Printer Stand
One of the biggest changes in my office remodel will replace two different pieces of “furniture” currently in use. I have this terrible adjustable metal shelving which acts as my printer stand, while also housing most of my networking equipment.
I LOVE how my camera makes the posts look like a trapezoid at the top.
The other piece that will finally be gone is this Ikea Groland kitchen island. I didn’t have this in my office when we first moved into our current house. I actually bought it for my mom to use after she moved into an assisted living facility. After she had to be moved into a full-time care facility, we wound up with the kitchen island.
We didn’t have any real use for it, but then I figured I might be able to use it as a type of workbench in my office, and so that’s been its lot in life ever since. Right now, I have a network switch, inkjet printer, and a host of other printing supplies sitting under this workbench. Everything is just out in the open, constantly collecting dust, and it quickly just turns into an area to collect crap (like most horizontal surfaces do in my workshop).
I really need to put that bike helmet somewhere else since I got rid of my mountain bike.
I really wanted something that would be an all-in-one place for EVERYTHING sitting on these two eyesores. After a lot of tinkering with ideas, this is what I ultimately came up with.
Allow me to explain exactly what’s going on here. On top of the printer stand are my black and white all-in-one laser printer (left) and the color laser printer (right). The right side of the cabinet will have, from bottom to top, a shelf for the APC UPS currently in use, the cable modem, and then the wireless router.
There are five total doors on the front. They have a hard maple frame with a walnut panel. The top level has one singular door which will simply be extra storage. Next to that, these doors will have the ability to open and then slide back into the cabinet, with a pull-out tray which holds the inkjet printer. The reason for storing the inkjet inside the cabinet is it just isn’t used frequently enough to warrant it being out in the open.
The bottom section has two larger doors, each for more storage. On the left I have all of the toner and injet cartridges along with paper. The one on the right is empty at the moment. As was the case with all of the previous pieces in the remodel, all of the doors are inset.
Since this is a common theme with all of these pieces thus far, I needed to make changes to the doors to have them be overlay versus inset.
Because I was already modifying the printer stand, I decided to see if I could come up a bit different design for the front. I really wasn’t too keen on those two large lower doors, and the slide-in doors just weren’t working for me anymore (mostly because they were likely going to be a pain in the ass to install).
After a bit of time, here is what I came up with instead.
Nothing has changed on the top. Immediately you can see the section of drawers which took the place of the one lone door in the upper section. I think the old version just looked strange with that one odd door. Also, I opted to forgo the sliding doors altogether for the inkjet printer. For the lower section the space is essentially the same, except that I went with two sets of smaller doors instead of two large ones.
The one other thing I had to change up was the location of the UPS. On the old plans I had it on the same side as the modem and router. Since my original design, we’ve gotten a new cable modem from our Internet provider and it is a bit taller and doesn’t have the capability to be hung from its side like the old one. This meant I needed it to sit on a shelf like the UPS. I simply didn’t have enough room on the one side to allow this. I opted to move the UPS to the left side of the printer stand instead. There is another outlet over there anyway and it won’t force me to cram everything together on one side.
This build was more of the same type of construction as the two previous projects…dadoes. There isn’t much more to say about this, other than to make sure you cut your dadoes to match the thickness of the material sitting in them…ask me how I know :(
The bottom shelf had an additional dado cut to allow for a center brace. Because the printer stand is 48” wide, I’d prefer to have a bit more support to prevent any possible sagging in the future.
Despite the large nature of this piece, I opted to not use any glue in any of the dadoes. For the sides, the stretchers will be more than sufficient to hold them rigid and in place. As for the shelves and the vertical dividers, I toe-nailed a few pin nails to help hold them in place to prevent any sliding around. I know this isn’t the conventional means of construction, but this furniture isn’t going to be moving once in place, and I’m not worried about any the pocket screws in the stretchers or pin nails failing.
All of the exposed plywood edges which can be seen were all covered with iron-on edge banding. In the future I may switch to making my own hardwood edge banding, but for now I’m going with the path of least resistance. The iron-on stuff isn’t perfect, but it will do for my furniture.
With the carcass put together and everything square, I sized and cut the back panel. I, again, opted for pin nails to attach it to the shelves and dividers. The frame racked quite a bit before, but with that simple 1/4” back panel in place the whole thing is rock solid now.
Next up was bank of three drawers. Nothing special here, once again…more pocket holes and edge banding for the tops of the drawer boxes. I went with soft-close drawer slides for these as I did not have enough old drawer slides on hand. I made a small mistake in laying out the top and middle drawer, but it was a simple fix with only a few screw holes visible when the drawer is opened to show my mistake (no biggie).
As with the file cabinet, the trim was more or less a pedestrian affair in attaching to the printer stand. I did make one big mistake with the front piece of trim when cutting it to size. I forgot to account for the side trim on one side and cut the front piece a couple of inches too short…oops. Thankfully I had plenty of hard maple on hand, albeit for the other two pieces yet to be built. I didn’t get enough material for everything anyway, so I needed to go back to the lumber yard for more regardless.
I must say that before I attached the trim, the back panel, and the drawer slides, I finished the entire carcass inside and out, minus the back panel. This made for a much easier go of things. In addition, I drilled a set of three shelf pin holes for the bottom right storage section. This allows me a little flexibility in the future, although I don’t think I will likely need it.
Next up were the six doors, four on the bottom and two on top. The only door I’ve made for my office furniture, thus far, was the one for my desk that covers the Synology boxes. I opted for floating tenons for that door because I routed a groove in the back to easily insert the metal mesh panel.
I was going with 1/4” walnut plywood panels for all of the remaining doors, so a more appropriate method of construction would be a shaker-style door. I’ve made only one of these doors before on my Finishing Station. I had a little mishap while making that door, so I didn’t want to have the same problem this time around. Being as that was a shop project, I didn’t care quite so much, but I’m using some much nicer material this time around.
I, as before, referenced the same tutorial as before to refresh my memory on what to do. I took my time and checked my measurements a thousand times before making my cuts. In the end, everything came out great…except I almost screwed up two of the rails.
Well, screwed up is a bit strong. What happened was, after I cut all of the tenons on the rails of all six doors, I changed out the saw blade and set my crosscut sled on the floor after I was done. I went to dry-fit everything and set them in place to get a look at everything, and that’s when I noticed a HUGE problem…I forgot to cut the tenons one one of the ends of two rails for the upper doors…SHIT!!!
I thought I was in for it in trying to set everything back up again. I put my box joint blade back in the saw and realized that I never changed the blade height and never moved the stop block on my crosscut sled…PHEW!!! Crisis averted. I ran the two ends of the rails through and they were perfect just like all the rest. I got lucky on that one. In the end, all of the doors went together well and when in place their spacing is nearly perfect.
After cutting the plywood panels to size, it was time to glue up the doors. Shaker doors aren’t too hard to glue up, so these went together quite easily. I needed 12 parallel clamps total, and I used most of the ones I had, including four of the 50” ones.
Once the glue set overnight, I removed the clamps and went about sanding all six doors. It took me an entire morning to sand everything from 80 to 220 grit, and even then I wasn’t done yet. I waited to ease all of the sharp edges and corners until later.
Next up were the hinges. I had to think about the hinges a lot in advance due to the construction of the carcass. With every other cabinet I’ve built, the doors all used full-overlay hinges. This time around, with the vertical dividers, I would not be able to use full-overlay hinges for the two middle doors on the bottom. These doors utilized half-overlay hinges instead.
In addition, because I planned on using a pull-out tray for the inkjet printer, I would need more of the same hinges I used on the Executive Desk. These, too, were full overlay hinges and I had the drawer faces to contend with in sharing a vertical divider.
I thought about it for a bit and came up with what turned out to be a simple solution. I took two pieces of scrap 1/4” walnut plywood and super glued them together. After adding a couple of strips of edge banding on the fronts and tops, I attached them to the side of the vertical divider.
I didn’t bother putting finish on the spacers…I didn’t see the point, really.
With the added thickness, this moved the door over 7/16”, allowed me to still have the 1/8” spacing I wanted on everything, and gave the drawer face something to rest against when closed.
All of the doors were hung in place after I set the printer stand on the floor and leveled it. I could have done the same thing on my workbench, but I needed to get it on the floor eventually anyway, so I figured now would be as good a time as any.
It took a few minutes to adjust the hinges for the correct reveal. With the addition of the door knobs and drawer pulls, everything looked great.
The tray for the inkjet printer wasn’t to terribly complicated. I simply attached a couple of plywood rails to the bottom of the opening and screwed the drawer slides onto those. With the tray installed, the drawer slides are essentially invisible, yet still easily accessible.
The last thing to do was the top. Some of the hard maple I got for the tops of the remaining office furniture decided to bow and twist, so I had to use a few more pieces than I’d planned (gotta love a 5/4 potato chip). Once I got everything milled up, the glue-up wasn’t too difficult with the use of my Clampzilla panel clamps. I had these clamps for a long time before I finally starting using them on my office furniture project, but they’ve been well-worth the wait.
Well, here is the finished piece.
The two small shelves hanging off the sides were made similarly to the cable tray for my Executive Desk. All of the hinges and drawer slides are soft-close. For finish, I changed things to Walrus Oil Furniture Butter. I’d previously used Odie’s Oil on the Executive Desk and File Cabinet, but there was a whole thing that happened with a fellow woodworker and the founder of Odie’s that rubbed myself and A LOT of people the wrong way. I traded in my full unopened jar of Odie’s for some Walrus Oil and Atomic Finish (still haven’t tried that yet). The Walrus Oil Furniture Butter was very easy to apply and it looks almost identical to the other finish, so I couldn’t be happier.
When running the power cables for the modem and router, they were either just barely long enough or just short in being able to reach the outlet on the UPS. I opted to just run a power strip from the UPS and lay it on the floor to the side of the Printer Stand. It’s not what I was hoping for (I might attach it to the side of the stand later), but I didn’t plan for the power cord lengths when designing the Printer Stand. It’s not a huge deal, and only I’m going to see it, so I’m fine with it.
I’m really loving the choice of hardware for the knobs and pulls. They offer a great contrast to the hard maple, yet they go perfectly with the walnut. There is the slightest hint of copper in the pulls and knobs which I really like. Overall, I’m very pleased with how this project came out. I’m still making mistakes here and there, which is to be expected, but I’m learning at the same time. There are only two more pieces of furniture to make. Next up will likely be the small Bookcase.
