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Darkroom Furniture: Base cabinet
You can never have enough storage space in a darkroom! Trust me. In my current darkroom, I have put up wall cabinets for storage on the wall, and have built a base cabinet, with drawers, doors, and shelving, for storage as well as a counter top for enlarging and other work. DesignTools
Materials
Construction
Design
The design is based on kitchen cabinets I have seen. It is basically free-lanced to fit in the space I have. I built it in two pieces (except for the counter top) so that I would be easier to move into the room once they were built. Each unit has two sides, a back and shelving (I originally planned for two shelves in each, but decided to leave one out in one of them). The front of the cabinet is framed with 1x lumber with lap joints. I found a counter top at the local lumber yard that I could cut to fit. This was the most ambitious project for my darkroom. If you don't have the tools, or time, or patience, you might consider buying unfinished cabinets instead. If you do have some experience, this is not really too difficult to do.Tools
- Screw driver - I prefer a drill with screwdriver bits
- Saw - I used a table saw, with a dadoe head, if you don't have one, you might want to borrow one for this project
- clamps - lot of them, small ones and bar clamps
- Sander - I used a palm sander
- Paint brush
- Carpenters Level
Materials
- Particle board (plywood could be used, but it is hard to find good quality plywood anymore) I used one sheet of 3/4" high quality (and very heavy) board for the doors and bottom shelves, two sheets of 1/2" for the sides and other shelf, and 1 sheet of 3/8" for the backs and drawer bottoms.
- 1x4 and 1x2 lumber for the face frame - get the best grade of the best wood you can, I used Hemlock because that was available with no knots.
- 1x6 lumber for the drawer fronts - get the good stuff
- 1x2 lumber for the drawer guides - cheap pine will do.
- 1x4 lumber for the drawer sides and backs
- Door hardware (I beveled the doors, so only needed hinges)
- Drawer hardware (I beveled the fronts, and made wood guides)
- Carpenters glue - lots of it
- Sandpaper
- Primer - I used a flat white latex primer
- Paint - I used flat white latex enamel exterior house paint
- Screws - 2 1/2" long to screw the cabinet to the wall, 1 1/2" long to screw the cabinet together - I prefer drywall screws because they don't need pilot holes
Construction
- Make sure you have the correct measurements for the size of the room!
- Make sure you have the correct measurements for the size of the room!
- and a third time, make sure you have the correct measurements (I did not and had to change where I put the refrigerator!)
- Draw plans for the cabinets, and mark on them the dimensions you want to use, this doesn't have to be a perfect scale drawing, just something to refer to for the correct dimensions
- Cut the cabinet sides, the small square cutout is so your feet don't kick the cabinet.
- Cut the dadoes into the side, the vertical one at the back is for the back to fit into, it is not necessary, the horizontal ones are for the drawers. Make the dadoes half the depth of the width of the sides.
- Cut the shelves to size
- Cut the backs to size
- Assemble the cabinets, glue them up good, screw them together, and clamp with bar clamps.
