This article is about creating furniture by yourself. This was my first attempt so yeah, there were things I hadn’t anticipated but also, overall, it all seemed a bit simpler than expected.
I had already designed my furniture and previewed it in 3D (check out
How to Design Furniture in Google SketchUp for more).
So now, on to cutting, drilling holes and assembling.
1. I lay out all the parts needed in SketchUp, together with dimensions and printed it.
Schematics printed from Google SketchUp
2. Found out how big a MDF (melamine-faced) panel is (the ones I found were 2 x 2,7 m) and arranged all the pieces in there while trying to minimize lost areas.
– missing image –
3. Went to a furniture materials storehouse and bought a MDF panel (the price included cutting), they cut the panel into pieces and I took them all home.
One of the slices
4. At the same place I asked them to do some the edges (there are edge-banding machines that do that, it’s really fast and the result is pretty neat)
The margins
5. Bought some wood screws (I have no idea what they’re called). You have to drill holes before putting them in.
The screws
6. Got a hold of a power drill and some wood drills.
Drill
7. After a lot of measuring and drilling and screwing (I have no special equipment, so all this was done manually, by two people) I was the proud owner of some sort of shoe shelf:
Shoe shelves
8. I had bought some metal hangers, pretty easy to setup, no drilling required.
Metal hangers
9. Used a heavy-duty concrete
drill for the holes in the wall.
Concrete drill
10. In the upper corners of the
clothes hanger I put
two little corner things.
Corner
Corner (forgot the washer)
Corner with plastic cover
11. The hanger
went up
Hanged
12. And the entire thing looks like this:
Completed setup
So, this was a fun little project for me (I’ll update when I do the larger cabinet with drawers), I liked the
SketchUp design part and the actual work was kind of exciting too. As far as time spent goes, the design part took about 1-2 hours, and the assembly about 4-5 hours. The total cost was around 60 Euros (80$).
I have now dipped my toes and promise to post more in the (unlikely) event that I decide to venture into furniture-making even further
http://squaresquirrel.ro
Hello. Thanks for the article. Very informative and usefull. But there is one thing i still can not figure out - how did you get the first picture from sketchUP (1. I lay out all the parts needed in SketchUp, together with dimensions and printed it.) How could you divide your model into parts and place them together in one plane with dimensions? Please answer mojobiri@gmail.com Thanks
ReplyDeleteIf I understud your question,get picture from sketchup is very easy (File-Export-2D Graphic) than select JPG...
ReplyDelete-To get your model in parts you must make components,for example,draw a doors and select that and right click,make componenrt,than name it. After you draw everything as components,to get layout of all parts use "CutList" here is article about.
http://sketchmodels.blogspot.com/2010/12/cutlist-and-layout-from-sketchup.html
I hope my answer was usefull.