Building under-the-bed storage.

[JohnnyEgo]

My son is 7. He is drowning in toys that have taken over our house. His room is on the small side, and between his dresser, bed, and bookshelf, he is out of space for more furniture. So I figured I'd build him a storage platform that the bed could rest on. The only problem is that my son has the sheer destructive power of a low-yield nuclear bomb. He loves to jump on the bed, and has already broken his old bed frame and box spring. This is pretty typical of the condition I find him in:

He's way too much like his father to be in any danger of rapture.

Consequently, anything I build for him has to be pretty much bomb-proof, or built like a supply crate that is going to be air-dropped. I also have about six hours a day to make significant progress on anything I build, so this may take a while. However, the first 80% always goes by pretty quick, and I thought I'd share the process for other aspiring wood workers or child containment enthusiasts.

Day One

This is the moment before the very first cut, when you realize that this is your very first chance to mess everything up. I've got two sheets of 3/4 'baltic' birch, and a 1/4 sheet of sandeply from Home Depot. I put 'Baltic' in quotes because real Baltic Birch is a fantastic product with thick, even veneers, which this is not. It's also probably from Canada. However, it is a step up from the void-filled, paper-thin veneer'd crap that Home Depot puts on sale for $35 a sheet. First cross-cut made.



Moved the sheets on the cutting table a little to get some better clamping space, then made the long cut. I have a deep affection for the grossly overpriced Festool tracksaw system. It saves me a lot of time in quick and accurate cuts, and in clean-up. You can do most of the same things with a shop-made cutting guide and a shop vac for several hundred dollars less, but for me, the money was well spent for the time it gave me to focus on the hobby.



Going to route some dadoes and rabbets, which are different names for shallow grooves the same thickness of the boards, with rabbets being open on one length, and dadoes being not.
A quarter inch is a nice compromise in depth in 3/4 material. Plenty of gluing surface area, without compromising the panel integrity too much.


In order to make sure that these grooves line up across both panels, I route them together before splitting the panels.



I run a 1/4 inch rabbet along the long side of the panel for the backer-board. I used the table saw for this cut, in part because the backer-board is not truly a quarter inch, but some metric size like 5mm. Also, it was a little easier to make sure the rabbet would be the exact same across all four boards using the table saw. When I make bookshelves, I usually make a quarter inch dado about a half inch from the back of the panel, which gives me plenty of meat to hold the backer board. In this case, I need the backer board to lay flush to the floor, and since it will be sitting on the floor, any force applied to it will be fully supported.

[JohnnyEgo]

I am going to glue all the joints together, but I want to dry-fit everything together first. None of the interior of the platform will be visible, which makes it a perfect application for Kreg pocket screws. The joints they make are very strong, they go together fast, and you can still unscrew them at this stage. This is the first of many, many Kreg pocket holes that will be drilled. I threw my Kreg station on top of the table saw and started drilling:



Between the glued dado and the pocket screws, this should be a pretty durable joint.


Back to the cutting table to cut the backer board:



It mounted flush and fairly tight:


At the end of Day One, I have what looks a lot like a big bookshelf.

[BladesNBarrels]

My first thought with the excess toys was, "That is why Goodwill accepts donations."

Your description is an excellent tutorial with easy to follow directions for any construction requiring a case.
Thank you!

[JohnnyEgo]

Day Two
The day started with a lot of 1x2 pine. Going to use it to reinforce the bed platform and trim it out.


Going to be doing a lot of miter work and pocket holes, so I set up my compound miter and Kreg station.


I want all the styles to be cut to the same length, so I made a simple stop to make it pretty fast. I really want a good fence system for my miter saw, but I have yet to find one I really like that remains very portable. One of these days, I will build my own on some Dewalt brackets, but today, it's one piece of scrap screwed into another that gets the job done.


Drilling lots and lots of pocket holes.


Bolting up the face frames.



Because I am going to be cutting holes in one of the panels, I made these support frames to reinforce the platform and take some of the stress off the carved up panel.


First test fit, and a general indicator of what this thing is going to look like on the floor. My son has two of those black bins as toy boxes, so it is important to make sure they are going to clear whatever I do.


I decided to make some support frames for the not-cut panel side as well, sort of on the fly. I ran out of square stock, so the last thing I did for the day was to swap out a ripping blade and rip some stock out of some 2x4s.

[Mercula]

Holy shit balls you have some nice equipment ! Jelly indeed. Nice work man.

[Erni]

Awsome build.

Can you show what the saw hotse table is made? 2x4 supports with loose ply?

[JohnnyEgo]

Sure. Not that much to it. A couple of notched 2x4s I can clamp to and cut on directly:


And a piece of 1/2 inch foam glued to cheap 1/2 inch ply:


I cut directly on the foam when I want full panel support and to minimize chipping on the downward face.
I flip it to board-side up when I need a table surface or I want to screw a fixture or jig to it.
Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly lazy, I just throw the board foam-side up directly on the floor, and cut sheet goods from there.

I do have a few nice tools that make things faster and easier for me. However, the vast majority of what I do could be done with nothing more than a circular saw, a drill, and a cheap plunge router. And indeed, that is what I used for the first ten years that I took up the hobby. Throw in a Kreg jig, a carpenter's square, and a tape measure, and you have most of what you need for this hobby for $250 or less.

[Erni]

Thanks. Since I got a bit older the back and knees don't like wirking on the floor anymore.
I do an occasional thing and now I need to cut an Ikea carcas so it just fits 3 drawers. It was cheaper to start with the carcas and go from there. But need to cut the melamine panels clean now.

[JohnnyEgo]

Supporting them on foam and running painter's tape along the cut-line will help reduce chip-out on the Melamine veneer. You can also pre-score the veneer with a razor blade.

[JohnnyEgo]

Day 3

Started out by locking down all the face frame styles.



I was going to put in a couple 1x2s between each shelf to provide bed support, but that would have meant another trip to Home Depot and didn't strike me as being strong enough for my purposes. So I made three more support frames similar to the ones on either panel.



Did another mock-up before routing holes in one of the panels.


Then began the one part I couldn't come back from on this project: cutting the door openings in the panel. I saw a 1/2" panel cutting bit from Freud on sale the last time I was at Home Depot. I like Freud bits, I prefer 1/2" shank bits, and I thought this might make a clean cut through the ply.




I was very wrong. It mostly burned the ply and then started burning into the cut-out framing it was supposed to ride against. It did not want to cut without great force, at any speed. It mostly just sat there burning itself up. I switched to a two-flute trim bit that ended up cutting like butter, even though I had to drill a pilot hole for it.