As usual, click any photo to bring up a larger version.  

Exotic Red Nightstand

 

This is the gorgeous nightstand that I made for my wife.

Four years ago, I designed and built a fairly unique double-decker nightstand for myself. At the time, my wife was not interested in one for herself. I know, nightstands are supposed to come in pairs, but we actually like having an eclectic mix of furniture in the house.

Still, when the time came to make another one, we both agreed that we wanted it to be at least "similar" to the first one, though not identical. Building it out of Padauk and Maple was mandatory!

I considered several different designs, before settling on the one shown here.

(I did not post any of those other designs on my website, but I did show some of them off on a youtube blog-type video that I put together, which you are of course welcome to check out here: https://youtu.be/dJk3IADQqtc

 

I started with some 8/4 (eight-quarter) hard maple for the legs, jointing and planing it down and cutting them to 1-1/2" square. I also jointed and planed more maple for the rails and stiles, and also resawed a few wide panels in half to make floating panels for the two sides.

I made the rails to be 1-1/2" wide also, just like the legs. This looks nice and consistent, but I discovered that this does not leave a lot of room for the joinery. After plowing a 3/8" dado in a test piece for the floating panel, I realized the problem. I was able to work around this by chaning to a shallower 3/16-1/4" deep dado for the panels. It was still a bit on the small side!

 

The nighstand is mostly a square shaped cabinet, but I still designed in a taper at the bottom of the legs. I think that this helps it to look a bit less boxy. As well, the other nightstand also had tapered legs and I want them to be design "cousins" at least.

The floating panels were bookmatched, which is a detail that probably only I will ever notice, but it was still important to me.

The panels sit in stopped dado in the legs, and matching dados in the top and bottom rails and the center stile. The center stile was also given a stub tenon so that it could also fit into the dado in the top and bottom rails.

 

(Next Set Of Photos:)
With the two side assemblies built, the next step was to build the drawer frames... I'm not even sure if that is the proper name or not. These are the wood frames that the drawers ride on, and also act as the divider between the drawer fronts. These were also made of maple stock, doweled together, and then mounted to the sides using dowels.

 

Actually, let me back up for a moment to the assembly procedure. I don't really mention this in the plans, but I added a side piece to three of the drawer frames. You can see them stacked up in the right side of this photo.

This piece fits inbetween the drawer frame and the side panel. It is just there to help keep the drawer aligned. Otherwise, due to the thickness of the cabinet legs, there would be a gap between the drawer frames and the side panels, which could cause troubles with drawer alignment.

The construction of the drawers was detailed in my article on the Small Drawer Lock Joint. The drawer boxes are maple boxes, with a plywood bottom. However I did not stop there.

I also designed the drawers to have a padauk front. Now, exotic hardwood is expensive. If you make a mistake while building with it, it can be a costly error. Instead, I made the drawers bodies out of inexpensive domestic maple lumber. I then resawed some paduak and planed it down to panels of 1/4" thick. (This is still quite thick, I could have gone thinner to 1/8".)

These thin panels were then laminated to the fronts of the drawer boxes. The bottom drawer is quite large, so I first had to glue up a wider panel of these thin veneers, which is shown in the next photo.

 

For some strange reason I don't have any photos or video of gluing up the panel for the nightstand top. Oh well. Here is a photo of trimming it to size.

While I love the colour of Paduak, the dust is very fine and gets everywhere. Dust collection is mandatory. I find that the wood can also splinter if you are not careful.

I ran a 45-degree chamfer along the front and sides of the nightstand top. This gives the edge a little thinner look.

 

 

Final assembly: attaching the top to the base.

I attached it with some screws through the top frame of the cabinet. The holes were elongated a bit, to allow some seasonal expansion and contraction of the top.

Time to apply the finish.

It really is kind of wrong to compress all of this down to one photo, as it is a large part of the process. I first work through 2 or 3 different sanding grits with sanding the parts. I vacuum off the dust, and inspect everything carefully looking for glue squeeze-out or rough spots. Then there is each coat of finish followed by light sanding, more vacuuming or dusting, more inspecting, and then the next coat... But it's not very exciting to watch. Hence, just one photo is shown here.

This time I am trying a new finish, as recommended by my brother. This is Minwax oil-modifed waterbased polyurethane. I don't know how it can be both waterbased (with water cleanup) and still have oil, but I'm no chemist. I first tried it on some test pieces and was quite pleased with the result. I think it looks really nice on the finished piece. It wiped on very easily, and levelled quickly. I am used to dealing with a LOT more bubbles when finishing, and this time I had hardly any. As well, waterbased finish is known for being totally transparent -- which can come across as a cold and lifeless finish. I would guess that the oil in this one helps with a bit of amber/warming tone, and the results were very nice.

Last step of the process is to drill a hole in the center of each drawer and attach a knob.

 


Photo Gallery

Here are a few photos of the final product. It's hard to get the full impact of the black grains running through the vibrant red padauk. Stunning. Too bad that it darkens with age.

 


Plans and Dimensions

If this project interests you, I have provided here all the dimensions of the piece as I built it. At least, I think I've got all of the critical dimensions noted on the plans!

(I tend to treat plans more like "guidelines" than actual rules for most of my projects. For one thing, I think I ended up making the top 26" wide...)

 

Some of the Tools/Supplies Used In This Project: (Affiliate Links)

Minwax Oil-Modified Waterbased Polyurethane
Dowelmax Company
NOTE: at the time of publishing (May 2023) Dowelmax is not currently available on amazon. It has been in the past, so I am keeping the following links, but right now only the link above to "dowelmax.com" is known to work.
Dowelmax Dowel Joinery Kit
Dowelmax Drill Guides for 1/4" Dowels
Dowelmax Dowels

Ridgid compact 12V drill
DEWALT DW703 Miter saw
DEWALT D26453K 5-Inch Random Orbit Sander
DeWalt DW735 Planer
3rd party blades for DW735

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases you make using my affiliate links.

 



Let's talk about colour changes

After I published this project, there was a lot of chatter on various woodworking forums about how Padauk change colour, what can you do about it, and so on. So I quickly made this video to share what knowledge I have about colour changing. In it I show you the new nightstand right beside a similar five year old nightstand (also shown in this still photo) so you can see for yourself how African Padauk's colour changes over time.

I also show off a few other projects that I have made over the years that contain Padauk, as well as moving on to show some Jatoba, some Purpleheart, and some Yellowheart. Yellowheart is the only one of those that does NOT change colour.

Yes you can try and slow down the colour changing process in Padauk by using a UV-resistant finish, and by keeping the piece out of sunlight. But it still WILL change gradually over time. My advice is to enjoy it while you have it, and also try to see how it still looks nice even as the colour changes.

I strongly suggest you watch the video, as I did not take the time to pull out a whole bunch of still photos. Here are two examples. First, I show the five-year-old drawer on top of the brand new nightstand. This shows the striking change in colour from five years. But in the next photo, I show just the five-year-old nighstand top, showing how on it's own it still is a striking and lovely piece of wood.

(I apologize, as it is not the best photo quality.)

 

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See Also:


Double Decker Nightstand


Shaker Style Bed


Shaker-style Stepstool


Easy End Table


Harvest Table (Part 1)