Drawers, Drawers, and...Drawers
All week I’ve mentally prepared for building a ****-load of drawers while the UPS guy fumbled to figure out how to get 32 pairs of 100-lb drawer slides from ahturf.com to my house without the boxes falling apart. Squirrel…
I have built many many many cabinets over the past 5 years. I can say, without question, that ahturf.com is the least expensive place to buy them that I’ve found on the net by quite a bit. They ship very quickly, box the slides extremely well (better than anyone else I’ve ordered from), have excellent customer service, and have never drifted even once on any of those categories (consistent). I was not paid a penny for this feedback, just sharing my experiences with my GJ brothers and sisters.
Back to the build…I miss the repetitive nature of working in the machine shop and this type of work tends to satisfy that void…until I’ve built about 15 drawers and then I just want it all to be over. Before I get started I move all of my assembly tools into the top drawers so I can keep the work surface as clear as possible as I assembly the drawers.

While doing so I also wanted to snap a few reference shots. This shows how far into the “isle” the drawer protrudes at full extension. This is one aspect I did not consider at the time of designing the cabinets on paper. The larger drawers are going to take up so much of the walk way that it may even be difficult to fully open the drawer while standing in front of it. It may be necessary to access contents from either side. Too late now, it’s gonna have to work.

After reviewing the pictures I started to realize just how much I was procrastinating on getting started. For whatever reason I really wanted to see this drawer with air tools in it so I grabbed my impacts for a quick test fit. Today they’re cram packed in a really small drawer.

Now they’ll be able to breathe a little. These drawers were set to a depth to be exactly like the above craftsman box only I added 1/2-inch spacing between the drawers. This one drawer can hold all of my air tools with room for expansion. This one drawer replaces about 4 of these smaller drawers.

For the most part, I just go heads down and build one after another until progress is realized. To make things easy on myself, I build the first of a certain size and get all of the dimensions perfect and then assemble the remaining drawers of the same-sized drawers back to back just following that pattern. By the time I get the hang of it, I run out of drawers that size and have to go back to measuring and fitting.

Some drawers are more difficult to assemble than others using only the bench top but a little creative balancing and I manage my way through. The drawers I’m using for my sockets and ratchets are clumsy large and have double 100lb slide assemblies. They’re HUGE and that’s exactly how I wanted them. Previously my various socket and ratchet drawers were maxed out and I had no room for those next tools I just have to have (I refer to them as “expansion opportunities).

To give you an idea of how much bigger they are than the drawers inside the Craftsman 41-inch box, this should give adequate perspective. The overall size of the drawer almost perfectly doubles in square inches. Looking down at the drawer I realize that maybe I made them a little too large but I should probably wait until I move in before going there.


I spent the rest of the weekend installing drawers but it really feels like most of the work is installing drawer slides. I built a couple fixtures to try to speed up the slide install but none really saved me time. After a long weekend I’m getting close to having the main bench done now. Close enough that I think I can shift my focus to the other side of the shop next weekend.

There is one moment to celebrate though. Now that I have some drawers installed, I start using them to keep he work surface clean/clear.

I feel like I've made great progress however I also feel that I'm a long ways away from being able to pull the car in (which needs to be done by mid-march or so I negotiated). would have been a lot easier had I not wanted so many drawers.
