In the laundry room, we have a small, plastic storage cart that was in place when we moved int. It holds things like detergent, bleach, dryer sheets. With it being plastic and holding a fair amount of weight, it leans and falls into the washer and dryer and can’t stand on its own. So, I set out to create a custom cart made from wood.
Laundry Storage Cart Build Video
Materials and Plan
The cart is made from ash hardwood and 1/2″ plywood and is painted white. Ash makes up the frames of the unit and the plywood makes up the panels and the shelves. The picture below shows a lot of ash laying out, but I only used two boards. I think the two on the far right.
The plan below show some dimensional details. The view on teh left would be the side frames (with 3 horizontal rails). The view on the right is the front and back frame and panel. So four frame pieces in total that will joined together via rabbet and reinforced with glue blocks.
Dimensioning Lumber
As with most projects, I started at the miter saw and cut everything down to rough length. Then I moved on to the bandsaw to cut down for rough width. Then onto the jointer and planer for surfacing. Finally, using the table saw and miter saw to bring all the pieces down to finished dimensions. At this stage, I only had the plywood roughly cut to size since I had to wait until I had a most of the frame put together to get the final sizes for the panels and the shelves.
Mortises and Tenons
The next task was to lay out the tenons for each horizontal piece then transfer the tenon locations to the vertical pieces as my lay out lines for the mortises. All of the tenons were 1″ deep and 1/4 thick, but varied by length. I typically use a 1/4″ or 3/8″ offset from each edge.
After marking out the mortises and tenons, I started cutting them with my mortising jig and a router. During this same time, my mom was helping me by cutting the tenon shoulders and cheeks. The shoulders were cut on the table saw with a slight undercut. The cheeks were initially cut on the bandsaw and finished on the router table. I think there are 28 mortises in total. After all was cut on the machines, I fine tuned them with a shoulder plane and rounded the corners with a file/chisel.
Dry Fit and Panel Measurements
After all of the frames were fit together, I could cut the long vertical rabbets that joining them all together. The rabbets are cut in the front and back frames After cutting these, I realized I cut them too deep and got into the mortise and tenons (ooops). So I had to go knock down the interfering section of the tenons. Once that was complete, I could dry fit the four frames together.
After the frames were dry fit together, I was able to take all the measurements for the 6 panels for the front and rear frames and for the shelf pieces. At this point I hadn’t cut the grooves for the shelf pieces to sit into yet. After this initial dry fit, I cut them on the router table.
Final Dry Fit, Sand, Mask Paint
I set off to make the 6 panels and the three shelves. I cut all the pieces to final dimension using the table saw and miter saw. The 6 front and rear panels needed tongues cut into them to fit into the frames. I used the router table and a 1/2 bit. The final dry fit was up next and I was really liking how this was looking. It may be a very handsome piece if it was stained instead of painted.
After the dry fit, I cut the small glue blocks to reinforce the rabbets. Then I glued up the side frames since they do not have any panels to prefinish. After those came out of the clamps, I sanded everything and started to mask off the areas where glue would get applied. This process required me to do a semi dry fit of the rabbet joints and the glue blocks.
After 1 coat of primer and 2 coats of top (with sanding in between), I was ready to clamp the front and back panels together.
After those dried, I could glue the four frame pieces together via the long rabbet joints. I didn’t really like they way this joint turned out due to some gaps, but boy it took some clamps.
Then I clamped the glue blocks into each corner to reinforce the rabbet. There were some areas that needed to be touched up. Mostly due to missing paint or imperfect masking. A few areas were marred up from the clamps, so those had to get scuffed and touched up.
Finished Pictures
