AUNT Laurie and family gave
this dresser as a gift to the Twins.
You might recall the
post.
It is from Ikea, a retailer that does well in selling inexpensive, assemble it yourself, furniture made of pine and paperboard. That is fine for what it is, but he thinks that with a little effort, these normally disposable furniture pieces can have their lives extended far beyond what most people experience with them.
Hey, Grandma Hanasik always said, take care of your stuff. The difference between high class people and low class people isn't how much stuff they have, it is how well they take care what they do have.
Dad has had a number of products from them over the years and has had the same observation about them. They tend to fall apart because they lack a good backbone. If you place your hand on the top of the top shelf and push, it will readily move a 1/8th of an inch. Pulling it back doubles that sway movement to an 1/4". That amount of play tends to increase over time leading to a point where the whole thing becomes so far out of square that the drawers will not open or if they will, they will not close. Then it becomes less and less useful. Perhaps one day one of the Twins decides to use one of the non-closing drawers to climb up. But the drawer bottom cannot support his weight, he breaks through, there is a big hole, Mom is angry that her little boy is injured, and decides that that piece of excrement has to go.
Before that hypothetical comes to pass, Dad decides to modify the dresser a bit to make it sturdier.
The basic problem is that the dresser is not boxed, it lacks structure to prevent it from moving left and right. Dad can't do anything to add structure to the front of the it, the side in the back ground above, because that is the drawer front side. But the rear is completely open, and when placed against a wall, it doesn't have to be finished and pretty. So he will cut and install something on the rear that will box it in, or add a spine, or add a keel, or provide rigidity - choose your idiom. This will cover the rectangular space in the foreground in the picture above.
This bi-fold piece of laminate paperboard is what Ikea supplies to cover that space. It is not nearly rigid enough to do the job. It is a finishing piece that is not really worth the the time to tack on.
Dad went to survey his materials to see if he has anything on hand that will do the job.
Above the 1/8" B/C piece he found for less than $9 at the the Big Orange Depot should work fine.
The first thing he did was measure for the cuts. It needed to fit perfectly into the rabbit joint milled into the dresser from the factory. See above.
Above, Dad measures the hypotenuse of the two triangles by measuring from corner to corner. If the measurements match, then the rectangle is square.
Above, the orange and blue triangles form the rectangle that fits the back of the dresser and what Dad needs to cut out of the plywood. If the long side of the orange triangle equals the long side of the blue triangle, then the piece is square. This must be measured and cannot be assumed. Many materials that come from the store look square, but aren't. Dad doesn't want to discover this when he goes to install it.
Dad set up a cutting fence to guide the saw. Free hand cutting is precise in skilled hands, but not precise enough over a long span for Dad's liking.
With the first cut done, Dad set up for the second cut.
Second cut. Clamping the oak fence to the plywood serves another purpose, it makes the thin plywood more rigid while cutting and reduces the possibility for an error. However, the material is so thin and light, Dad feared that it could shift while in mid-cut, so Dad tossed a ITs so thin, the bag of charcoal helped keep the plywood stable and secure lbs. bag of charcoal on top to add mass during the cut. This helped stop shifting as well as jumping.
Testing the fit. The width is perfect. Dad sanded down the sides and began to countersink some #8 screws.
Thought this was going to be easy, until the drill bit broke. But Dad has back up tools.
Finally done. It took longer to find the other counter sink tool than it did to drill the holes.
The back bone installed. This will keep it from swaying and becomong junk for a good long while. The length is not the critical measure here because there is no rabbit on the bottom to fit into. His tolerance here was a a good 1/4".
From the front, without the drawers in place. Dad tested it for flex. It moved, but not side to side. It twisted slightly. The hardware supplied by Ikea does not draw the pieces together tightly enough so there is still some slop (movement) in the joints. Dad will remedy this at a future time by gluing and clamping it.
Another future project will be replacing the paperboard drawer bottoms with ply wood. These will be as easy to cut and finish as the back was, but will require an additional step to paint them. Setting the tools up for the cut and cleaning up will be the hard part.
So with a little bit of effort, Dad made an inexpensive, disposable piece of furniture more rugged and sturdy and capable of withstanding the abuse the Twins will heap on it.
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