Woodworking – Triple Cities Makerspace, Inc.

Erik Leonard has been a proud Binghamton homeowner for a couple of years now, and in that time has substantially remodeled many different portions of his house. One recent project of his was reworking the closet in his bedroom, which was large but not easily accessible and had a lot of unusable space. Erik wanted to make better use of this space within a reasonable budget, and as a Maker decided that he would try to make his own built-in closet organizer based on his specific needs and preferences.

Erik started this project by drawing up some rough sketches of what he wanted in terms of clothing organizational concepts, then refined his initial ideas and sketches using the dimensions of the existing closet which the cabinet would be installed into. Specifically, he took the existing closet clothing rod as the highest dimension for any clothing inside the cabinet, then measured the length of his suit and added 3″ for clearance below the suit to get a vertical dimension for the portion of the cabinetry where clothing would be hung. He also decided to make this and all other portions of the cabinet take up the full width of one of the existing closet doors, to make the best use of the space available to him.

Next, he set the bottom of the cabinet on the floor, then measured a foot plus an inch vertically to create an open space for using IKEA clothing organizer cubes, which measure approximately 12″ in all dimensions. Finally, he took the remaining vertical space within the cabinet, divided it in two, and called the resulting dimension the height of each of the two drawers to be created and installed between the two open spaces in the cabinet. The screenshots below illustrate this design process, which culminated in detailed SketchUp designs used during the process of cabinet construction:

Once the design of the cabinet had been finalized, Erik created a list of materials and set about shopping for them. Most of the cabinet is constructed of 12 or 18mm sande plywood, which is extremely dimensionally accurate and strong but cannot be stained, as it contains divots filled in with wood putty; as Erik intended to paint the cabinet once constructed, this was not a problem for him. He specified 18mm plywood for the cabinet’s perimeter surfaces and internal dividers, and 12mm plywood for the cabinet back and drawers; all seams were connected using wood glue and/or standard wood screws using pocket hole joinery. All remaining components were sourced from the Home Depot (full-extension drawer slides, rated for 250 lb.), IKEA (the drawer pulls), Amazon (RGB LED strips to illuminate the cabinet interior), and AliBaba (an LED controller for the LED strips).

Once all of the cabinet components had been purchased and transported to the TCMS wood shop, Erik set about assembling the cabinet, using various YouTube tutorials and woodworking blog posts for information and ideas regarding cabinet assembly. He devoted a great deal of time and attention to making each of the plywood pieces cut to accurate dimensions per his design, which made the cabinet assembly process much easier. One design change made in the process was changing the LED strips’ mounting method from routing them into the top of the cabinet – which proved to be extremely time-consuming and difficult – to making use of extruded aluminum LED strip holders, which have built-in light diffusers and easily clip together around the LED strips before themselves being screwed to the top of the cabinet, as shown in the second and third screenshots below.

First partition and drawer installed, with LED strip holders mounted in the top of the cabinet

Creating and installing the drawers with their fascias proved to be one of the most time-consuming portions of the project, for the sake of making sure that the drawers consistently opened and closed smoothly and because of Erik’s desire to hide all of the fascia fasteners where possible. Once these were finally assembled and fitted, the drawers were temporarily removed from the cabinet, and everything was painted with multiple coats of a white, semi-gloss urethane alkyd enamel.

Both drawers installed, fascias not shown

Once the paint had dried and the drawers re-installed, Erik enlisted the help of TCMS secretary Stephen Welte to help him transport the cabinet home and into his house. Once this was done, Erik was able to install the cabinet into his closet after temporarily removing some trim pieces around the closet for greater clearance, and screwed the cabinet into the closet structure with several screws which he subsequently concealed behind the cabinet’s drawers or with wood putty (sanded and re-painted afterwards). The LED strips, whose wiring had been concealed in a channel within the top of the cabinet, were connected to their controller (located on top of the cabinet), and the controller in turn plugged into an existing outlet within the closet.

The finished closet cabinet, installed and populated

Erik is very happy with the final results of this project, and plans to eventually create another such cabinet for the other half of his closet to make better use of the space there!

All drawings, designs, and photos courtesy of and property of Erik Leonard. Wikipedia cited for page describing the concept and methods of pocket-hole joinery for woodworking projects.

James “Evil Jim” Ulrich and Mary Donnelly are two long-standing members of the Binghamton musical drama troupe Summer Savoyards, which has been putting on plays in various local venues since 1961. The Savoyards’ latest production of the beloved dark comedy “Arsenic and Old Lace” will be hosted in the Bundy mansion in downtown Binghamton on the first two weekends of April, and Jim and Mary have been building set pieces for it in the wood shop at the Makerspace!

Summer Savoyards chose to put on “Arsenic” because its darkly hilarious story appealed to the Savoyards’ executive board as well as several regular participants in the Savoyards’ productions. Savoyards’ main focus has traditionally been recurring adaptations of various Gilbert and Sullivan plays, but everyone involved felt like trying to adapt something different, and to make use of a new venue in the Bundy mansion annex (in cooperation with some acquaintances there who wanted to promote Bundy as an events venue). Mary volunteered to be the play director, Jim volunteered to take charge of set design and construction, and everyone set about preparing for the show.

Mary wanted to have the show provide a more immersive than usual experience with respect to the audience, both for the sake of providing a fresh take on the play and because of the spacial limitations of the venue at Bundy. As such, Jim set about creating a seating layout for the venue which allowed for a reasonably sized audience to sit within a space arranged with some minimalistic set pieces designed to invoke the feel of a late Victorian living room (i.e., the set of the play), along with several pieces of Victorian furniture (a love seat, a china cabinet, etc.) sourced from Savoyards participants. Jim created or modified designs for several mock door and window frames in the modelling program SketchUp with elaborate detailing reminiscent of the Victorian era, as shown in the screenshots below, based on various Victorianesque design ideas he found through online research. Once he’d created and refined these designs, based on feedback from the other members of Savoyards with respect to physical size and layout, he printed them out with their corresponding bills of materials and cut lists, and took them to the TCMS wood shop to build them.

The Makerspace has been used by Jim for building set pieces for past Savoyards productions, but this production involved the largest utilisation of the wood shop for building set pieces yet. Jim, with the help of Mary, Amanda Truin, Eric Adler, and a few odd volunteers, had to build a full padded window seat with a window frame, five additional window frames to be suspended from the ceiling (including one created specifically cover a whiteboard in the annex), and several mock doorway frames. They had $500 to purchase materials to build these set pieces (plus a few additional material donations from Jim), and five weeks to build everything using the tools at TCMS plus a few additional ones provided by Jim. These tools included a table saw and sawhorses, a router, a screw gun, a pneumatic stapler, a multitool, a body grinder, a jigsaw, a chop saw, and various paintbrushes.

Most of the set pieces were built according to the original SketchUp designs, but there were a few modifications made along the way for various reasons. For example, the window seat’s lid was given an additional layer of 1/2” plywood to strengthen it, as various people would be sitting on it throughout the play and the original lid was deemed insufficiently rigid. This lid’s hinges were also extensively modified in several ways to make them squeaky for effect, including treating them with acid and a degreaser, having their pins hammered further into the hinges than typical, and leaving one end of the hinge looser than the other so that excessive flexing would occur. Jim further decided to modify the lintels on the door frames by adding 3/4” pine routed into strips for edge moldings, in addition to the existing frame moldings, to make them even more fancier. Final adjustments were made to the constructed set pieces to accommodate their mounting places in the venue (e.g., providing surfaces for clamps to be fitted to hold the set pieces in place). Finally, long-time Savoyards seamstress Julia Adams volunteered to build a cushion for the window seat and curtains for the window frames.

These set pieces are currently installed in the Bundy museum annex, and you can see them in person on the first two weekends in April when the Savoyards company puts on “Arsenic and Old Lace”! As well as the TCMS members and friends already named, long-term Makerspace members Gary Alan Dewey and Leslie-Morgan Frederick are playing two different roles in the play itself. Come and check it out!

https://www.summersavoyards.org/events

Picture credits:
All photos and drawings are provided and owned by “Evil Jim” and Mary Donnelly.

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Category: Woodworking

Project Profile: Built-In Closet Cabinetry

Project Profile: Summer Savoyards Set-Building for “Arsenic and Old Lace”