Allan Barker, Ashgrove, Qld

Kitchen Dresser
Hoop pine
1200 x 365 x 1570mm h

The finished dimensions of the new dresser are, for the lower section: top and base, 1200 l x 365 w x 25mm d, sides 365 w x 25 d x 600mm h, and the support frame is 1120 l x 345 w x 330mm h.
For the upper section made from the 20mm d shelves, the finished dimensions are: 1120 l x 170 w x 590 h. The overall height of the dresser is 1570mm which does not including the decorative piece on the top of the upper section. It was also made from left over pieces from the shelves and is about 120mm h.

Materials
Materials were sourced from old cabinet in laundry of our family home. It had no special history or significance.
The cabinet was of a carcase type frame, and the cabinet bench top was a large board of hoop pine. It had two shelves and a base made of tongue and groove hoop pine paneling. I pulled it apart and stored the timber from it in my workshop for about seven years.

Methods
This piece of furniture was very simple to make and didn’t require any special processes. Its manufacture was simply to reuse the old timber from the old laundry cabinet that I had pulled apart some years before.
All I had to do was clean up an old hoop pine board from the top of the cabinet, saw it up the middle, cut off the pieces I needed, do some router trenching and edging, then glue and screw it all together.
A saw cut down the middle of the old cupboard top produced two lengths which produced the top, base, and two end sides for the lower section of the “new dresser”.
The old tongue and groove shelves had enough timber to make the upper section and shelf, as well as the shelf for the lower section. The 4mm plywood backing from the old cabinet was reused, after cleaning and sanding, for the back of the new dresser
The support frame and legs were made from an old coffee table my father had made from crows ash in the early 1960s. I found it under my father’s house years later (2005), and the wood was still good.
The doors were made from what was left over from the pine frame and there is one pane of recycled glass in one of the doors. The other two have new glass. The glass cutter told me that new glass is much easier to cut than old glass because it becomes too uneven and brittle to cut and usually ends up cracking.
So after some sawing, router trenching and edging, and hand chiseled mortises we have a dresser and my wife is pleased. Total cost for other materials i.e. glass, stain, varnish, turps, sandpaper, new brush, door handles and hinges, about $80.
One problem worth mentioning about staining and varnishing old timber such as I used is that stains from laundry liquids and other chemicals are very difficult to sand or scrape away.