Shoe Storage Bench - Built In Bench

This video was sponsored by Skillshare, but I'll tell you more about them in a little bit. Why don't you come into my house and I'll tell you about a little problem I was having. Shoes. Loads of shoes all over the ground. Our mud room was a complete disaster. Even my wife was getting frustrated. She was all like, Honey, there's shoes all over the ground. It's a mess all over the floor. I can't take it. Please do something about it. Please. So being the good husband that I am, I decided that after living in this house for nearly 10 years, it was finally time to do something. I thought I could build a bench where you could sit down, but it would also have drawers that could pull out and you could store shoes in them. Yeah, just like that. So after a quick trip to the lumber store, I was ready to get rocking and rolling. Now the first thing I did was cut all of my pieces that I would need to construct my cabinet carcass. Now let me tell you a little bit about this cabinet carcass. I'm not really being too careful with it. It's going to be wedged in between two walls. It's going to have a solid wood top and a solid wood face frame. So I don't have to spend too much time making sure that it's perfectly joined together because once I wedge it between those two walls, it literally cannot move. So instead of trying to do dados or dominoes or something fancy, I just cut all my pieces and decided to pocket hole them and screw them together. Literally, that's the only way I'm hooking this carcass together. Pocket holes and screws. And because I'm going to fill the entire carcass with drawers, you will literally never see this plywood box that I'm about to slap together very quickly with hardly any effort. This is how it's going to look. I'm going to build two separate boxes that will join together to make my complete box. We're talking about a 14 and a half foot run here. And since plywood only comes in eight foot sheets, I decided to do the two boxes to get my full 14 and a half feet. Now, I just slapped the ends on there with a little glue and I hold them in place with a pin nailer. The pins are just to hold the plywood still so that I can sink a couple screws in it directly from the outside. Again, you're never going to see these screws or the outside or the plywood for that matter. So just get the whole thing together. Don't worry too much. No one's going to see it. After screwing my two outer pieces on, I start attaching my internal divider support thing. Again, just with some glue held in place with some brad nails and finished off with a couple screws straight up from the bottom. Nice and simple. And then I put some upper support pieces. These are just pieces of three and a half inch wide plywood that I trimmed down and then added some pocket holes on each end so that I could easily attach them inside of my carcass. And then I just screw them in the middle right into that center divider. And just like that, my box is pretty much ready to go. But like I said, in order to get our full 14 and a half foot run, we're building two of these boxes that will be identical. So after we get one done, well, we just slap together another one until we've got two identical boxes that will make up the main portion of our cabinet carcass and look something like this. Now, as I mentioned, we could slap these together pretty quick because they're going to be sandwiched in between two walls with a solid wood top and face frame to give them strength. The face frame is also going to beautify them. So any imperfections that are in the cabinet carcass are going to be completely hidden by our face frame. And of course, all of our drawer faces. After doing the cabinet carcass, I threw together a quick toe kick that they will sit on top just to give our bench a little bit more height. Now I'm really slapping this thing together, just glue and some brad nails because once it's wedged under that cabinet box, like I said, it can't go anywhere. So just get it done and move on. And you should have two cabinet carcasses, two kick plates. And voila, you're on the road to a beautiful bench. With our carcasses and toe kicks complete, it was time to prep the space and start bringing things inside. So the first thing I had to do was rip off some existing trim. Now this is kind of a unique area because it's got this tile backsplash. But I thought ahead. See, I made my toe kick about a quarter of an inch higher than that tile backsplash. So we can pretty much avoid it altogether because the cabinet carcass will sit on top of the toe kick and float just above that tile backsplash. So we don't have to worry about notching it out or doing some fancy cuts. So first I brought my toe kick in and I stuck it in place. And wouldn't you know, it was a perfect fit. Nice and tight between those two outer walls. And then I got to enjoy a rare luxury, which is called working at home because it was just a short walk from my wood shop into our mudroom carrying these plywood carcasses. So first I brought one carcass piece in and I plopped it down on top of my toe kick. As you can see, it runs into a piece of existing trim on that wall. So the first thing I had to do was remove that trim. I just did this quick and easy with a multi-tool. Don't make fun of me for using Ryobi. They sent it to me a long time ago and believe it or not, it's the only multi-tool I have. And it works. So get off my back. So after removing the trim, I slid the carcass in place just to make sure that it fits nicely. Now I wasn't too concerned about getting a perfect cut here because the face frame will actually sit on the front of this carcass and will make sure to cut nice and pretty for the face frame. So after doing one side, I slid that same carcass box over to the other side and used it as a template to remove the other piece of trim. And then once I got that trim out of the way, I slid it into place just to make sure that fit and I was ready to bring in my second carcass piece. Probably need to lose a little weight. Now here's the real moment of truth to see if these two carcasses will fit in between those two walls. Now let me give you another little piece of advice. Make your carcass like a quarter of an inch shorter than it needs to be. It doesn't have to be super tight in there. What you want to be tight is your face frame and we'll worry about that later. All we want now is for our carcass to sit nicely in between those two walls and we can shim it into place to make sure it doesn't move around. So after I dropped the two carcasses in, I just hook them together with a few screws to keep them from bouncing around and I started working on getting the whole thing level. First front to back and then side to side. Side to side was great. I didn't have to do anything but front to back was a little out of level so I just added a few shims. There is some debate in the cabinet world on whether or not shims should go between the carcass and the toe kick or underneath the toe kick. Well, I broke all the rules here because I did a little of both. I shimmed between the carcass and the toe kick in the very middle and then I shimmed between the toe kick and the floor on the outer edges. I don't know why. I'm just weird like that and hey, it worked and the whole thing was wedged tightly so does it really matter? And then finally I hooked the toe kick to the carcass just with some inch and a half screws directly through the bottom of my carcass. Next I found some studs and I hooked the entire thing to the wall with some three and a half inch wood screws and it was locked in tight and not going anywhere. Next I decided to take a break from the actual cabinet boxes and start cutting down pieces for my top. Now I'm making the top out of rustic white oak. Which is just a fancy way of saying oak with a crazy amount of knots in it that you're gonna have to deal with later but I'll get to that. Since my cabinet is 14 and a half feet and I wanted the top to be made out of continuous runs of lumber I had to get 16 foot pieces of oak because that's the only length I could get 14 feet out of and let me tell you milling them down was a pain in the butt and like I said they were completely full of knots so I was gonna have to do a little epoxy fill. This is the only way you will ever see me filling wood with epoxy in my shop. Death to river tables. So I prepped all the boards on the bottom with some tape to catch my epoxy once I poured it and I did this first before gluing it up so I didn't have to turn the entire slab upside down and do it afterwards. So after taping the bottom I just glued them all together and then once they were securely in clamps I started pouring some epoxy. Now I just used West Systems clear epoxy and I added a little black latex paint to it. That could be a horrible thing to do but I've been doing it for years and it works great. You just need a little bit. A little goes a long ways to make that epoxy completely black. And then once it was all dry I popped it out of clamps and I started sanding the crud out of it until it was nice and smooth and then I set it aside to be finished later. Now I'd like to take a moment to tell you about our sponsor for this video, Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning community with literally thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people. Hey, I'm curious. You can learn awesome things like, for example, how to film on your iPhone. So in this class we want to talk about mobile filmmaking specifically shooting on your iPhone and really taking the object that you have probably in your pocket every single day and shooting pretty awesome video on it. Or you can browse their vast library of different topics like animation, film, fine art. I'm hesitant to tell you this but they even have classes on woodworking. This class is all about furniture making. How to design, make models, and do simple woodworking. Skillshare is kindly offering a free trial of Skillshare Premium for the first thousand people that use the link in my video description down below. So click the link, check it out, and hey, go learn something awesome. With our top all put together and ready for finish I decided to jump back over to our boxes and start piecing together our face frame. Now I like to do face frames in this manner when I've already got a built-in carcass. And that is to cut my two outer pieces, get them nicely fit. For these I had to cut a few little notches to fit around the existing tile backsplash. So I quickly just did that on the bandsaw in my shop. Then once I have them fit perfectly in place I like to hook them in just with a few brad nails. Now this isn't permanent, we're going to pull these back off but it's going to hold them in place while we get our measurements for our cross pieces. So once we get one piece done on one side we switch over to the other side, do the exact same thing holding in place with a few brad nails. And then once those are secure we can get our internal measurements for our cross pieces. And by doing it this way we know that our face frame is going to fit perfectly when it comes time to actually install it. So after I got my cross pieces cut to size I just double checked to make sure they fit nice and snug between those two outer pieces. And then I marked those two outer pieces just so I could remember which was which and ripped them off of there. I'll just break off those nails and fill the nail holes before I paint. But now we have the peace of mind of knowing all of our pieces are the correct size and we can start to hook our entire face frame together and get it ready for paint. And because I thought you needed a little more pocket hole action in your life I'm hooking the entire face frame together quick and easy just with some pocket holes and glue. These pocket holes will be on the inside of the face frame so you will never ever know they're there. Pretty simple, huh? Am I the only one that uses my mouth as a container to hold extra screws? No? Just me? All right. Once we get our outer pieces connected onto our face frame we could hook in all of our internal drawer dividers. I just cut a few pieces of stock wood that I could use as spacers and I worked my way down the line making sure that all of my dividers were nice and even. And then of course I sanded the entire thing thoroughly with the hand sander and then I knocked down the internal edges just with a piece of 220 sandpaper. And just like that our face frame was complete and could be set aside until we are ready to paint it. Wahoo! The next thing we had to do was start constructing our drawer faces. So using just some three-quarter poplar stock cut down to two and a quarter inches wide I take the dado stack and I run a quarter inch groove down the center of all my outside pieces. Then using a crosscut sled I cut my corresponding tenons. Now if you want a detailed step-by-step on how to do this process I have a video for that in my cabinet making series. I will leave a link to that at the end of this video. Once I had all my pieces cut it was time to insert my panels and get them glued up. For my panels I'm using a piece of half inch MDF, rabbet it out on all four sides to create a nice quarter inch shelf that will slide perfectly into my drawer faces. Again I show this entire process in my cabinet building series so if you want the details go check it out over there. And yes, as you're wondering, I did this on purpose so that you'd have to go watch another video because that's how I make my money. All right, with all my pieces done I just start gluing them together making sure I get a nice amount of glue on all my tenons and then I flip it over and do the same thing to the other side. Now some people leave the panels floating, some people glue them in place. With MDF you can totally glue your panels in place because that wood's not going to move but I just add a little bit of glue to my panel so it's kind of half and half. Then after letting the drawer faces sit for an appropriate amount of time they are dried up and ready to be taken out of clamps and sanded. To sand my drawer faces I like to first run them through the drum sander on both sides to knock down any ridges and then I finish them up with the hand sander. Have I mentioned how much I hate sanding? But let's be honest, there's just no way around it. And with my drawer faces complete it was time to get ready to paint everything. Now normally I paint outside or in my garage but it was pouring down rain outside and I'm not gonna lie to you my garage is full of junk so I decided to make a Dexter style kill room, I mean paint booth, in the middle of my shop just by stapling some sheets of plastic to the ceiling and protect all my precious machinery. In no time at all I had a nice well-lit spray booth and I was ready to start spraying paint. Now whenever I paint cabinet doors I like to use water-based because I don't like cleaning things up. I first do a coat of this premium wall and wood primer followed by the emerald urethane from Sherwin-Williams. It is a super hard paint and it sprays very nicely. To spray my cabinet doors I'm using the Fuji Q5 HVLP sprayer. It does an awesome job and, well, I'm not a great painter so if I can do it I think anybody can probably do it. I typically like to do one very thick coat of the wall and wood primer followed by two to three coats of the actual paint. And with the sprayer it goes by pretty darn quick. In no time at all my cabinet doors were painted and ready to cure and await their installation day. Now you might be asking, well, what about your face frame? Yeah, I don't typically spray my face frame when I'm installing it separately. I like to use a brush because that way I can touch it up after it's installed and you're not going to notice my brush strokes. Kind of tricky, huh? With everything painted it was time to take down my kill room, I mean spray booth, and get my top cut down to size. Now if you ever have a situation where you're trying to measure in between two walls and your tape measure does this old tricky here and you don't know what the exact measurement is, just do what I do. Measure away from the wall, just a standard measurement. For me I always do exactly one foot. Make a little mark and then measure from the other side of the wall to that mark and just add your one foot. That way you'll know the exact length in between the two walls and you're not going to have to guess on a bent tape measure. Once I had my measurements all figured out I just locked on the track saw and I cut my top down to the right length. First on one side and then the other. Finally it was time to finish the entire top. Now if you've watched any of my other videos involving white oak you probably already know the answer to this. I'm finishing it with Rubio Monocoat Cotton White because it's the best for white oak. It just looks great, leaves it looking natural. Can't get enough of this stuff. Then with everything painted and my top finished the only thing left to do was construct all of my internal drawer boxes. For this I used 5 8ths Baltic Birch and I just trimmed it down to the correct size I was looking for. For this I'm doing 10 inch drawers. They got to hold shoes so you know they got to be kind of beefy. After I ripped everything down on the table saw and I added a quarter inch dadoed groove on the bottom of each piece for my panel I trimmed down all the pieces and I pre-sanded them. Then all I had to do was slap them together. Again if you want a detailed step-by-step on my drawer making process there's a video for that in my cabinet making series. Hint hint, go watch that video. And before you know it I had eight beautiful drawers that were ready to be lightly sanded with the hand sander to knock down all of those edges. And then I finished off each drawer with a nice coat of linseed oil just to make that Baltic Birch really pop. With our drawers lightly coated in linseed oil all of our pieces were complete and ready to hook together and get this thing done. So the first thing I needed to do was bring my face frame into the house and install it onto my carcass. This was kind of a nerve-wracking moment because you never know if that face frame is gonna fit. Oh wait, we do know it's gonna fit because we took all of our measurements directly off the carcass. Oh yeah, so of course with a little love it slid nicely into place exactly where it should go nice and snug between each wall. There was a little bit of a gap here or there but it was small enough that a little caulking will fix it up nicely and you'll never be able to tell. So after we get it in place, you nail it. This is what it looks like when you try and nail a face frame without the gun hooked up to the air compressor. What an idiot. So like I was saying, with the face frame set in place I just tack it to the carcass with a few 16 gauge nails nice and easy, lemon squeezy. I said that in a previous video and someone liked it so I thought I'd throw it in again. And then once our face frame is tacked on I installed a nice piece of trim on the bottom to hide our kick plate. Again, just a few 16 gauge nails. And then just to make it look a little more fancy I installed a piece of quarter round to cover the seam between that trim and the floor. Then I filled all my holes just with some white wood filler and like I mentioned, I caulked all my seams where the face frame met the wall. And wouldn't you know? It looks great. The last thing I needed to do was just touch up the whole thing with another coat of paint using the brush and I was ready for the top. A 14 flipping foot top. But man, it went in absolutely perfect. Couldn't have planned it better. I was tired. Then I just hooked the top to the carcass with a few inch and a quarter screws through our internal carcass support pieces. And it was time to start installing my drawers. For my drawer slides, I'm using these Blum undermount drawer slides which work great in this application because you can hook them to the face frame and then just screw them right to the bottom of the cabinet. Then I installed my little Blum orange clippy things and I just clipped all my drawers right in place. You're probably tired of hearing me say this but I also have a full video on drawer installation in my cabinet building series that you can go check out. And voila! My drawers were installed and it was ready to start mounting drawer faces. Now for these overlay drawer faces, I have these really handy dandy clamps that are made by Rockler Woodworking. That make installing overlay drawer faces incredibly simple. You just hook on the clamps, slide in the drawer face. I like to use a little spacer bar between my top and the drawer face just to make sure everything is nice and even. So once you get it nice and even, you just lock down your clamps and it holds the drawer face securely while you screw it in from inside your drawer. And just like that, your drawer face is on. No fuss, no hassle. It almost makes it fun to install drawer faces. Ah, who am I kidding? It is fun to install drawer faces. It's just so satisfying to see it all come together. With all of my drawer faces installed, the very last step was installing the hardware. So I drilled a hole in the center of all of my drawer faces just eyeballing it. I'm just kidding. I pre-marked them all. Not that good. And then I installed just a simple black knob on the front of each drawer. And just like that, our bench was done. The only thing left to do was to fill it with all of our shoes and then, of course, go get my wife to see what she thinks. Shh, filming. She'd be really, really mad. Yeah. It's always nice when you have a problem and can find a solution. A room that used to be littered with an unordinary amount of shoes now looks nice and clean. My wife's happy. The space looks great. So I'm calling this one a success. Well, I hope you enjoyed that. And I hope you came as a stranger but you're leaving as a friend. Now, if you enjoyed that video, go subscribe down below. And if you want to see in detail how I do my drawer boxes and my drawer faces and all that jazz, check out some of these videos that are floating around me here. And you can see step-by-step instructions on exactly how I do that process. Cheers.