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| . | ARCHITECTURAL CASEWORK: | ||||||||||
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So who needs an architectural display case or drawer case and how are they different from my finished casework? Well, the finished stuff is just that, -it's finished. Put one of these cases in your home and you are done with it. This is not to say that it is not a beautiful addition to your home -an elegant piece of furniture. You can fiddle about with the stuff you put into it, but other then moving it from the bookcase in your study to the top of the TV in the family room, it's pretty much done and done. For some people this is altogether sufficient and a good thing, but for some people, not nearly enough fun.
An architectural display case or drawer case, on the other hand, is just a little bit more elaborate and wonderfully adaptable. Think of them as a cross between your kitchen cabinets and building blocks for big kids, -building blocks that are carefully sized to compliment each other and fit neatly into your home. (Check out my Slide Show to see how this might unfold.) This casework is like your kitchen cabinets but there are a lot more drawers and the drawers are smaller. (We are putting away your precious collectables after all, not your pots and pans.) Just like your kitchen cabinets, they will support countertops and desks. But unlike your kitchen cabinets, they are fairly easy to install and probably stronger then your cabinets.
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| Selecting a Display Case or Drawer Case Here is how it works:
Then, to grow the potential of these cases, there is
a cases that are the same height, but twice as wide -an Finally there are two at the opposite ends of the scale -the
Now, (if you are still with me), comes the fun
part, -fitting them together to serve your needs and fit your home. For
example, do you want to be able to show your guests your collection? How
about some end tables?
Or do you need a custom built desk?
Do you have a good spacious workbench for your hobby? Maybe you have this closet...... But perhaps the best use for these cases is to simply fit them into you home wherever and however. In the bedroom....
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| SAFETY FINE PRINT: Your house was almost assuredly build with things 16 inches apart. Maybe 24 inches, but more likely the lumber that is in your walls, under your feet, and over your head is a bunch of variously sized boards 16 inches apart. You will notice that all of the above are either 16 or 24 inches wide, -or 32 inches wide, but this is just 2 times 16. This is so they can fit into your home, and be firmly bolted to your walls. This in turn allows you to stack them up into stout and safe cabinets and counters. As to safety, -you MUST do things right if you do built-ins and/or stack things up to any height. Have a look at Making Desks and Work Surfaces with Modular Drawer Cases. If you have any doubt about your own abilities, check out Hiring Carpenters and Other Useful Things. |
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To resume, the very best difference between your kitchen cabinets and my drawer cases is that you can swap the drawers around and change drawer sizes as your collection grows and changes. SELECTING DRAWERS is the next step: |
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For example, lets suppose you collect those little pins that they sell or give away at tennis tournaments. A case with 10 shallow drawers would serve your needs very well indeed. (This case is the 16 inch 'cube.') |
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But now you decide you want to collect tennis balls as well. You can pull out 4 shallow drawers and replace them with 2 medium drawers. |
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Taken a step farther, you now decide you want to pilfer shoes from master players and add them to your collection. (Don't know why you would want to do so, but you get the idea.) So now you pull out a medium drawer and a shallow one, replace the two of them with a single deep drawer, and you are all set. What do you do with the drawers you removed?
You start another case of course. And this, ladies and gentleman, is how Home Museums happen. |
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All this means that if you collect the smallest items, you want lots of flat drawers. For example, As many as ....
10
#1 drawers fit into the CUBE Using
the CUBE as an example, it can have ten #1 drawers
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As a final complication -and I think it's worthwhile complication- I also make drawers I call... Basically, a Cheater is a drawer with an oversize drawer front or 'face" that covers the top of the case.
Looks
like this. Compare
it to this side view,
Cheaters
also can cover the bottom of the case as well as the top. If, for example,
On
the other hand, if you put the case (or cases) up on a simple toe-kick, |
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A Paper Design Worksheet / Planning Tool: Sometimes, simplest ways are the best. What we have here is literally a 'cut and paste' worksheet. There are both a template to easily lay out the walls in your room, and sheets that have scale elevations of each possible drawer or display case. You make some measurements, sketch out your room, and cut out the appropriate cases. Then comes the fun part -you can lay out a scale plan of what your Home-Museum could eventually look like. |
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| PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: Sort of a Do-It-Yourself reading list. | |||||||||||
| Making Desks and Drawers with Modular Cases | 
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A soup-to-nuts explanation on how to actually go about
building your own Home Museum.
(It's a longish article, give it a minute to load.)
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| Furniture and Built-In Ideas |
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No words, -just pictures to give you ideas for your own
dream rooms.
(Use your Go-Back button to come back here.)
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| Ergonomic Considerations for Installations |
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Do you have a body? How does it seem to fit into the world? These drawings show you how various bodies fit into various things like desks and such.
(This is a PDF so you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view these drawings.) |
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| Fast and Easy Finishing Techniques | 
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There are about a million ways to finish wood. And some of the most beautiful are also the easiest. | |||||||||
The basic unit is a 
-16 inches on a side
(actually 15 3/4"). 
,
and another case,
that is
the same width, but twice as high -the 
. To round it out, there
are a pair of cases that that sort of fit in between. These are the 
and the 
.
case that is as high as the HIGH and as wide as the WIDE case.
At the
other end -there is the smallest case, the 
,
(half as high as the TALL case -but as
wide as the CUBE, TALL, and EXTRA TALL) that holds either a single file drawer
for your papers 
, or a number of regular drawers. 
Or put
two CUBES side-by-side in front of your couch and a nice piece of wood on top,
and you have a table to hold your collection, coffee, and snooty art books. 
In the kitchen..... 
In the living room....
,
WIDE 
, and
EXTRA WIDE 
cases, OR 15
drawers fit into the TALL 
and LARGE 
cases, OR a whopping 21
drawers for the EXTRA TALL 
case. BUT,
if you collect larger things -or variously
sized things, you can mix and match to
precisely fit your needs. 
, OR
three #3 and one #1 drawers 
OR it
can even be like the SPECIALS above with one #3, two #2's, and three #1's 
AND you
can do it all with the same case, even after
it is installed as a desk, or
counter, or whatever else you want.
Notice that the desk top,
(or counter top or bench top or whatever), in this picture is a solid slab, -for
example a door blank and the top drawer's face is oversized to cover the case.. 
where the desk-top is a thinner
material (3/4 inch) trimmed with solid wood edging. This
edging covers the top of the drawer case and so there is no need for special, "Cheater" drawer faces.
you put your case
directly on the floor, you probably will not want to use a Cheater. This
is particularly so if you put if on carpet, -the drawer might not even open.
the problem of interference is eliminated and a Cheater is just the ticket.