First time poster here. I know this is probably rambling but I gotta get it out here to get your thoughts!
My wife wants me to add some drawers to her bathroom vanity. I've done some things with dimensional lumber in the garage and my "shop" (3rd car garage). This spring I made a box using hand planes and my first hand-sewn dovetails. Very satisfying. My only experience doing anything with drawers was doing a few repairs in the kitchen where the rear screws holding the cheap slides in the particle board cabinets had pulled out. Anyway, SWMBO wants 'em and I figure I can save a lot of money doing it myself. I also think I may do as well as whoever we'd hire but I need some advice. I don't know the right terminology so please bear with me.
I've included a couple of pics (below) of the vanity as it exists today. I definitely am not up to doing face frame drawers on this. I thought I could just do drawers that were equally spaced (vertically) using low-end HD slides attached to the sides (edge) of the cabinet opening and attached in the rear to the cabinet. Knowing how poor the materials are for these cabinets I already expected I should beef up the rear before attaching the slide sockets. The height of the cabinet behind this right vanity door is appx 16 3/8". I was thinking of 3 drawers appx 4 3/4" tall with appx 1/2" space between each drawer. I'm going to make them out of 1/2" Baltic Birch plywood with 1/4" floating drawer bottoms. The depth of this cabinet is appx 20 3/8". I've already bought some lower end 18" drawer slides at HD.
I figured I would attach the drawer slides to the front edge of the cabinet and at the rear to some solid wood skeleton (pine 2x4? or poplar). I hope appx 16" deep drawers would all align flush with each other as long as I get the slides aligned when I install them. I'll have to add some additional pieces to the edge of the cabinet for the hinge side slides in order to make sure the drawers clear the hinges. I've done all the measuring and those hinges stick out appx 7/8" from the front edge. I figured add a 3/4" strip to the current edge of the cabinet. Once the slide is added there that 3/4" plus the 1/2" for the slide should allow the drawers to clear the 7/8" protrusion of the hinges.
I'd like to just do a round over on the drawers, sand well and then use a clear finish. I have no experience (beyond jr high 50 years ago) with finishes so your advice would be very useful. Do I finish the bottom and drawers separately so they don't stick? What clear finishes are best? I'm hoping to get a good router out of doing this work. :-) I'd like to know what bit would round those 1/2" drawers? Also, there isn't a lot of space in here for me to work and I'm a big guy 6' 3" 250 lbs. So building the drawer boxes in the shop and basically just minimally trying to attach slides into this cabinet was what I was striving for.
Your thoughts on what you'd do, things to know about doing drawers/using drawer slides/etc, better, easier ways to get this done,... would all be appreciated!
PS.
- Using the cheapo slides because she's just putting cosmetic kind of stuff in these drawers.
- Tools at my disposal, Delta contractors TS, Delta mid-50s BS, most basic WW'ing hand tools, etc.
IMG_3073.jpgIMG_3074.jpgIMG_3075.jpg