Building DIY Storage Cabinets
By Larry Walton
Versatile modular cabinets for your stuff.
I used the promise of some good food to entice my bachelor brother to come down and help me with a cabinet project. He somehow got the idea that there would also be a golf outing. He should have known better; we were embarking on a home improvement project, which involves some cool power tools, but very rarely the use of golf equipment.
Before my brother, Chad, arrived I drew up a set of plans. It’s important to have a detailed set of plans so you have something from which to deviate. Also, it helps to get your volunteers on the same page.
What the family needed was a way to store some of our stuff. The place we were moving into had a one-car, detached garage known in this area as a carriage house. Large double doors, in keeping with the historic district, were not conducive to daily use for car parking, so we planned to use the garage as a storage room. (It’s one thing to begin piling stuff until you can’t fit a car in the garage, but we planned to never park the car there in the first place.)
This project can also apply to those who want to add storage in one of multiple garage bays, sheds or any size room where you want to build closet and/or shelving space without building a closet. The design can be used for book shelves, food storage, wardrobe closets—you name it.
Taking time to sketch out your project helps to get everyone on the same page. Plans can also help you make the best use of your materials.
The biggest advantage to this project is that the cabinets are designed to be completely modular and portable. You can take them with you when you move or reconfigure them for use in different rooms as your needs change. In fact, as of this writing I’m planning to add a face frame and doors to one of the 24-inch units and use it in our bedroom as a wardrobe closet.
With plan in hand, we were able to calculate the materials needed, which in our case turned out to be one heck of a lot of plywood. Good thing we have a family member working in the plywood industry. When drawing up plans, it’s a good idea to sketch out a 4-by-8 sheet to scale and divide it up to represent parts (top, bottom, side, back, shelves) so you can see how to best use the material.
We wanted the vertical and horizontal dimensions of all of our cabinets to match, but with a variety of depths (12, 16 and 24 inches). In the end we made all of the units 32 inches wide by 84 inches tall. The 7-foot height would allow them to be used in rooms with 8-foot ceilings. It could be brought in and still tipped up with the toe kick removed. As for width, 32 inches would make a reasonable span for almost any weight of object we would store on the plywood shelves. We built five units that were 16 inches deep, two units that were 12 inches deep and two units that were 24 inches deep.
Most of the cuts for this project will be made on the table saw. Taking a 16” rip from a sheet of plywood leaves the 32” back panels needed for the cabinets.
