My dresser I built.

ryanator

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Finally after 40-50 hours of work and 3.5 weeks, my dresser is done. Below is a pic from my phone, I'm trying to get a good camera to take some pictures.

The dresser is 60" wide, 36" tall, and 19.5" deep. Total material cost: $440

Material and Design: It's all plywood with Wenge veneer (exotic African medium toned wood) sealed with 5 coats of water based clear satin polyurethane. The finish has a distressed antique look. The style is a contemporary design.

Legs: This is what I envisioned for some reason that motivated me to build it. If anything, it adds some uniqueness to it. The legs have glass strips embedded from inside. I had these cut from Viking Glass in Dickinson. I cut 4 long pieces of plywood to form each square leg and used a table saw for the inside cutout and routed an insert on the inside to lay the glass in. I then secured the glass on the inside with wood blocks carefully drilled and nailed by hand to not crack the wood.

The inside is a web frame design to fit the drawers into.

Drawer boxes: The drawer boxes were cut to fit on wood runners and kickers (no metal slides to open or close) with Johnson's paste wax rubbed on to help them slide smoothly. I used wood biscuits with a biscuit joiner to attach the box sides, front and back pieces together with glue and used a air brad nail to secure it in place as it dried. (Think of this in place as a classic dovetail or box joint design).

The drawer bottoms are red oak 1/4 inch plywood. I dadoed (cuts a groove) the drawer box sides to insert the bottom as I assembled it all together.

Drawer fronts: The final part was to attached the drawer fronts. Before hand, it's important to measure everything(I did to the 64th of an inch) and to keep in mind the veneer thickness while I put veneer on all sides of the drawer fronts (it's about a 64th of an inch). This allows me to make sure I have a 16th inch spacing between everything. I then exactly measure each handle

I actually cut and made the table top before everything else, and as I kept measuring and cutting to make the rest, I hoped they would fit to the top, and they did, so I didn't have to resize the top.

All I know after some exhausting hours, it's one hefty, well built piece of furniture.

Bill of materials: Total cost $440

Plywood - $70

Drawer Boxes - Baltic Birch plywood $55

Red Oak drawer bottoms - $30

Veneer - Wenge - $140

Drawer handles - $70

Glass - dark colored - $55

Misc (finish, glue, biscuits, paste wax, nails, etc..) $20

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DAMMMMMMMM son! Man that thing looks awesome. I love the modern look to it! Man you have a talent with wood. You should start a side business making custom furniture. Awesome work! B)
 
Very nice work Ryan.
 
I'm telling you man, get your name out there, start doing work then get out of the corporate world and work from home.
 
I'm telling you man, get your name out there, start doing work then get out of the corporate world and work from home.
Wouldn't that be nice. Where would my market be? Did you know that if a person came up someone to have a piece of furniture custom built, the quote price on something like this would be around $3,000? No kidding, that's the common markup of these types of things. If needed, I might hone my skills some more to reach that to every little detail.

 
Well the quality of furniture is cheap these days, I think some people wouldn't mind spending extra on something with quality built in.
 
Rough economy doesn't help the selling of higher priced albeit quality made stuff.
 
Economy would make it tough, but still even the fairly spendy furniture you find in furniture stores these days is very cheaply made. The bedroom set we got for the new house (dresser, chest of drawers, and a couple night stands) look nice on the outside, but when start looking a lot of it is made out of pretty light weight/weak material.

As far as market I couldn't tell you, but one of my uncles is a carpenter in a smaller ND town. Builds custom furniture, trim and cabinetry. He also delivers/installs the stuff. No clue how well they do, but I think he stays pretty busy.

 
I'm really wanting to build more, but wouldn't know what to do with them.

Check this site and browse his other projects: http://www.custommade.com/kaku-victory-chest-of-drawers/by/myersdesign-artbox Look at the price! I like the look of it and could make it with the species of wood spot on at a cost of $500 or so. Not that I'm looking at that range to sell at but I could replicate some of those on the site, just not the metal pieces without a machinist shop around.

I don't like to replicate things, but it helps with learning how to handle building styles.

 
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