A few months ago, I was commissioned by a bubble tea shop to design and construct a built-in unit to help display their merch and snacks. What I thought was going to be a build similar to my past ones, this turned out to be a huge challenge, mainly because of its large size. I knew working on something this large in my small 2-car garage, and later have to load it into a van and moved through doorways all by myself, I needed to break this into smaller pieces that are designed in a way so they could be put together onsite quickly and efficiently.
Check out the full build video below!
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MATERIALS
3/4” Walnut Ply
3/4” Maple Ply
1/2” Maple Ply
1/4” Maple Ply
Hard Maple Lumber
3/4” Walnut Ply
STEP 1: BAR TOP
The first thing I worked on was the bar top, which was made by laminating two sheets of 3/4” ply together. When I do something like this, I always cut one of the boards slightly larger. That way, I could just flush everything up using my router after the glue has dried.
Afterwards, I cut some hard maple strips for the trim around the bar top to hide the plywood edges, as well as protect the plywood. I used miter ends on the trim pieces so there won’t any exposed end grain when everything is done.
Once the bar top was complete, I assembled the commercial steel base and attached it to the bar top using bolts and threaded inserts.
step 2: base cabinets
I had originally designed the base cabinet as a single piece, but due to it being much longer than the length of any flat surface I had in the shop, I made it into two. After cutting the side panels down to size, I cut notches on the bottom corners to make clearances for some 1/2” thick by 6” tall tile baseboards along the walls that this bench will sit against. And then I drilled pocket holes into the panels, which will be the primary joinery method for the base cabinets.
I used one of the bottom stretchers as a spacer to help me position the bottom panel to the side panel before fastening them together with glue and screws. Then I just repeated this same process to attach the rest of the panels together. Check out the full build video for the animation to help illustrate the order which I did things.
Once the main panels were fastened together, I began to attach the stretchers. I started out with the bottom stretchers, which were used as spacers previously. Then I flipped the assembly over on to its feet and attached the top horizontal stretchers connecting the two side panels to the vertical partition. And instead of a full back panel, I used one long stretcher that spans across the side panels to bring everything together.
STEP 3: face frame
Once the base cabinets were completed, it’s time to work on the face frames. As a small furniture maker, my first instinct was to cut each frame piece individually to fit the panel they’re going on. But this will, most likely, cause problems as we bring the two base cabinets together. Because any small variations in the pieces will compound over the length of the cabinets, and these errors will likely cause me to end up with drawer openings that won’t line up perfectly.
So the conventional way is to actually construct the face frame separately. That way all the joints will be nice and tight, everything will be squared up, and all the openings are the same size. Then you take that and attach it to the case. This way you’ll end up with a perfect frame on an imperfect case, but that won’t matter because it’ll give the illusion that everything is perfect.
After milling and cutting the face frame pieces down to size, I used Dominoes to attach them. But you can also use pocket screws, biscuits, or dowels. We just want something here to keep the parts aligned and the joints tight. The face frame parts aren’t very big, so I only used one Domino at each joint. Finally, I squeezed all the joints closed with clamps. Keep in mind not to apply too much pressure on these since the rails aren’t that big, we don’t want to introduce any kind of deformation or flushness problems between the parts.
The next day, I took the face frames out of the clamps and gave everything a quick sanding to knock down any glue squeeze out that could interfere with how the frame will sit on the case before attaching them together. I used clamps to hold the face frames to the base cabinets to prevent things fro slipping around while I drove screws through the pocket holes we cut into the panels earlier.
STEP 4: bench top
The bench top is made with a single piece of 3/4” ply for the main top panel and several skeleton pieces attached along the bottom for added support using glue and brad nails. I used my tracksaw to cut the bench top down to its final size and flushed everything up. I also attached hard maple trim around the two edges of the bench top that will not be sitting against walls.
The bench top will sit about 1” proud of the base cabinets along the two edges with the trim applied, which you can see in the last image.
step 5: top side wall
Next, it’s time to work on the upper portion, which consists of a back wall with french cleats sandwiched between two identical side walls. Since the left side wall will sit flush to the bar top while also functioning as its secondary support, that’s what I worked on first.
Like the bar top, the side walls are made by laminating two pieces of 3/4” plywood together, with hard maple trim applied along what will be the top and front edges. These were pretty straightforward, so I will jump right to how the side walls will attach to the bench top.
As I’d mentioned in the beginning, it’s important to be able to assemble everything quickly and efficiently on install day. So bolts going through the bottom of the bench top and into the bottom edge of the top walls was the way to go.
But I didn’t want to put threaded inserts directly into the plywood edge because I was worried it’ll split the layers, so I ended up drilling some 3/4” holes in the locations where I’ll be putting the threaded inserts, and then cut some dowel plugs to fill those holes. That way the threaded inserts will be embedded into the dowels, which I felt was a much more robust way to hold the inserts.
To help keep the threaded inserts lined up down the middle of the part, I used this centering jig that Woodpeckers sent me. It’s not really important to keep the threaded inserts centered, but it will help to locate the thru holes in the bench top, as shown in the last two images. If you don’t have a jig like this, just oversize the thru holes in the bench top to account for any deviations.
After drilling the thru holes in the bench top, I flipped it over to drill a recess for the bolt head to sit in. I also drilled additional holes for a couple of 3/8” dowels, which I used as locating pins to allow me to quickly position the side walls to the bench top before bolting things down.
STEP 6: Top back wall
With both side walls bolted down, I took a measurement in between them to determine the size of the back wall.
The construction of the back wall is pretty much the same as the bench top, with supports glued to the back of the panel along all four edges as well as a few along the middle. But the hardwood trim was applied only along the top edge.
I used the same method to attach the back wall to the bench top as I did for the side walls. But I needed a different method to fasten all three walls together since I didn’t want the bolts visible on the side of the bench. That’s why I went with pocket screws placed along the short edges of the back wall. This way, I can attach all three walls to the bench first using bolts, and then I’ll drive the pocket screws in to pull the three walls together.
Next, I cut three strips for the french cleats that will go on the back wall. Usually I wouldn’t put edge banding on something like this, but considering that these will all be below eye level, I really didn’t want to leave the plywood edges bare.
After the strips were cut to size, I attached them to the back wall using glue and screws, countersunk into the cleats. Since the shelves that will hang on these are pretty big and heavy, I was not stingy on the number of screws used.
Using a lot of screws also meant I had a lot of holes to plug up. But thankfully, I got this really cool tool from Toolstoday, called a “plug planer”. This thing helped me flush up all those plugs really fast. But of course you could do the same job with a flush trim saw, just…maybe not as fast.
STEP 7: attaching bar top to bench
After connecting all of the individual pieces together, off camera, I installed some threaded inserts to the underside of the bar top used to mount a couple of steel brackets for connecting the bar top to the side wall. This will allow the client the option to remove the bar table from the rest of the assembly if they needed to, for things like placing a Christmas tree in that location during the holiday seasons.
step 8: finishing
And with that, all of the big pieces for the build were pretty much done! I went over all of the edges with a 1/16” round over bit and sanded all of the surfaces up to 220 grit to prep for finish.
Since this display case will be placed in a commercial setting where the floor is cleaned with bleach and hot water every night, I needed a really tough finish. After talking to a few maker friends on Instagram, they all recommended conversion varnish. But I found out that type of finish could only be applied by spraying…so I went and bought a HVLP system!
This project definitely gave the little nudge I needed to get into spraying, and honestly, I don’t know why it took me so long! The entire process was really simple and quick, other than the fact that I had to pitch up a tent in my garage. But, the finish went on super smooth! I don’t even want to think how long it would have taken me, or how messy it would have been, if I’d used some kind of wiping finish.
step 9: drawer boxes
Before I started on the drawer boxes, I remembered I had to attach strips of plywood to the inside faces of the base cabinets so that the face frame won’t interfere with the travel of the drawer slides later on. Then I proceeded with making the drawer boxes, as I usually do, using 1/2” plywood for the sides, and 1/4” plywood for the bottoms. And since I’d previously made sure all the openings were exactly the same, this process was really quick and painless, with lots of repeated cuts.
step 10: drawer fronts
For the drawer fronts, I really like the frame and panel look on built-ins like this. But instead of using the traditional construction where a 1/4” thick panel sits in the grooves of the 3/4” frame, I built these drawer fronts using a 1/2” panel that sits in rabbets cut in the back side of the stiles and rails. This allows the frame and panel to be flush in the back, where it’s mounted to the drawer boxes, but still keep the 1/4” reveal in the front.
While there are several ways to attach the stiles and rails, such as using Dominoes or pocket screws, I went with a lap joint by cutting a rabbet on both ends of the stiles. One thing to note here is to make sure the stiles are long enough to use this method, because the nesting will reduce the overall size of the drawer front.
While glue and clamps would be sufficient to assemble the frame, I really wanted to get things moving along, so I shot some brad nails into the joints and proceeded with measuring and cutting the 1/2” panels. Since I’m using plywood for these, I didn’t need to worry about expansion and contraction, so I just glued the panels in place and shot a few more brad nails to hold everything together.
At this point, the drawer fronts are ready to be attached to the drawer boxes, but I decided to wait until after the base cabinets are installed on site before doing that.
step 11: Shelves
As I’d previously mentioned, these french cleat shelves were pretty large and heavy. One of them was 47” long, the other was 30” long, but both were 18” deep and made from 3/4” ply. Because of the depth, I wanted good vertical suppport on both ends from the front to back. So I ended up making some side braces and added a taper to them to make them appear a little less chunky. These braces also has another function. By attaching them to the outside of the assembly, I was able to hide all of the plywood edges from the side view without needing to apply any additional edge banding.
To keep a large heavy shelf like this level and secure, I also attached a spacer to each of the shelves, just below the french cleat.
step 12: final install
The building where this display case is to be installed has thin and skinny steel studs instead of regular wooden studs, so I decided to attach cleats to the walls using anchors first, and then mount everything to those cleats later.
I think the part of the install that took the longest was using shims to bring the two base cabinets level and plum. Because once that’s done, I just had to drill screws through the side of the face frames to bring them together, and then screw them into the cleats.
The top portion of the display case went together pretty much as planned, with the three walls bolted to the bench top first, before they’re secured to each other with pocket screws. And then all of that was screwed to the cleats mounted to the walls, as well as to the base cabinets. I once again, used the plug planer to get in between the tight space between the french cleat strips to flush up the plugs used to hide the screws.
After all the drawer boxes were put in and drawer fronts mounted, I went around the entire piece with caulk to seal up all of the gaps to finish everything off!