Homeschool Cupboard, Part 1

We have this wall at one end of our living room. To me, it's just awkward because it's not really big enough for a seating area; it's just a short wall between a hallway and the doors to the deck.

I had this cabinet here for awhile, but I moved it to the library to hold our musical instruments.

After I moved it, I thought of putting a cute old curved front desk in the space. After all, we needed a desk to organize our papers and such.

But then I started seeing secretaries everywhere. They look nice, and you can close them up and hide your mess :)  However, the only ones available locally are way out of our price range.

As I pondered what type of furniture to put in that corner, I was also pondering our school location. I originally intended to use the basement for schoolwork, but the north and west-facing windows just weren't cutting it. We like our sunshine. Since we have a nice big south-facing window in the kitchen, we've been using our dining table for schoolwork.

yeah, the table is never this clean

Unfortunately, everything ends up scattered all over the table and it just looks cluttered. I've been working hard to get the house organized and de-cluttered, and the cluttered condition of the table was bugging me worse and worse.

Then I had a brainwave: I could solve two problems at once. Remember the awkward wall? It's right next to the french doors that open onto the back deck, so there's lots of available sunlight, making it a reasonable location for our schoolwork. But I didn't want a table in that corner, always sitting out. We don't do schoolwork 24/7 (at least not at a table), so why should it be seen 24/7?  I didn't want to just shift the clutter from the kitchen to the living room.

As an aside: if the library was a smidge larger and had south-facing windows (north-facing windows with a porch roof above them just don't let in enough light), we would totally have it set up as our schoolroom.

Anyway, As I thought about hiding our school stuff, I remembered the Craftbox Workboxes that I'd seen on various blogs. They're a cabinet that opens out and a table folds down, and when you're done, you fold it up and in and it just looks like a cabinet.

The Workboxes weren't quite what I was looking for, but I knew I could design and build something that would work for us. A lot of thought, a lot of measuring, some drawings, more measuring, more thinking, and I was finally ready to start the project.

The basic frame design is similar to the bookshelf frames I built for the library, but this frame is shorter and meant to stand alone. I installed a single stationary shelf about a third of the way up to stabilize the frame and support the table top.

2x4 base

base with bottom shelf attached

base with the rest of the frame attached

the stationary shelf

The table top is a piece of 3/4" oak plywood trimmed with oak screen trim. I attached it to the stationary shelf using a 30" piano hinge.

back to front: backing plywood (1/4"), table top (3/4" oak plywood), shelves (3/4" oak plywood)

frame with backing and trim attached

At the other end of the table top I installed two table legs that I'd purchased a couple years ago for another project but ended up not using. I attached a 2x4 between the legs to add stability and to keep them lined up. 

table top up, with single eye hook at the top that didn't work out

table top down

I used hinges to attach the legs to the underside of the table top so that they could swing down when the table top is folded up. I also attached some locking hook and eyes to keep the legs from getting kicked out of position when the table top is down.

I wanted to be able to keep the table top from falling down when in the up position, so I installed a hook and eye on each side of the table top. I'd tried one at the end of the table that hooked to the roof of the cupboard, but it interfered with the movement of the table, so I had to change it out.

I used my favorite metal shelf strips in the top and bottom sections so we could adjust the shelves to our needs.

table down, with shelves in, doors not yet attached

table up, hooks on the sides keeping it in place, lower shelves visible, drop-down drawer front attached to fixed shelf

The next step was to add doors. I started by installing a drop-down door that would allow the table top to remain down while the other doors were closed. This involved a 1"x6" board, two hinges, some rolling catches to keep the door shut, and some drawer pulls.

After that was in place I measured and measured again, then started building the other four doors. I used 1x3s for the frames and 1/4" plywood for the panels. Before I screwed the frames together, I used our table saw to cut a groove for the plywood to sit in. Then I used my Kreg jig to drill pocket holes and glued and screwed the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle.

these aren't the doors for this cupboard, but I used the same method, so I only took one set of pictures

After each door was built, it was time to attach the hinges and connect the doors to the cupboard.  I did have to do some trimming with the table saw, though. Despite my best efforts to build square I could not get the doors to hang completely square. Very annoying. Once the doors were on, I attached more roller catches to keep the doors from swinging open, then attached a handle to each door.

Once everything was built and put together, I realized I'd used the wrong hinges. See anything problematic here?

The doors block half the table space and make it impossible to reach anything we put on the shelves.

                Oops.

So I ordered new hinges, and I'm hoping they allow the doors to fold back out of the way. I'll replace the hinges, and then paint the inside of the cupboard and the shelves so we can start using it. I don't want to have to pull everything back out to paint later, so I'll paint before putting everything in. The outside will get painted later, just like all my other pre-birth projects.

I will say that it took me awhile to build this cupboard. Since I designed it, I had to think about the best way to do everything before I actually did it to make sure it would turn out how I wanted it to (and I still missed the mark with the door hinges).


I've been working on this project while I worked on the sofa table, the side table, the library side table, and the LEGO habitat, and even with the hinge issue and needing to paint the interior, I've finally reached the point where I can call it done. Yay! I almost feel like a "real" carpenter :)

Despite the parts that didn't turn out quite how I wanted them to, I'm really happy with how it turned out. It's always good to see what I envisioned in my head and on paper actually work out in real life.

I'll post an update once I take care of the hinges and the interior paint.