Dovetail joints are not all that difficult to make if you have the correct jig and they make for a strong joint once they are complete. The key is in the set up. Once everything is lined up correctly you can just snap them together with a little glue and they will last forever. 
The second purchase that I made was the drawer slides. We got the kind where the drawer should be able to be pulled all the way out and each drawer should be able to hold 100#. (That should hold a lot of detergent products plus a jar for all the loose change one finds when washing clothes.) The assembly of the cabinet took place at Shawn's home. You can see at the left that we were starting to mount the drawers to the slides. Looks simple. Just need to make sure both sides mirror each other.
To the right is the first assembly of the cabinet portion of the project. I say first assemble because the top drawer was in backwards. We had to reverse that drawer so the ugly part of the wood was to the back. That did not take too long to do. The maple plywood was fun to work with. The homemade boards - ones that were made out of rough maple - are always a problem. One has to worry about flaws that will show up here or there. The key is to be able to hide those flaws. (Kind of like cosmetics...)
The picture to the left shows the drawer fully extended. No one wanted to test the 100 pounds theory at this time. It rolls in and out real nice - a sign that everything was lined up correctly. The drawer ended up being 10 1/2 inches wide which is a narrow drawer, but there was not a lot of space that was available between the dryer and the wall. They are 3 inches deep which will make it easier to lift things in and out. They are almost like small trays - 10 1/2 by 24 inches (really 23 3/4).
At the end of the day, this is how things ended up. We still have to made a drawer front, maybe we will make two drawer fronts - one for each drawer, or maybe we will make a door that swings to the side. We made a trip to Lowe's to get some ideas of what the professionals do (Had a couple Budweiser Selects when we returned home to help us think). The cabinets on display at Lowe's seem to have one solid drawer front connecting both trays. When you pulled it out, both trays would come at the same time. We ended up favoring the idea of having a drawer front for each of the trays, but still wanted to think about it some more. (Maybe a couple more Budweiser Selects will help.) The drawer fronts will be another project for another day as will the staining and finishing.
Loving my drawers! Thanks a lot. Great pics by the way. Linked your blog from ours. Hope that's ok!
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