How to Build Modern Nightstands

hey guys alex here from mr building and in today's video i'm gonna show you how i built this beautiful nightstand that is also very beginner friendly so without wasting time let me show you how you can build this yourself and let's get into the video let's go [Music] now before we get started let's talk about sponsors today's video rockler family owned since 1954 rockler is your go-to source for high quality innovative woodworking tools finishing supplies hardware lumber and expert advice whether you're building a simple bookshelf custom desk or brand new kitchen cabinets rockler has everything you need to make your next project a success rocklin has developed hundreds of innovative tools for woodworkers over the let's see here some examples are bench cookies silicone glue tools clamp it clamping squares bandy clamps desk collection accessories router jigs hardware installation jigs and so much more also specializes in hard to find furniture hardware kit from murphy bed hardware to hidden shelf brackets barn door hardware and even rolling library ladder kit rockler offers expert advice across 37 stores in the us including product support team reachable by email chat or phone finally rockler offers hundreds of how-to articles videos tips and free plans on their website rockler.com now without wasting time let's get back to the video let's go i'm coming up with a series the series would be of simple stuff very practical stuff uh just the things that we need for our homes especially new couples who are buying these houses and remodeling and now they need to furnish it now the the techniques would be basic the tools uh basic as well we're not gonna do two anything too crazy you can totally do it just give it a try and i promise you we'll learn something and we'll save a bunch of money later down the road so that's what i want to do those are my intentions they're pure i believe and i hope you're going to learn a ton so first order of business we're going to start building some nightstands just got a new tool sds hammer drill this is perfect for drilling into concrete and stuff like that anyway this is not sponsor at all this is me having fun that was pretty cool okay all right enough enough goofing around let's go build we're gonna have first of all i want it to be big girthy some would say uh it's gonna be 24 inches wide 16 inches deep uh it's gonna be 24 inches tall and i'm gonna have a base for it so it's gonna have like this inset recessed kind of like a toe kick style we'll be making the drawers out of a half inch maple ply uh four by eight sheet is probably roughly around i was at 35 40 bucks here's the thing you can make it i'm out of three quarter inch material this is gonna be super heavy you don't want to do that just get this [Music] these are my basic uh cut lists here's my basic dimensions right there take a pause if you need to got the sides 16 and a half by 16. we need two of those 16 by 24 we need two of those all right i just cut up a 16 and a half uh length by whatever you want i did six inches this is the back support just to make sure that there's you know doesn't start caving in [Applause] now we got to do the base moving on [Applause] six by eighteen you need two of those and six by ten you'll need two of those as well [Music] now we can assemble let's go we you're gonna use a pocket hole jig you can have a cheap one like this this is a mini by craig it's uh 20 bucks you have half inch you have three quarter inch or inch and a half set your collar to three quarter inch or whatever thickness you're setting here clamp it in place and then you're gonna put this in here i'm gonna break something oh there's wood glue on it drill it through come out you got a pocket hole put your pocket hole screws again give you special kind of screws and then bing bada boom also we're gonna use wood glue on this it's important pocket holes wood glue very strong let's get to work look at all that wood glue i don't know what that came from whatever project i did i gotta do a better job cleaning my tools i'm gonna go to my foreman right there because it's tempting me it's like i have it let's just speed up the process [Music] the screws are going to be clamping everything down and the wood glue no matter how little you put usually squeezes out if you take tape and you mask off just where the materials will line up on the edges basically keeping an apron if you will a bib if you will we have a baby um along the way here's that boom remove that we're going to put our wood glue on whatever thing we're gluing up wood glue will squeeze out but then after everything dries for i don't know maybe 20 minutes we'll just remove our tape and bada bing bada boom nice easy clean up [Music] i don't know if you saw this little brush gluing mechanism uh it's the glue kit from rockler like it a lot you'd be surprised how often i use it really inexpensive go check it out one important thing is um obviously we are going to secure them like this but then i also put two screws on the short ones and then four on the long ones and that's the part that's going to secure this to the basically attach the two units [Music] together [Music] oh yeah all right real quick i'm gonna go start assembling the uh the second dresser and then we'll start the next step [Music] it's been a long difficult labor but i wanted to present to you twins healthy beautiful full-term twins oh job well done for today folks 60 bucks what we're looking at so far next step is to start building the drawers so we have our plywood cut we're going to start ripping uh these are our cutlass though um take a screenshot if you want if you'll excuse me to fire up this puppy we'll get cutting [Music] now here is the most important part about these measurements is measure the width of this cavity here and then subtract an inch thus drawer slides that we're going to be using are half inch thick so you're going to have a half inch on each side and then the drawer is going to be floating in the middle it really improves the quality of the drawer if you round over these edges if you still don't have a router and you're like how do i make this nice i got you fam don't worry take 120 grit sandpaper get a piece of block of wood and then just kind of go over now you're not going to completely round them over but what you're going to do is you're gonna get rid of that really harsh sharp line that could you know potentially cut you [Music] obviously we use the mini jig if that's what you're using uh we've been using three quarter inch setting because that's the one that we're working now we're using half inch setting so you change this thing and you move it up to the half inch and now the last thing we need to do is move this little stop collar to uh the half inch mark and then we'll be ready to clamp this down and create those pocket holes and me you know me i'm gonna use my floor mat you use this and then go get a formula [Applause] hey real quickly i don't know if i mentioned this get yourself a nice blade for plywood get a higher tooth count sticking to that like nothing less than 40 uh teeth per inch yeah yeah yeah no 40 tooth blade yeah so uh 40 to 60 40 60 you'll be fine trust me the base of the cabinet drawers this is this is quarter inch plywood that cheat costs me it's a 4x4 sheet 11 bucks at home depot you could staple this thing or screw it from the bottom up but the problem is number one you can see stuff on the sides number two is over time it'll sag and break out so you have to create a little inset in it we'll just use a table so hopefully you guys got table saws if not um you could probably get away with using a skill saw it's just a little bit tricky but here's what we're gonna do we're gonna take this guard off and we're gonna lower this blade to where it stick out about a quarter inch out high and then we're gonna use our fence put it in place here and space it out about a quarter inch from the blade after that we're gonna create one pass now that's quarter inch material the thickness of a blade is an eighth two eighths equal a quarter so then we're gonna move it just a hair to create another slot well the hair is another eighth and then that's gonna create our quarter inch groove slot that's gonna then allow for us to take this piece that we're gonna cut up in place and then slide it inside into a perfect position [Music] got drawer slides i'll put the link in the description as well um got these from rockler here's the thing important um they're different sizes based off of the drawer you're doing so these are 14 inch because these are 14 inch drawers you can do 16 and whatever ball bearing ones are a little pricey especially the fancy ones like these which they're self-closing uh 16 bucks for a pair we got these drawers in here we have to spread them out evenly uh the best way to do it is take this distance here uh it's about inch and a half divide that by three meaning we're gonna have space on top between the drawer and the bottom ours is roughly like inch and a half so i just got a couple of scrap pieces of wood and i start with the bottom one that's going to find my level and i start installing these [Music] i goofed on something i don't i don't know why this is in space as properly as i thought it would so i added another three quarter inch piece right there if you run it if you're doing the exact same thing i'm doing which i hope you are because this is like a learning opportunity two and a quarter so i got three pieces of half inch and a piece of three quarters i'm just trying to space it out even because when we do the uh the drawer faces you want to have them even learning lessons you guys know this that's part of the drill we're learning lessons [Music] oak specifically gets to be known as something that gets flaky pretty quickly especially if you have the wrong blade that's earlier i said use a high tooth count blade so it prevents any kind of tear out i want to show you what can go wrong on a on a pore blade um on oaks as you can see it tore out all these oak particles on top trick number one get masking tape this kind of almost keep those little wood chips down nice clean perfect cut and try to use a table saw you're going to really appreciate it that's the hardest part of this entire project is just nice good clean cuts blade get a nice blade please all right all right let's do these drawers edge banding is it's pre-glued on the back it's slightly wider than the three-quarter inch wood so what you would do is you place your iron on the first maybe three four to five inches a couple of mississippis on there make sure it's super hot take a scrap piece of wood and start pressing it on and continue this all the way along the way so your job is to take the glue that's being melted and just start spreading it to actually stick to the edges that we're trying to put on listen for a hollow sound if you don't hear hollow sound you're good if you hear a little hollow sound that's probably because you missed a part and you'll have to go over with that iron no big deal and then cut off all this excess stuff try without cutting your plywood the last part you'll need is you'll need 120 grit sandpaper and you can use the same little block of wood there wrap it around going at a 45 degree angle over and up and start sanding to make it flush you're not going to do much damage to your plywood don't worry about it usually big box stores will have like a white melamine edge banding maple and birch but for like red oak stuff and the reason i want red oak stuff is because it's got a nice good grain pattern we're going to stain it it's going to look super modern you get our rockler's website i'll put everything will be down in the description so don't worry just check it out you'll be fine we're going to start sanding it before we start assembling and staining you can work it from 120 to 220 but i'm just going to skip 120 the veneer is so thin on this plywood that you don't want to go too far you'll take it off and it'll look ugly so be on the light side 220 grit make it nice and smooth hey in case you're wondering what these are these are bench cookies from a rockler when you're saying things my table it's got paint on it so it's bumpy so what we don't want to do is give it a nice fresh sanding and then lay this thing right on the table and start scratching it up again so it protects your project make sure you don't lose the work you already you know the momentum you already got i got two stains here uh this one is flint and this is sun bleach by varathane what i like to do before i stain is i'll take a scrap piece of this wood and then i'll do a couple of test pieces and just see what i like more i don't have gloves i have everything else by gloves i have to be very careful so that is flint and that is sunbleached so this is flint sun bleached i like this this is a lot lighter this is like more modern you never know you have to check with the boss all right so this is flint this is sun bleached i like this one i thought so sun bleached or flint which one yeah some bleached it is [Music] all right so we're gonna have to start getting uh ready to clear coat you wanna clear coat it just because you can protect it from you know grease on your hands and all that stuff i always use a water-based semi-gloss clear coat i have an hvlp sprayer which is just high volume low pressure if you don't have something like this and you're like what can i get to get by with this project you can get a wipe on polyurethane um and you just put on a rag and just do a couple of coats on it you don't get too much on it but you know it's something also you can also brush it or roll it don't brush it actually just just roll it'll be a cleaner job so i already got it loaded up in here and we're going to take it outside and give it a couple of coats [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right so let's start installing our drawer face these are the drawer pulls we're gonna use super modern they're from rockler again i'll leave all that stuff in the description if you flip it first of all on its back pre-drill two holes on each side of your drawer face that way when the screws come in to secure them it'll be a lot easier we're gonna throw a little bit of tape just to make sure they don't wiggle out on us we're going to take a drill bit that is just slightly bigger than the back of the drawer pull and we're just going to screw in just for the first top part basically the drawer face after we made our markings of where the center line is just the first drawer face okay okay then we're gonna take our inch and a quarter screw inch and a half whatever you want to use this is just going to be something to secure in place the drawer face we're gonna push one drawer out at a time nothing is misaligned we're gonna take our screws that are one inch long the reason why one inch is because our drawer box is half an inch the drawer face is three-quarter inch to secure both together without having a screw come out here one inch is a good good middle ground double check nothing came out of alignment so at this point this drawer face is secure so now we're just gonna remove our temporary screw gotta drill all the way through this time put this through screw in your place your drawer pull remove your tape and just like that our first one is nicely aligned and works perfect we're going to take our hole saw create a little hole here bust it in there and then now we can feed it because we have an opening in the back all of our cables in there [Music] [Applause] hey thanks so much for sticking around watching yet another one of my videos it means the world to me if you're brand on the channel and you like videos like this make sure you hit the subscribe button and tap the notification bell that way you'll be alert every time we put a video out i hope you guys stick around and follow this process of this beginner woodworking projects we're doing projects like nightstands up next we have the bedroom we that the the dresser and then the the farmhouse dining table the coffee depot basically stuff to equip and and furnish your home because there's nothing more exciting than remodeling your home and then furnishing it with stuff you built as well make sure you follow me on all of my social medias all the links including the tools on the project views and my patreon and the merch section courage and sweat will be down in description below all of this stuff helps support the channel big thank you to sponsors today's video tune out this week we'll see you guys on the next one see ya bye [Music]