I’ve put our bedroom back together, and not the old crumby dresser I was using before doesn’t fit (I moved a wall 5″).
Now I am looking at a long built in cabinet to store clothes, but I’m usure my idea will work. My problem is that I only have 24″ of space to work with… and that’s assuming the drawer opens fully and hits the edge of the bed.
Would a 12″ drawer system work – or it is a ridicuosly short space? I’ve got about 9′ oa wall to cover with drawers, so they can be wide.
Any thoughts?
Rebuilding my home in Cypress, CA
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I was going though the same thin. i was moving into a smaller room. So I thought I could make the drawers and use slidin dovetails for the slides. The standard width for a dresser is 19 1/4" so going to 13" your only really loosing 6" in width and I was going to make it up in the width of the drawers.
But now I decided to just get a smaller bed :>). . I made the boxes out of birch ply and Im gonna go frameless with solid wood edging (maple) Im gonna stain it a dark walnut or mahogany and spray it with tinted w/b poly.
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Would a 12" drawer system work
Do you mean 12" total depth, or 12' drawer guides?
Six-part drawer box with 7/16-1/2" sides gives you 11" on the inside of the drawer box front to back. You gain another 1/2" by using a five-part box (back of the drawer head used as drawerbox front).
Now, in 12" total cabinet depth, you can sometimes get 11" guides in, but, like as not, you'd need 10" guides. That 10" deep drawer box is only 9" on the inside--which is very tight, no matter what the width.
Note that every inch you can "steal" you get back where it counts. So, if you can recess the cabinets in between the studs, or any such similar dodge, it pays back pretty quickly.
Not using a flush drawer front, but one overlayed on a face frame nets you the thickness of the f.f., too.
I was thinking of a 12" deep cabinet, with whatever drawer inside. Looking to save every inch, I might even make the drawer boxes out of plexi or bent and riveted metal. I was thinking about those fully extendable ball bearing drawer slides too. Considering 1" is almost 10% of my depth, every bit counts!Rebuilding my home in Cypress, CA
Also a CRX fanatic!
make the drawer boxes out of plexi or bent and riveted metal
Ack, now I can't remembe the name, but there are several outfits that make drawer guide & box side fro mthe same piece of epoxy-coated metal, which might "buy" you a bit more depth.
Full extension guides are still limited by the cabinet back, which you might want to consider omitting, if possible. That can be a pain, as you then have to shim mounts for the back end of the carcass/box halves of the drawer guides, which makes getting exactly parallel a challenge to ones profane vocabulary.Occupational hazard of my occupation not being around (sorry Bubba)
Easy- you are simply building a bookcase with drawers the height you want it. Should be doable out of one sheet of plywood, and one sheet of mdf for the drawer fronts and face frames
xxPaulCPxx ,
The wall is 9' long right ? is the bed length going in the 9' direction ?
If it is seems as though you would have several feet or so for full depth drawers maybe . Or , could you build a full depth stack on each end a bit taller then normal , if you add the square footage up it could be close to the same or more . Also some full extension slide are what they call 1" over travel , an 18" slide pulls out 19" and so on .
hope this helps dusty
Have you considered using shelving instead of drawers, with doors that slide side to side. You would gain considerable storage space. It ounds like you are only going to have 12" of space between the bed and the 12" deep cabinet. Is that right or did I misunderstand. If the drawer will extend out enough to hit the bed, where are you going to be when you open it?
Disregard what is considered "standard" in drawer depth and width and height.
Determine what you are going to be storing in those drawers and whether the articles need to be stacked, pigeonholed or folded or refolded in ways you didn't do before.
If you were in the military you might remember how you had to fold or roll some of your duds to get them to fit and conform.
Look at some of the ads for closet systems. You'll notice that in some the storage is shelving units that hold exactly one folded item, such as a shirt, spaced just far enough apart to comfortably load and unload the shelf.
Just about anything you might want to put into a drawer will fit, especially if you don't try to double pack one in front of the other, in a foot or less depth.
You can get creative with doors rather than drawers. Consider sliders that masquerade as the flat panels (or raised panels) in a rail and stile door. Consider doors with top and bottom hinge pins that will allow the door to appear to open normally but then be pushed back into recesses on either side of the opening, such as the disappearing doors on entertainment centers. Consider the same arrangement but lifting the door and sliding it back. I think these are used in barrister bookcases.
Using doors also forces you to be somewhat neater and more organized. You won't be tempted to jam things in and rely on drawer sides and the front to hold it all in. You can build your storage unit much higher using doors because you can see directly in, even above head height, which you can't do when you have to look over the top of drawers to see what you have.
That's what I was thinking about, depthwise, that 12" might be OK.
For everyone, just so I can illustrate the point:
View Image
With the bed so close, I will only be able to access the space while sitting next to an open drawer. A sliding panel is a good idea, but I don't know how I would be able to see what is on the bottom shelf when I am sitting almost on top of it.Rebuilding my home in Cypress, CA
Also a CRX fanatic!
I'd go with shelves covered by full-length cab doors limited iin width by the distance to the bed covers less 1" or so. You could have plastic bins that pull out on the bottom to get to items blocked from view by the upper shelves.
Got an 8' tall one in the MB that works fine, and is 14" deep.
If you install a murphy bed then it wont matter cause the bed will be tucked away and you will have more room when not sleeping.
Ooooo - one more gadget to break while I'm away from home! Interesting idea though... but I'd hate to have to flip the wife up into the wall when i put my socks on in the morning.Rebuilding my home in Cypress, CA
Also a CRX fanatic!
It seems like no matter what you do, the dresser will be awkward. If there is only 12" between the bed and the dresser, won't you be smacking into it when you get up in the middle of the night? Any thought of building a new platform style bed, with long drawers sliding out of the end?
Well, it can't be any worse that the present situation, where all sorts of stuff ends up on my side of the bed... like a hamper, a humidifier, a fan, a plastic bag, etc.
It's not uncommon for me to go to bed after my wife goes to sleep. I open the door quietly, carefully make my way over to my side of the bed in the dark, the stub my toe on a shoe - then shuffle into a plastic bag - overcompensate and bump the bed... this BTW is the universal sound of "THERE IS AN INTRUDER IN MY ROOM" for my wife, who wakes up and half consiously SHRIEKS - which scares the beejeejus out of me and I SHRIEK too. My neighbors must think we have a strange mating call, when they keep hearing the faint "Aaaahh!" "Aaahh!" coming from our bedroom at night.
Building a platform with drawers is an interesting idea though. Keeps the cats from hiding there, and I could put drawers on the other side to give my wife more storage.Rebuilding my home in Cypress, CA
Also a CRX fanatic!