This bedroom clothing armoire was constructed as a stacked two piece upper cabinet and lower dresser unit assembly for ease of cross country shipment. It is medium sized for an armoire with basic dimensions of 57H by 34W by 18D (excluding hardware projection and top overhang) to fit nicely against a city town house bedroom wall. All elements of the exposed cabinetry are solid walnut including all shelving and panels and the one inch thick top.

The walnut drawer fronts are dovetailed to alder drawer sides while the drawer backs and the solid wood bottoms are poplar. The alder made it’s way into the construction because of it’s stability when I found the first trial poplar cupping badly after re-saw. The drawer guides and kickers are poplar while the replaceable runners are maple for wear resistance. The all walnut cabinet doors use mortise and tenon joinery with a floating panel and are hung on offset knife hinges. The drawers are of 8 inch height and the frame construction allows them to be about 16 inch deep by 30 inch wide. A fair amount of effort was dedicated to ensuring grain match across all of the adjoining rails, posts, drawer fronts, etc.

Although the armoire design does not follow typical Shaker cabinet construction I attempted to add some Shaker style elements on the panel relief, leg taper, and top under-bevel. The walnut was dyed using a 50% Solar-Lux Van Dyke Brown solution before numerous coats of wipe on Satin Poly were applied. The drawers were left unfinished as I prefer the feel and look of bare wood for those surfaces.

Launch Gallery