I cannot say it enough: I am really glad that we decided not to do the kitchen this year, because we were then able to focus on small upgrades we’ve been wanting to do for a while. I am also glad that we hired out the floor refinishing. It was done quickly and nicely without much of our effort. We then directed our energy to the finishing work such as putting up baseboard and trims, plus what I am about to show you today.

Edge banding all the DIY drawers:

I have built drawers three times in this house: the cutlery drawer in the kitchen, the master bedroom nightstands, and these “baseboard drawers” under the built-ins in Slav’s office.

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However, I never got around to finishing the edges of these drawers.

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A couple years later, they are still not finished:

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Oops. I think we got stuck at the 95% zone, which means there is only 5% of the work left, but it will take forever to finish!

Finishing the office library

When we refinished the hardwood floor on the main story, all the baseboard drawers came out. I purposely did not put them back in, but left them in the garage instead. I knew that walking by these drawers everyday would force me to get the edges refinished. You bet, I ordered the edge banding in just two days…

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I also got a Minwax stain marker (in dark walnut color) to color the side of the panels between the bookshelves. I cut these panels from a big back panel for a bookcase, so the edges are raw.

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It did not take long to color the side of the panel with the stain marker:

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Now you can no longer notice the corners where the panels meet the bookshelves.

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I also colored where the panels were pieced together.

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Now it is time to address the drawers! It actually took over a week before the edge banding to come in. By then my motivation of putting these drawers back to where they belong has accumulated so high, that I got to work the very first weekend morning after it arrived.

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Edge banding is really not hard. My only advice is to use a flat file to trim the excess, an old-school way of finishing the edge banding. Here is a video I learned from.

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The finished product, making me wonder why I have waited so long to finish it?

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The corners:

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I rounded some corners a bit to create a worn look. The new edge banding is a bit lighter than the bookshelves, and having the corners a bit worn just feels more natural.

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Now I can call our home library 100% finished!

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Edge banding our nightstands

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As the iron was hot, I continued to edge-band the nightstand in our master bedroom. I made these nightstands from plywood. To be honest, I left the edges exposed on purpose. In my mind, it is how plywood furniture is supposed to look like. But Slav did not dig it, so here we go…

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I kept the top edge in a smooth and nice finish:

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For the sides, again, I created a little “worn”. We can only see these edges from our bed, and I like that it looks more “lived-in” than a sharp and smooth edge.

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Now the man is happy, and I am not upset either. I think both finished and unfinished edges look nice. It just comes down to personal preferences.

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That is, another small upgrade for you, the 5% effort on my DIY drawers. What do you think?