How to Design Drawers for a Chest of Drawers

Series Summary

Are you tired of your wife nagging you about not having enough room for all her clothes? Do you ever wake up in a cold sweat wondering if the furniture from IKEA really is aesthetically pleasing or if it's cool just because everyone else thinks it's cool? Do you spend hours of the day rolling your clothes up tighter and tighter just to fit them into some plastic shelves you bought in college? Well, worry no more! Let your wife stop pestering and your fears of IKEA's legitimacy abate and build your own chest of drawers. Building at home has never been easier.

In this free video series, watch as professional builder Jon Olson teaches how to make a chest of drawers. Learn how draw up the design for a chest of drawers and dresser, how to cut the wood for top, bottom and sides, how to design and assemble the drawers for a dresser, how to cut and attach the trim, how to stain a dresser, and how to place the dresser in the room. This piece of furniture is both beautiful and functional and a great addition to any room.

Video Transcript

"In this video clip we will be designing our drawers. The sides of the drawers are going to be made out of 1/2" oak plywood and the bottoms are going to be made of 1/4" oak plywood. With the drawer slides that we will be installing the directions require us to have a 1/2" clearance on each side of the drawer. When I measure my opening for my drawer I get 28" if I subtract that 1/2" clearance from each side my drawer width is now going to be 27". When I designed my chest of drawers I designed it so that the top 3 drawers have the same height and the bottom 2 drawers have a different height. The height of my top 3 drawers are 8" typically you need to have 1/2" clearance on top of the drawer so you can fit it in with it being on a drawer slide. However since clothes are going in this drawer and typically people stack there clothes a little bit higher that the top of the drawer, I'm actually going to leave a 1" clearance. With that being said the height of my top 3 drawers are going to be 7". For my bottom 2 drawers I have a height of 10" I'm going to subtract my 1/2" clearance and that's going to give me a height of 9" for my bottom 2 drawers. For the depth of all of my drawers I'm going ahead and measure the depth of my chest of drawers which is 20", now on the back of my chest of drawers I'm going to have a sheet of 1/4" plywood that I'm going to rabbit in. So I have to subtract a 1/4" from my depth, so the maximum depth that my drawers can be is 19 3/4". Typically you want to leave a little bit of room behind your drawer, now since the maximum depth can be 19 3/4" I'm going ahead and make my drawer to 19" as my depth. So my final measurements for my top 3 drawers will be 7" high, 27" wide, 19" deep. For my bottom 2 drawers my width is going to be 27 which is the same as the top the depth is going to be 19, which is the same as the top 3 drawers. However my height is going to be 9" since that opening is a little bit bigger."