for this cubby bench I'm going to be using 3/4 in plywood as my primary building source and I'm going to cut down the top and the bottom of the cubby first and I'm going to use a router to cut some rabbits and Doos into it the rabbits will be a/4 in deep as well the doos and they'll be as wide as the plywood which will be the actual measurement so it isn't actually 3/4 in wide it's 7 or 70 3 in wide take your time and setting up each of these and measuring it out it takes a while and we're going to go ahead and finish it off by cutting a rabbit on the back end and this will be for the back piece because you want the back piece to sit on a rabbit rabbit joints are much stronger than just your traditional box joint now with the top and bottom pieces formed identically I'm going to cut out a piece for the back and I'm going to line up the top and bottom pieces as they will be and transfer the lines from the doos and the rabbits to ensure that these things are exact an eighth of an inch difference can be a massive difference when you're talking about Precision work and cutting and joining wood so I measure them carefully and I use this nice little jig I made from a thin piece of plywood to be able to identify where my router will be cutting and that greatly increased the speed of my work now I'm going to cut out the square inserts that'll go into those rabbits and Doos to be able to make the box and I'm going to join them together to help join them together I'm going to use this right angle clamp and use brad nails 18 gauge to kind of just set these things nicely together and hold them still while I finish putting them together the brad nails are great because you can still manipulate the wood because the brad nails aren't very strong but they'll also hold it nice and snug while you get ready to drill so you drill counter syn and then drive screws into all three sides to make this box very strong now this box needs to sit up a little bit so I'm going to cut out some strips and this will go on the bottom side just to raise it that 3/4 in width because I want to put some trim on this board I could use a full sheet of plywood for this project like I have seen others do but I didn't want to waste any plywood or make this bench any heavier than it already is now I'm cutting out some 1X Two Pine strips and I'm going to be mounting that on the front side around the Box openings and I'm just going to use brad nails to hold these pieces in place I could have used glue as well but I wanted this to be semi removable in case I wanted to break it down later for another project I found it critical to cut these vertical pieces precisely to avoid any sort of Gap especially since I'm going to be painting this I want this to be flush the speed square is a handy tool to help line up these vertical pieces to make sure that they are straight up and down and they'll just be attached by simple brad nails additionally I cut up some trim board to put on the ends to give it the similar look that the front had of a finished carpentry and I used the 18 gauge Brads again the brad nails leave a little hole so I'm covering that up with some Putty filling it in and then sanding it over to make it nice and smooth using molding on the bottom Edge where the bench touches the floor we'll add a nice classic look and it doesn't take much effort just need to make sure you miter those Edge Cuts perfectly and wrap it around the three exposed sides cuz the back end will just be pushed up against the wall now I'm going to be B painting this bottom portion and I decided that a primer coat would be really excellent in ensuring that the main coat of paint will adhere properly while the primer coat is drying I'm going to cut up some 10x1 dimensional Pine and I'm going to cut this for the bench top I'm going to find the best pieces the best grain of the wood with the least damage and use those for my exposed top pieces I'm going to glue two of these pieces together and I decided to use my bench to help me glue these together so I'm using some wax paper to be able to ensure that the pieces don't accidentally get glued to the clamps or my bench I did this because I did not have that many long clamps I just bought three brand new ones from DWT and I just needed more clamps that's the the key word right you can never have too many clamps this turned out really nice and clamping into the bench also helped me make this thing perfectly flat because that bench is perfectly flat made from MDF let's go back to painting it's time for an actual coat of paint and you may not be able to see too much of a difference because that is Swiss coffee I am painting with which is very similar to the all-white primer now Swiss coffee is a great slightly warm color and because of the priming I didn't have to apply more than two coats to completely cover the Box 24 hours of dry time the glue up was complete I needed to just plain down the joint and then sand it off to make it look like one uniform piece and this went really well the only thing would be left to do is to finish sizing this off I'll go ahead and have to cut it on the radial arm saw I made it a little bit bigger to leave a margin of eror and I trimmed off the edges because those got a little Nicks from just transporting the wood a Cham for bit would clean up this Edge nicely and create a beautiful look how this will be going into a home with a child so I need to take that corner right off wood conditioner or pre-stain is important to use before applying a stain to ensure a uniform application of the stain the stain I decided to use for this project is honey is a beautiful dark golden stain I found that applying the stain with a brush and then moving it around with the roller created a really nice application and let me control how much stain I was using where the stain would be sealed with a polyurethane coat and this polyurethane coat would need to go on three times with sanding between each coat that is a light sanding of all the different complicated ways you can attach a bench top I decide to use the simplest and that is just to drill some holes and join it with screws I drilled plenty of holes counter board and counter sunk them and made sure I didn't drill into the box to avoid a blowout situation destroying the paint line up that bench top and then when you have it where you want it clamp it down so it doesn't move and drill through the holes you've already made into your bench top but not through your bench top make sure you mark that position on the drill so you don't do too much and then add your screws here is the finish product I am very proud of it now I don't know if one person can claim any design on this I have seen so many posts on Pinterest and other DIY boards about how to make such a bench so I kind of took from all the different examples I saw and made it one that I felt like would work well for me