In-Wall Drawers for Dummies

knee-wall storage

It's bad enough when a complete amateur attempts a copy-reword-paste job on a simple carpentry project, such as building a birdhouse. We already know that woodworking classes are missing from the fine arts and creative writing college curricula... Be that as it may, it's far more irksome to our staffers to find utterly incompetent freelancers attempting to create instructions for a project that they themselves consider "challenging." With that in mind, let's have a look at how Mark Koltko-Rivera botched instructions he cribbed from somewhere for "How to Make an in Wall [sic] Drawer" at HomeSteady.com.

PhD in counseling or not, Koltko-Rivera immediately revealed that he was far out of his depth. He started by demonstrating his ignorance of construction in his introduction:

"Consider the space under staircases, along attic walls, and in knee walls -- the space that is created when a roof-line cuts through a room on an upper floor of a home. "

No, Mark, a knee wall is not "the space," it is the short vertical element that closes off the space. But let's get to the meat of the matter: the alleged instructions. K-R claimed to have used a Popular Mechanics post as a reference; there's no such information in the post. He must have attempted to upload the information from a hard-copy book... too bad he didn't understand it!

According to Mark, the first step in installing an in-wall drawer is,

"Slide drawer glides into place one drawer [sic]. Calculate the width, height, and depth of the cabinet..."

...which is a little weird since that's his first mention of this "cabinet." You are then supposed to measure the drawer and add to the dimensions. Hint: K-R thought you'd bought a ready-made drawer from Home Depot, which is why he instructed his readers to measure it... 

Moving right along, Mark said to cut up some plywood big enough to enclose the drawer and its glides. Included in this mishmash of instructions is one that says to,

"Center the narrow side of the 1-by-2s 'D' across each 1/4-inch gap, with the front of the 1-by-2 flush with the 3/4-inch dowel side pieces. Place a thin bead of wood glue on the ends of each piece 'D' and nail into place."

This is the first mention of "D," so a reader would have no idea what K-R was talking about (much like Mark himself). His plan for a "cabinet" is well-nigh impossible to follow (especially without illustrations) and, according to staffers who've built cabinets, lacks even the basic structure of an actual cabinet. Our Dumbass of the Day, sadly, didn't even know enough to know what he didn't know about this topic. That's so eHow...

DDIY - STORAGE