Building a Rock’n’Roll Wardrobe
Earlier in the year we decorated the son’s bedroom, new bed, new computer desk, office drawers and snazzy chair. A complete new layout, as well as new lighting. So far so good.
Alas this also meant the original wardrobe would no longer fit in the available space due to the imposition of a section of the vaulted ceiling limiting the available headroom. This seemed like a good opportunity to create a more bespoke bit of furniture to fill the (odd shaped) gap. This is that story.
(click the pics for larger versions!)
Design
Stage one, define the requirements. Alas not that easy since he was a bit vague on what he wanted. So, some Sketchup models later, and after knocking up a few miniature demo doors so he could see what terms like "shaker style" or "raised panel door" meant and would look like, we had not only a design but also a few clues to the required aesthetic:
A creation in a darker wood to match the existing desk and other furniture, with a fairly simple “not too fussy” design.
Materials
A couple of sheets of 12mm ply from Wickes provided most of the required sheet materials. (I could not be bothered sticking the roof bars on the car, but the car park and a trolley makes for quite a good improvised workshop to split both boards length ways with a 18V circular saw!)
I had some walnut boards lurking in the workshop, so that seemed like a good start. We could build an odd shaped box for the carcass out of the ply, and add a nice real wood face frame to it. For doors, I had something a bit special in mind, but that would also need some solid wood door frames built.
The doors
My plan was to make the doors the central “stand out” part of the design (both literally and figuratively). For this I had in mind some rather nice walnut veneered material that was part of an existing wardrobe that had been lurking in the garage for many years. It was an art deco style cabinet that was in some ways quite pretty, but never really seemed to fit any room. Hence why it was in the garage, and currently dismantled to conserve space.
The Rock'n'Roll connection
How it came to be in my position in the first place is perhaps more interesting. My Nan’s friend Eileen, had at some point given her this wardrobe – ostensibly to furnish the guest room. Originally it had been in the bedroom of her elder son Anthony, but he had moved out some years back, and it was then surplus to requirements. Anthony (actually his middle name) was far better known by his stage name Vivian Stanshall, renowned “Ginger Geezer” and lead singer in the “Bonzo dog doo-dah band”. The erstwhile owner of the donor wardrobe thus adding the required provenance to justify the “Rock’n’Roll” in the title!
Starting the build
Sheet goods
Preparing the ply. I needed two sides with “points” to match the slope of the ceiling. A shelf and a base, plus a plinth. These were cut down with the aid of a sawboard, and then refined on the table saw to get the exact shapes.
Since this was only 12mm ply, it was a bit on the floppy side for a large free standing piece, so some thought needed to go into stiffening it during the build. Part of that was the addition of dado / rebate joinery to allow each piece of ply to register into a slot machined in its adjoining piece. This makes assembly easier, since all the parts fit together properly, and only in one place. It adds mechanical strength and restraint to each joint.
I cut the dados for the shelf and base using my custom dado router jig, and also added a rebate around the back and top of each side panel using the router freehand with a side fence. This is to allow the 5mm ply backing material to register into the sides, making not only a stiffer box, but also the back will force the box into square, since the rebates prevent it fitting any other way.
I added dados to the front and back faces of the plinth to allow the cross members to locate securely. Once all the parts were ready, they could be glued up into the final form.
The plinth was then inserted between the sides under the bottom of the wardrobe, and glued and fixed in place to the underside of the base with some small connector blocks. This allowed the plinth to hold the base flat, and the base to force the plinth square.
Real wood
Next job: start preparing the hardwood. I needed three main elements. Material to make a face frame for the cabinet – to look good and hide the ply edges, but also to add stiffness to the ply. Material to make a “cope and stick” frame for the door panels, and finally an assortment of “lippings” and profiles to finish the edges of the ply.
I had one 8’ board of sawn timber, approx. 8” wide and 1.25” thick, plus a second smaller (but already planed) 5’ long board approx. 6x2” in cross section. I ripped the wide board into 4 equal sections. These could form the rails and stiles of the door frames. These were then planed flat on one side, then flat and square on an adjacent face using the surface planer. The third side could then be cut parallel to one of the planed sides on the table saw, before finally using the thickness planner to finish the final side to get the wood “square all round” and reduced down to final dimensions.
From the other board I cut various edging strips and profiles. I added a small rebate in the edges with a pass on the table saw – this made for a nice positive registration on the edge of the ply, making an easier glue up, that also pulled the edge of the ply straight.
The last stage was to get busy on the router table and cut the cope and stick joinery profiles on the rails and stiles. This makes the door frame components with a decorative bevel on the internal edges, but also includes the required rebate for the door panel to locate in, plus the matching joinery profiles for the corner joints in the frame.
- Cope and Stick joinery, rail and stile detailing
Door rails and stiles, cut and ready for planing, and profiling
The stile edge profile - this is what provides a decorative edge to the door panel, and also a rebate to locate it.
The rails get an inverse pattern routed onto their ends. This allows them to mate neatly with the stiles at the corners
The interior of the joint
And the external, showing the interlocking profiles which gives a good amount of glue surface for a strong bond.
Preparing the Door Panels
To make the door panels I was going to use the sides from the donor wardrobe rather than the actual doors. Two reasons for this, the original doors would not have been wide enough, and also the original doors have a very elaborate book matched burl walnut veneer, that did not really fit the “not too fussy” design requirement!
The sides were in mostly decent condition, although there were some scratches in the finish, and also a few long dents where it looked like something had been dragged over the surface leaving a visible line.
The construction of the side panel appeared to be a ply base, with veneer to both sides, and real wood profiles glued to the edges. The profiled edges could be cut away at the table saw, and some of the remaining wood trim parts prised away with the aid of a good heating with a hot air paint stripper to soften the old wood glue. Sanding off the old finish with 120 grit on the random orbit sander dealt with the old finish and the surfaces scratches, but not the dents.
I could not sand too hard since there was only a limited thickness of veneer. So for these areas I dripped some water onto the dented sections, laid a paper towel over the area, and then pressed down with a hot iron. This rapidly boils the water and forces the steam into the wood fibres helping to re-hydrate them and make them swell. About three applications like this was enough to remove the dents. After a quick sand you would not know there were ever there.
The final job was to replace some missing sections of veneer on the “inside” of the panel. As this was a plain hardwood veneer, I could just cut out the damaged edges, and replace with a length of generic “iron on” veneer edge
banding strip.
The final job was to add a rebate to the door panel edges on the rear. This was to reduce the overall thickness of the panel so that it would fit snugly into the rebate in the door frame parts. (normally when making this type of door you would machine a decorative "raised panel" style bevel on the front of the panel, but this this was a veneered panel we could not do that here without cutting through the veneer into the ply base layer)
Assembly
The door panels could now be trimmed to size, and assembled with the rail and stile frame parts to make complete doors.
The remainder of the carcass could have its lippings glued on, and the whole thing assembled. I had made some bespoke profile sections – one to form the top of the face frame, which matched the slope of the top. I included a rebate in this to allow it to act as an end stop for the ply top panel. I also did a similar one to allow a nice transition from the back to the sloped top, again with rebates to accommodate the backing ply.
The back and top were cut from some 5.5mm hardwood ply, and that was pin nailed to the carcass. That completed the main carcass assembly.
Fitting the doors
Prior to fitting the doors, I needed to make sure the carcass was sitting level – alas not something guaranteed on my rather rough workshop floor. So I levelled that on some shims and wedges first before going any further. I planned to fit 4 hinges to each door (again more stiffening!), so made a story stick from a strip of 12mm ply, where I could lay out the hinge positions, and also drill the screw hole positions for both sides of the surface mounted furniture hinges. This then let me offer up the story stick to both the doors, and the door jambs on the cabinet, and drill 2mm starter holes for the hinge screws - greatly simplifying the layout and accurate positioning of the hinges.
Finishing
The inside of the wardrobe was going to be left light in colour, so this just needed a couple of coats of satin finish clear varnish. I applied the same to the outside of the back and top as well to keep the moisture penetration into the ply similar on both sides in an attempt to prevent warping in the future. The inside of the doors had a coat of quick drying walnut varnish to disguise some of the repairs and old (now filled) screw holes.
The sides and plinth base needed to ideally match the walnut elsewhere, so after some experimentation, we decided that a Rustin’s “dark oak” wood stain would be a complimentary colour for the sides.
All the real wood bits then got a few coats of Liberon finishing oil. This can be applied with a small sponge onto the bare wood and allowed to soak in for 10 mins. After that, wipe off any remaining on the surface and leave that to cure for 5 to 8 hours. Then apply another very thin coat. Again leave to dry, and rub down gently with a soft abrasive pad to “de-nib” the finish. Then one more coat of oil. Each one builds the depth of finish, slowly increasing the lustre. Three coats give a nice natural satin look, with none of the “plastic wood” look you get from film based varnishes.
I also oiled the ply sides – these were very “thirsty” and took about five coats to get to a nice even satin finish to match the rest.
The final job was to grab a suitable hanging rail from the local Screwfix, and fit that.
Installation
This took somewhat more effort than anticipated since it is rather on the large size, and the stairs just a wee bit narrow! We took the doors off to make it lighter. It then took a few attempts to get it up the stairs and round a couple of corners and onto the landing. Eventually we realised that doing a 180 with it, would allow us to use the slope on the top to make it go round the corners a bit easier! Mind you I still had to take the handrail off the wall to make enough space. That got us to the top of the stairs and almost round the corner onto the landing.
Alas it was pinned against the stairwell wall, the landing wall, and the corner at the top of the stairs, just caught on the corners, but possibly only an inch away from actually getting round. Hacking a lump out of the wall did occur to me, but In the end I had to admit defeat and get a saw out of the workshop! A small bit chopped off the base at the back of the plinth proved to be enough. The face frame acquired a few scuffs along the way, but the beauty of an oiled finish is that it is very easy to repair invisibly, so a quick rub with a nylon scouring pad, and a re-application of all and all looks good again.
