Betty's stamp and life musings: Plans for credenza

Since I can't seem to get ambition to make plans good enough to even think of asking money for, I'll try to explain what we did.

First figure out your size. I wanted 2 foot deep X 4 foot long....that makes 2X2 slides. DSIL bought some of the lumber but didn't think that when he purchased 1X12 lumber, it's milled down. He cut and glued the pieces using large clamps. My side pieces are 22 3/4 inches. Which is fine BUT it makes more work cutting the shelves. You can make it a single tall unit also. After I was done and worried it might not fit, I was wishing I would have done that but now I'm glad I didn't, I have work space for my wizard!!

The shelves were the hardest thing to figure out how to actually them in. I had first thought of saw blade grooves but the logistics of getting them even and lining up was mind boggling. DH came up with using corner molding.

Now, it's not a cheap thing to build. I so wanted acrylic shelves until I priced them. I think it would have been over $10/shelf, maybe more. I just remember that wasn't an option. It was going to be hard to get the right size and cutting the 3/8" pieces I was told was very hard to do without cracking....just what I need a piece ruined. I was lucky to get things on sale but I think it still was over $225.

Here's a picture of building.

Each piece of corner molding (L shaped) was glued and stapled down. (I held, wiped the excess liquid nail and pounded the staples that didn't go in all the way....then threw the ball for our border collie....hold, wipe, pound, throw, repeat.....102 times) We marked 1 inch apart and drew lines. This left a little over 3/8 inch between each piece. Do some math, your pieces might not be the same size. The shelves rest on the top, they don't on an edge. We started down 2 inches. If I could do it over, we would have gone down a little more so we could have put the L brackets on the inside instead of back. My unit has 102 of these molding pieces glued on, each end piece and the middle piece had them on 2 sides. Each was cut the length of the board. I was lucky to get the molding 1/2 off when our Home depot closed. I also bought a 1 piece sheet of wood for the top of the credenza that was 2 X 6 foot. I didn't have room for the full 6 feet so cut off 6 inches so I could have a little over hang in the back and sides. You can't have it on the front or it will get in the way of your shelves and labels. .

Here is the unit upside down as we were putting the bottom. We glued and screwed everything together. I used 1 inch pine for everything but the back and shelves. Since mine wasn't going to be against a wall, I wanted something nice on the back so bought a 3/8 inch piece of nice plywood even though I had the lumber for the back, DH thought it would make it too heavy.

The shelving is made out of a material generally used for backing of furniture bought in 4 X 8 " sheets. It has a finish on one side. Since my sides weren't 2 feet, it took a lot more cutting to make the shelves fit and since we aren't cabinet makers, some fit in spots others wouldn't. But they all slide well and I love it.

Next it was time to finish it. Since the shelves had a finish, I didn't need to do those also. But I did have to use a left over piece of the back for 4 of them (chose to to the bottom 2 that are farther apart) so those 2 needed finishing. I can't imagine how much work it would have been to stain and varnish 52 of them!! After the 3rd coat of varnish, DH put on the 6 casters and it went in my room to be loaded.