Where The Shiny Things Go

Many of you know that last weekend was my birthday, but what I haven't shared is that I got The. Coolest. Gift. from Parker! Seriously yall, I'm in love. I wanted him to share how it came to be, so here is Parker's take!

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They always used to say “diamonds are a girl's best friend” … what they meant to say is “accessories are a girls best friends”, and Chelsea is a girl. The problem with having so many accessories is that it is not easy finding places to put them. Chelsea was running out of room and needed a solution fast. This is when “we” decided that I should make her a jewelry armoire for Chirstmas.

Chelsea's jewelry box looked more like a chest of buried treasure

Chelsea's inspiration for her armoire was the armoire of her mother. Unfortunately for me (the guy who had to design the new armoire) the old armoire had been given away.  There were a few features that were important to Chelsea. She wanted to have the ability to hang necklaces, and she wanted plenty of room to store her ever growing collection of shiny things. I wanted it to match our bedroom furniture (which I also built) and to be aesthetically pleasing. So Chelsea and I worked together to draft and initial design.

Initial sketch

Unfortunately for Chelsea, this is about where the project stalled, courtesy of flight school (I am not complaining). Since you are reading about this project in February, I think that it goes without saying that she did not receive the armoire for Christmas. Luckily, there were other things on her wishlist.

You can read about that here

After coming back from Christmas leave, I had the bug to build something. We made a toy box for Jenny, but that was not quite on the scale of what I wanted. That was when I decided to finish up the armoire design. A little brow sweat later and a few sleepless nights (not really), and I had a “final” product.

Main Sketch

The build itself took about four days. Everything was pretty straight forward and there were no major alterations to the initial design.

Building Materials. Note 1: Not all the plywood was used on this project. Note 2: I had to cut the plywood down to a smaller size so it would fit in the Audi.

Gluing the legs

Box construction: The inner plywood box formed the core for the rest of the armoire. I eventually attached the legs on the outside and the drawer rails on the inside.

Legs attached

The doors for the necklaces were one of the more challenging parts of the design. I wanted to make the doors hidden and not obtrusive. The frame was easy enough to make, but the back of the door had to be thin so that there would still be room for the necklaces. I used 1/8'' plywood that I couldn't really sand, and eventually the stain ended up looking (explicit adjectives here).

Necklace doors

The trim was picked to match the other furniture in the room. I was able to use some scrap wood from the drawers. 

Trim

 Just to make Chelsea happy... a picture of me in the shop:

Love you!

If you aint makin' saw dust, you aint makin'!

After the build I did something bad: Instead of putting everything together completely before staining (including drawers, doors, handles, etc), I just did all of the finishing work. This was a problem later when a number of small fixes needed tweaking (including some things that would have been significantly easier just to sand). For the record, I did install one drawer with slide before staining just to make sure everything worked properly.

As far as drawer slides go, I could have done them for cheaper. On all previous projects, I used 1x2 with a dado'ed guide right down the middle of the drawer. I did this to make it fancier … really it ended up just making it more expensive (and not really any easier).

Stained with drawer slides installed

After the stain and poly, I attached all the hardware, lined the drawers, and finished off the project. I had some issues with the big drawer fitting properly and the magnetic latches for the side doors. Luckily, these problems were resolved relatively easily. 

The drawer bottoms serve almost no function except to look pretty (and to keep stuff from sliding around).

Drawer bottoms

Side liner installed. Notice the hanging hooks.

In the end the whole project cost just over $200. But you know what they say, you can't buy happiness … just jewelry.