If there’s one thing that’s hard to find these days, it’s affordable furniture that lasts. That‘s even more true for kids’ furniture. My daughter needed a shelf with cubbies to keep clothes & toys. I wasn’t about to pay $75 for MDF boards that would fall apart in two years. So I designed one myself made out of pine. I paid $45 for the wood, and about $5 for the screws.
Read more about how I built it below:
The basic construction is simple. I used pocket hole screws to attach all the boards at 90 degree angles. Pocket hole screws can be expensive, but when done properly, they form an extremely strong joint that requires no glue. This picture doesn’t show it, but the horizontal shelves will become adjustable using pegs (yes, they make a jig for that).
In the picture below, you can see the peg holes. In the background on the right, you can see the jig used to make the peg holes.
My daughter’s bed was already a faux wood. I stained this wood espresso so it would match.
I am particularly proud of this part of the project. I made the angle on the front of the toy bin to be slanted inline with the angle of the main cabinet. I never thought my geometry teacher would be right about using math later in life, but here we are..
From another direction:
And here’s the final product. It came out really nice. We still use it. These days it’s used for books rather than clothes. The peg holes make it very flexible for different sized items.
