Today there will be a story about how they took me to the "weak". The background is as follows. My dear husband, watching from the sidelines how I was making organizers for my future workshop, once said in passing: "Is it too weak to make a chest of drawers myself?"
And that's not weak! A good idea - you need to implement it.
I didn't want to make it big or very small, so I determined the dimensions quite thoroughly, as a result, I got it 60 cm wide, 30 cm deep, 40 cm high.
To make a chest of drawers I needed:
- bookbinding, beer and corrugated cardboard;
- kraft paper;
- coarse calico, flax;
- glue Moment Joiner, PVA furniture, glue Moment Crystal;
- decorative handles 5 pieces;
- scissors, construction knife, square, iron ruler.
I cut out the sidewalls from corrugated and beer cardboard and glue them together.
Then, under the shelves on which the boxes will stand, I cut out additional sidewalls from dense double corrugated cardboard (if you do not have double corrugation, then glue two sheets of corrugation together), they are equal in height to future boxes, I make a gap of 0.7 between the sides cm - this is the thickness of the shelf, when they dry out, I paste over them with coarse calico.
The thickness of the side wall of the chest of drawers I got 1 cm, here the inner part of the bottom will be smaller by this centimeter, and the outer side made of beer cardboard is larger, then the side walls will fit, as in a groove, and the outer corner will be even and beautiful.
An additional double-corrugated panel was glued to the back wall, the upper shelf will rest on it, this panel is covered with coarse calico.
The middle shelf is made of double corrugation, covered with coarse calico, but the upper shelf I got from two parts - the lower side (coarse calico) is made of corrugated cardboard, and the upper side (linen) is made of binding cardboard. I glued the fabric to the furniture PVA glue, it is thick enough and therefore does not wet the cardboard, moreover, when it dries, it does not leave marks on the fabric.
She smeared the grooves and end parts of the shelves with Moment Crystal glue and assembled the base of the chest of drawers, and now the shape appears. Honestly, it takes a lot of time to dry the parts, especially you need to make sure that the parts do not lead, so they dry under pressure. My main helpers in drying parts were a hair dryer and an ordinary iron. I ironed the dried parts with an iron (without steam) and put everything under the press, all the parts after that turned out to be even and very strong.
I made lintels from several layers of cardboard - binding cardboard, then corrugation and again binding cardboard, covered with coarse calico and again drying?
And here is the back wall - if at first I had doubts about making a chest of drawers, now they are gone and my husband no longer smiles sarcastically, but looks with interest!
Now I take out a roll of kraft paper - what an excellent paper it is, it helps me a lot in building houses too - and here it came in very, very useful, before I had to beg for it at the post office, but now it turns out you can buy it in any hardware store. I glue all the corners on the dresser with Kraft paper, the corner is even and at the same time securely fixed. The width of the side wall is 30 cm, so I cut out flax 35 cm wide so that there is a sufficient bend on the back wall, as well as 0.7 cm on the front side.
I glue the flax with a whole strip - 40 cm + 60 cm + 40 cm, slightly pulling on the sides, dry it with a hairdryer, and then make cuts, but not completely, leaving a 0.5 cm undercut and bend the strip inward.
I cut out the inner part of the sidewall from binding cardboard and covered it with linen.
I cut out a piece of linen onto the back wall, I did not fold it, because it turns out an unwanted thickness, so I take out a sewing machine and put a decorative stitch along the edge of the back part, it will prevent the edge from shattering and at the same time decorate the back wall.
Well, the base is almost ready and I start assembling the boxes.
I glued them from binding cardboard - with Moment Crystal glue, the most important thing is to withstand the angle when gluing the bottom of the box. After drying, I glue all the corners with kraft paper and Moment Joiner glue.
Then I take a piece of linen fabric, cut it out so that there is an edge at one end, I start to glue it from the middle of the end part of the box, exactly where I will have the front side. The edge should extend by about 1 cm, overlapping the edge of the strip.
It is not difficult to get a neat corner, the main thing is to cut it off not from the very edge, but leave about 0.5 cm from the corner and glue the corner into an overlap, but make sure that the overlap is not large - 0.5 cm is enough, trimming from flax I did not throw it away, they were very useful to me to align the bottom of the box.
When dry, the flax becomes very strong and the box, accordingly, too.
Now I cut out the inner parts from the beer cardboard and glue them with light coarse calico, then glue them into the box - first the bottom, I bring the edges of the coarse calico onto the walls of the box and also glue it, does the extra fastening never interfere? then the side walls.
I decorated the bottom of the drawers in the same way as the back wall of the chest of drawers - it turned out smoothly and beautifully. The front panel of the boxes will protrude about 0.5 cm beyond the edges of the box, I cut them out of binding cardboard and wrapped them in coarse calico polka dots, two tones - red and brown. The front panel is decorated with a small linen insert, I calculated how long a strip is needed for one such insert, multiplied it by three, added centimeters to the bend and cut a single strip of flax, then stitched the drawing on a typewriter and then cut this strip into three parts, the drawing turned out to be the same everywhere. I did the same for the lower drawers.
It remains only to glue the front panels to the drawers and screw on the handles.
But I have not yet made small pockets for the instrument, at first I thought to just glue the rectangle and the cells in it, but it’s not too interesting, and then I came across a paper tube, I tried it on, it looks good, but it’s only enough for two pockets, but I need 7-8 pieces of them, that's just what to make them from, twist them out of kraft paper for a long time and dry, again, it's hard, and then I see how my husband collected all my scraps from corrugated cardboard and tries to shove them into the stove to put things in order and burn! Nightmare! Well, how is it possible - this is a building material, my hamster is in a swoon! After a short fight, having won a victory, I twist tubes from the scraps of corrugation.
How I did it:
- cut a strip with a longitudinal section out of corrugated cardboard;
- then a strip of kraft paper is twice as long as a strip of corrugated cardboard;
- I coat kraft paper with glue;
- I take a paper tube, wrap a corrugation on it;
- pressing the corrugation tightly to the tube, I roll it over the kraft paper smeared with glue, pick up a hot iron and again start ironing along this length of the tube, the corrugation becomes even, without corners, the kraft paper is reliably glued, and I get a chic, even and a strong tube of the diameter I need.
I make 7 such blanks, then I cut off 4 cm and I get such a half-column. I glue the blanks together with Moment Crystal glue and tighten the inner part with linen. Then I got carried away and forgot to photograph how I pasted the strips of polka dots on the front side, but, in principle, there it is already clear that the edges of the strips go into the fold and are not visible on the front side. And for the brushes, I made a specially higher glass.
I pasted all the end parts with rep tape in my favorite polka dots.
Well that's all - my chest of drawers is ready!
Have even tall tassels finally found their place?
The chest of drawers turned out to be quite roomy, there was even a place for fur.
