Corner Cabinets for Dummy Carpenters

Sample curio corner cabinet plans

We aren't really sure why anyone would turn to the likes of eHow.com to get plans for furniture for the home, but the people who ran the site were still more than happy to publish bogus claptrap. After all, any hit earns advertising revenue, no matter how worthless the information on the page, right? With that in mind, check out the OurPastimes.com post (by an anonymous contributor) that supposedly has information on "How to Build a Corner Curio Cabinet."¹

Our staffer who found this particular post was excited to note that, for once, the writer realized that lumber has thickness. For the two sides of the cabinet, the instructions say to,

"...cut a piece... [of ¾-inch plywood] 5 feet long and 2 feet wide for the one side [sic] of your cabinet... cut a piece that is 5 feet long and 1 foot 11 1/4 inches wide for the other side of your cabinet."

It's our experience that the average freelancing journalism (or English lit) major forgets to allow for the thickness of the materials when giving dimensions. Yay, anonymous. Of course, our staffers' awe soon changed to "awwww." That was, in part, because the anonymous one instructed would-be cabinetmakers to,

"Measure out a triangle using the corner of another piece of plywood with two 2-foot-2-inch-long sides. Use the two edges of the plywood for the sides. Draw a diagonal line connecting these two sides to form a triangle. Cut out two of these triangles for the top and bottom of your cabinet... Use the same technique in Step 3 to cut out four to five triangular pieces with two 2-foot-long sides." How one is supposed to cut the sides and six or seven such "triangles" from a single sheet of plywood is beyond us. It gets more bizarre, though. For a door, you are supposed to,

"Go to a local glass shop and have a piece of glass cut for the door that is 4 feet 10 inches long... Have all edges smoothed and finished and two hinges attached to one of the long sides of the glass about 3 inches inward from each end."

Clearly, "Contributor" is unfamiliar with getting glass that size: what thickness? tempered? how about a handle? It gets worse from that point, though. You see, two of those triangles form the top and bottom of the "cabinet" (hint to contributor: the hypotenuse of an isosceles triangle whose sides are 2 feet long is 2.818 feet long). You're then supposed to use other triangles the same size for "shelves" and slap the piece of glass on the front for a door.

Yeah, right: those shelves would stick out ¾" beyond the sides. That's not to mention that assembling the cabinet with nothing but 1½" screws wouldn't be very... secure., and all those exposed edges of plywood would be rather unattractive, especially if stained.

We suggest a face frame, dadoes or cleats for the shelves, and a rail-and-stile frame for the glass door. That last makes it far easier to mount hardware, as well as substantially less expensive. For a finished look, add feet. Frankly, this thing would be ugly as sin!
But that's just us, and we don't use the plans written by a Dumbass of the Day when we design furniture.

¹ The original has been deleted by Leaf Group, but can still be accessed using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_4841049_build-corner-curio-cabinet.html

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