Isn’t it always just the little things that hang us up in this skill of woodworking?! Figuring out how to use your tools just perfectly so that when you have to take off 1/8″ of material from the end of a board it doesn’t actually turn into 1/4″, placing tiny screws in just the right place so that your drawer slides don’t stick, not showing any signs of planer snipe on table tops…..
I could go on….
But I won’t….
Because I know you know what I’m talking about….
Well, one of our battles for the longest time has been full-extension drawer slides and installing them so that they don’t stick when you open the drawer.
The great thing about this project, though, is that we FINALLY nailed them! These nightstands have the smoothest drawers I’ve ever used – and it felt good to finally overcome one of those little things that keep you from experimenting with new ideas. Seriously. We would dread having to use full-extension drawer slides in projects because we knew we’d have to fiddle with them for so long (eating up our time and messing up our labor cost calculations). And ever since we got these to work to effortlessly, we’ve been using the same kind for almost every piece we make that has drawers!! If you want to give them a try, click the link above.
These nightstands were actually for us! The last set we had we made in the 1-car garage of our apartment with a miter saw and a drill….with a whopping 4 months worth of woodworking experience. They definitely served their purpose for a couple of years, but the tops began to warp and bend in the middle, taking away the structural integrity.
After a solid 2 years worth of improvement on our skills, we were ready to build some new ones.
We drove a couple hours to our nearest hardwood dealer and picked up a BUNCH of hickory (we were going through a “nothing-but-hickory”) phase at the time, and started welding the bases. We do mostly woodworking, but man is it nice to be able to quickly weld yourself a set of table legs for half the price of what you’d buy them on Amazon for. We put a shelf on the bottom of each one to hold all of our books and notebooks, and then put in our favorite drawer slides.
We didn’t end up selling these, but just to get some reps in, we did sit down and price them as if we were going to sell them. It’s always good to see if you’re on track with the methods and strategies you create for your business.
This is how the breakdown would have gone for both combined:
Materials (hickory, steel, drawer slides, hardware, finish): $165
Time/Gas driving down to hardwood dealer: $127
Labor (11 hours @ $30/hr): $330
40% Markup: $248
Total: $870
So these would have both sold for almost $1000 – probably about $430 for one. All in all, they look great (still do!) and we got a pretty big confidence boost on one of the smallest things that had just hung us up for the longest time!
This is the video we created walking you through how we build the nightstands and how we would go about selling them!
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This post may contain affiliate links for products we used to create this project! If you’d like to check them out, we do get a small percentage of the sale and they are of no extra cost to you! It all goes towards supporting the content creation of Jennie and Davis. BUT – we do not take tool sponsorships and there were no tool endorsements. Just our honest opinions!
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