I Built our Daughter THE ULTIMATE Changing Table Dresser

hey what's going on guys alex here from mr build it and in today's video it's going to be a really really fun one i partnered with my friends from tactical baby gear to create what we're calling the ultimate diaper baby changing station it includes led lights storage for extra diapers storage for the dirty diaper disposal large drawers for the dresser and a built-in changing pad so without wasting any time let me show you how i built it and let's get into the video let's go [Music] our first second let's talk about the sponsors today's video with tactical baby gear we're expecting our third child this summer and the first two times they're great but the fashion the dad fashion specifically was a little bit off let me show you the first two times we used carriers like this and diaper bags like that to walk around in public with our kids though it's cute for my wife i'm not a fan of it now i've been a huge fan of tactical baby gear way before they're a sponsor of this channel they create incredible gear for dads including carriers like this military tactical or sweet tactical baby diaper bags like this that has awesome compartments dirty laundry shoes white bag changing pads tons of compartments for storage snacks replacement clothing replacement clothing that's such a bad term spare clothing stroller hangers and probably room for beer i think we can put like three beers in there make sure you head over to tacticalbabygear.com use the promo code mr builda10 i'll link them down description below to get a 10 off of your first order today thanks tactical baby here we appreciate you guys without sponsors like you i could put these videos out now let's get back to the build let's go all right we are headed to the good old fashioned home deep we're gonna pick up some supplies with my dude beck's in the back say hi max beckham did his first project in the garage by himself what'd you make it's a trophy dude you did it all by yourself it's just mdf and wood glue dude you did a such a good job i'd even have to help you nice job dude that little uh trophy out of mdf and i couldn't be proud of him it's just sometimes it's a pain in the butt to have your kids do stuff like that but i can't hinder his creativity i'm just so proud of him so proud of you buddy you're so oh you're gonna be brilliant we're gonna go pick up some lumber we are to pick up a little bit of everything basically we got three quarter inch maple plywood because it paints really well half inch naval plywood for the drawer boxes a couple of drawer slides him just for the doors i mean you name a veneer uh you name it we're getting it so uh get it done [Music] all right getting so we've cut up our lumber as you saw on the tracks i see sometimes you don't really need a table saw you get away with a truck saw um so what i'm gonna do is these are 18 inches deep uh this is four feet long and this is 20 inches tall so what i'm going to do is start gluing things up make my life a little bit easier to make it a little bit easier i'm going to use these clamps uh clamp it they're kind of neat they're really cheap and the way they kind of work is you basically prop it in right there they're all specifically made for different sizes like three quarter inch half inch and whatnot all the stuff will be in my links in my description and then what you do is once you throw the glue on you can't win today these kind of hold it in place while you secure it so i'm gonna start throwing some wood glue on there i'm gonna use some brad nail something like two inches long start securing it and i'm gonna use a square to make sure everything's square because we've talked about this before if it's not square your drawer sucks and just foundation that's all that matters [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] i was going to brag nail this and glue the reinforcement piece right here that way this thing doesn't sway side to side you know just make it stronger and i realized i can't really do brad nail i can brand new on this piece but i can't brag now this piece because it's in the way so i'm going to throw some pocket holes right here we've done pocket holes before you guys are experts in it so i'm going to go throw a couple of pocket holes just to be able to secure it through some wood glue and i think the base of our cabinet will be almost done well minus the veneer part well you guys get it right look at this beautiful thing nice and sturdy it ain't going nowhere now here's the thing we're gonna need to include all of this uh edge end grain whatever you wanna call the plywood end green so there's three ways of doing doing a face frame cabinet style we've done stuff like that you've seen my videos or we can do it a nice easy way uh we're just gonna edge band it all edge banding is it's a veneer made out of the same material as this with an adhesive on the back side of it and by using an iron we're gonna iron it on release that adhesive and then basically it's gonna be like one permanent sticker if you will now before we get to do that some of these edges they're gonna make it a little bit difficult for us to do so what i like to do is take a sander and start cleaning all this up making sure everything's nice and flush especially by joints like that you want it nice and clean and clutch so we're going to do that clean it up start edge banding and we'll go from there [Music] all right it's my understanding it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission when it comes to using the iron all right i'll go ask her hey babe i'm gonna use your iron i'm gonna use the iron i need to iron some wood uh you might as well keep it you've already ruined it can you build me send me an invoice [Music] all right folks if you've made it this far and you're looking you're like i don't think this is looking good there's still the magic moment here's the magic moment uh all this excess which is about an eighth inch on whatever side take a razor blade and start trimming it off be very careful not to cut the plywood off then once you get it to about where you can still feel it maybe a 16th grab a scrap grab a scrap piece of wood and uh 82 120 grit sandpaper wrap it around and what you're going to do is you're going to start working the edge of it bringing two of the surfaces flush with one another and so now this looks perfect let me show you this is what it was we trimmed it a little bit and then this is where we sanded it look how nice that is all right let's get cracking on the rest of this thing also i'd like to sincerely apologize for saying let's get cracking uh we only said that in the 90s i was cracking it's crack-a-lacking let's be better i'm not saying it again let's do better [Music] the drawers are going to be made out of half-inch maple plywood the bottoms of the drawers are going to be made out of quarter inch plywood you can use maple or birch it doesn't matter um the idea is they're gonna be eight inches tall not including the face frame that's gonna be obviously larger and then um they're gonna be 16 inches deep i got 16 inch long extendable uh drawer slides so we're to start just mass producing them right now so i'm going to start ripping everything on my table so i make sure everything is the same size and then at that point we're going to start securing everything with pocket holes so let's get to work [Applause] [Music] we need to create the channel for the bottom the the quarter inch bottom that's going to be the bottom of our drawers now uh in order to avoid using a dado stack instead i will take my regular blade which is an eighth inch wide i'm going to set it to a quarter inch in depth and then i'm going to make two passes 2 8 inches equals a quarter and that way that piece will sit flush inside of it so i'm just going to get everything set up straight got to be about i don't know half an inch off the bottom and then i'm going to create two passes per board and then we'll be able to assemble everything so let's get to work [Music] everything's rounded over like we promised and we're really glad we did it so now all we have to do is start cleaning all of these things up what i mean by it is things like that little things like that are the things that kind of improve the quality of the work so i'm gonna quickly send this to about 120 grit on my sander then i'm gonna start installing the slides onto that cabinet and this drawer and then we'll start building the drawer faces let's go [Music] this helps install these little drawer slides this is just the slide opened up this is a magnet this is a reference mark once you've placed it on top i've created a little uh recess that would uh account for the face frames that are coming in so once the line's there i'm just gonna position it there line it up exactly where that little recess is i'm gonna take a little center hole punch to help me line up my screws a lot easier there you go first one's in first one's always the hardest perfect that's in take this off that's perfect i'm throwing a few securing screws just for backup and the first slide's done now we're gonna do the restroom okay so we have our drawers on it's time for the drawer faces now typically i like to build drawer faces out of a solid more harder wood a denser wood but i also don't want to break the bank on this i'm going to use select pine reason why i select it's a little pricier but as you can see there's no knots there's no imperfections that we need to patch up and fix with wood filler so this board is eight feet by i want to say 10 inches and what i'm going to do is i'm going to i need three drawer faces so i'm going to try getting three drawer faces out of this and then once we get them all done we'll put a little chamfer on the edges round them all over to make sure they're nice and appropriate and then we're you know what let's figure out a pattern i think this thing needs a pattern we'll give it a pattern so we'll cut these up and give it a pattern we're creative this morning so i still want to do a pattern i don't want to screw the pattern up before building the door because the door i definitely know how it wants to be i want to be like that retro cleated look i've done a similar pattern on my floating vanity in the master bathroom if you haven't seen that video go check it out i think you'll like it but i think what i'm first is going to do before committing to a pattern in the drawers is build this door the same way and the way i do that is take a bunch of one by twos we're basically going to create the styles and the rails and then create these in the middle if you don't have a domino that is uh like a tenon jig you'll see the tool used here in a minute um just use pocket holes or brad nails i have a domino i'm going to use my domino all right you guys have to see this the door is looking awesome so check this out it's roughly spaced out it still needs to be gapped out evenly oh it's gonna look so good over there i'm gonna round over all these edges i'm not gonna do it where it joins because i've done that before and i don't like how that looks but i am just gonna run it on my router right there now remember if you don't have a router table no problem you just use a palm router with a little round over a bit and it just makes it so much nicer since the router is going to be going anyways i might as well take those uh face frames for the drawers and just give a nice round over cleaner look all around it we're almost there let's go [Music] now earlier i mentioned about dominoes dominoes are just these little tiny little wood chips they're basically the idea of creating a mortise and tenon but in a more expedited quicker way a domino is a gift sent from heaven to earth and all it does is it quickly lines up you press it in and it creates that exact size hole that you can shove that in now if you don't have this tool which is pretty pricey if you don't have this tool for the longest time when i did things like that there are other alternative options number one is to do a dowel dowel is a little tedious to take a little bit longer but you can still totally do it option number two is you can create pocket holes now you will create the pocket holes you can pocket all screws on the back side of the door obviously you'll see all the pocket holes the solution is these pocket hole plugs a little bit of wood glue shove it in there once it dries shave it off and then sand it and it would fill anything that's exposed so you have a plethora of plethora i don't say that often enough you have a bunch of different options to do this door i have this tool i'm gonna do this let's get to work [Music] here are all of our mortises right over here little holes basically for our tenons we have all these little dominoes it's got these little grooves on them when moisture like wood glue gets on them it expands so creates even a tighter seal so if you excuse me i got a lot of glue to do [Music] everything's laid out so now i kind of have a visual so instead of making lines going uh horizontally to this i am going to create two lines that are going to come across about a quarter inch off the edge and another two lines coming across here and they're going to cross each other here so there could be little crosses right there so two lines quarter inch apart quarter inch apart and then uh i think that'll be just enough to give this kind of like that unique look first i'm making this hopefully this turns out good all right i sanded them down a little bit what do you guys think i'm kind of digging this a lot first i'm ever doing this kind of pattern excited that we're actually having the guts to try [Music] i used a technique that i learned not too long ago it's it's using a playing cards and so the way it works is you get your playing cards divided into whatever gaps you want to do in my situation they're about 3 8 inch of an inch wide i set them at the bottom take my drawer face i then take and have a pre-drilled hole where the knob will go i'll secure the drawer face temporarily to the drawer box very carefully i will pull my drawer out and then secure it from the inside with one inch screws i will then remove the screw that was holding in place drill a hole all the way through and then install the drawer pulls [Music] look at this look how nicely this turned out so the amount of textures we're gonna have on this thing is gonna be sweet all right so the actual baby changing part the part that keeps the baby safe is the top my wife wrote down some some dimensions i gotta build the topper that's 33 and a half inches by 17 and a half five three and a half inches tall so we are gonna take some of our leftover wood create that quick little frame and then use pocket holes to secure it on top i'm just gonna use some scrap mdf that i have and uh that way i don't have to edgeband all right folks i think we're ready for the primer the primer that i like to always use is the kills hide all it's an interior it's latex meaning it's water-based um it's really easy to work with it creates this adhesiveness that allows for the paint to actually have good grip to the wood what is porous it expands and contracts with temperature changes so i usually do one coat of this stuff put it on it clogs all the pore it pours and then at that point we start spraying the paint and it just gives it that grip so quick little roll fine sanding like 220 grit just to get rid of any kind of raised patterned grain and then we'll start getting for painting so let's do it all right folks so for paint i'm using a color from sherwin williams called ripe olive it's in a satin now here's the trick about cabinet uh kind of paint don't use latex that stuff is water-based it comes off really pretty easy so what i like to use is a paint product that's called urethane emerald alkalid it's super tough it's it's as easy to work with as a water-based paint meaning you dilute it with water if you're using hvala peace pear but it's hard like an oil-based paint so highly recommended go check it out a little pricey about 70 bucks a gallon but well worth it so i'm gonna go start spraying let's go all right so legs last and final part is the legs i picked up well i didn't pick up this was kind of leftover stuff from my staircase video if you guys haven't seen that go check it out really that fun project i got it from my local still shop all in all i think if i was to calculate this probably maybe 30 bucks worth of steel i cut that on that metal cutting chop stuff if you don't have one use this circular saw if you don't have that actually that was a reciprocating saw this is a circular saw i don't even know my tools do i and you can put a blade they're specialty metal blades you can put on them now a lot of people are intimidated by welding and you really have no reason to do so now let me show you a couple of quick tips tricks just to get yourself fired up and get going so let me show you so these setups they're always super simple so in the back of almost every welder there's a little chi chi base off of the steel that you're using so mine is that thick it'll tell you the settings for the gas and the settings for the knob so in this situation it's a three here and a 35 on the wire feed now here's the technique for the actual pattern there are two techniques the e and the z i don't do the z i do the e technique and all it is is a cursive e that you're just gonna follow this way this is the distance you will travel i like to use this anti-splatter spray you just spray it on and that reduces the amount of splatter that sparks all over the place [Music] and so here we go we have this little tiny e pattern that we just accomplished we got ourselves some something i guess [Music] all right so we got everything welded up everything's nice dirty and square uh before laying down our paint i'm using a self-etching primer it gives you that texture on it that way whatever goes on to the smooth metal surface can actually stick pretty good pretty tightly on um and then uh i know a couple coats of this we'll start putting the paint so let's get a rest oh i need a recipe i'll be right back all right let's tag this thing all right so everything's curing on the paint it's looking awesome it's gonna match the brass really really well at this point i'm just gonna take a drill bit and i'm gonna start creating the holes on top okay so when it comes to installing i got my little kit here i got my screws then i'm just gonna flip the sucker over lay this over it and then just start securing and then flip it all together okay i'll be completely honest with you when i saw everything apart i wasn't too sure i'm gonna like this project but as soon as that bronze gold-bladed uh legs went on this green it oh a good feeling so far so i'm just happy to work now [Music] so i'm gonna start hanging this up and start making the final adjustments and start putting in led lights that wasn't as exciting as i thought it sounded and put on it led lights let's go and one thing i noticed is check this out well we don't have a stopper for it so solve that problem there's always something uh cut a little scrap piece of wood i'm gonna drill it underneath here and then put a couple of those little rubberized clear circular stoppers that you put you know in drawers to prevent them from banging up all the paint [Music] there we go all right so this is the led kit that i bought on amazon they're they're always different brands that i use but all of them were pretty faithful that's just instructions this is a strip for the most part they're all about the same get rid of that get that power source little mountain stuff okay so we're gonna start on the inside and work our way down hey that is it for me this week thanks so much for watching this video a huge thank you to the sponsor of today's video tactical baby gear make sure you head over to their website use the promo code to 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