White floating nightstands with oak drawer fronts

these are our mid century floating nightstands made out of white painted MDF with oak wood drawer fronts

We built this set of two mid century white floating nightstands to show in detail how we made them look so nice. The first design we tried was almost identical as this one.

another design of this type of mid century white floating nightstand — The old white floating nightstand

The difference was that the drawer fronts are now inset, behind the routed edges of the boxes.

We also made a video to show more details about how we built them:

White mid century floating nightstands with oak wood drawer fronts

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We divided the process in three steps, one for each main elements:

Building the simple MDF boxes for the floating nightstands

The first step was to build the boxes out of MDF boards and then get them to the final shape.

1. We first built the simple nightstand boxes and then we rounded the inner corners and the outer corners. This process is described with a lot of details in another post and therefore we will not insist on the method we use. Before rounding, we reinforced the corner joints with wooden dowels cut from a long wooden round rod (8 mm diameter).

by using a mini belt sander we rounded the inner corners of the mid century floating nightstands\ — The rounded inner corners

7. When all the corners were rounded we started to route the edges of the nightstands:

for the front edges we used a 45 degrees chamfer and bevel router bit (it was perfect to precisely follow the curved corners). We used some 18 mm mdf boards to add extra support for the router. This way it was easier to keep it perpendicular to the edges.

in order to route the front edges of the white floating nightstands we used a 45 degrees chamfer and beveled router bit — The 45 degrees chamfer and beveled router bit

for the back edges we used a slot cutter router bit (to secure the back of the nightstand)

we used a slot cutter router bit to route the back edge of the floating nightstands — The slot cutter router bit used for the back edges of the floating nightstands

8. We cut the plywood for the back of the nightstands to size and we rounded the corners using the belt sander clamped to the table.

we rounded the corners of the back in order to match the edges of the floating nightstands — Rounding the corners of the plywood back

9. We secured the back of the nightstands:

we applied the water based adhesive in the routed chamfer
we placed the plywood in it’s final position
we drilled the holes for the wooden dowels
we hammered the wooden dowels in place
we cut the dowels with a hand saw

we secured the back of the nightstands by using water based adhesive and wooden dowels — Securing the back of the floating nightstands

10. The next step was to sand the boxes very well:

we hand sanded the routed edges. For the rounded corners we used the same piece of round wooden bar as support for the sandpaper
we also hand sanded the sharp edges
we sanded the back of the nightstands using the belt sander

After all these steps, the MDF boxes were ready for applying the water based primer and the water based paint.

The MDF drawers of the mid century floating nightstands

For the drawers we also used MDF boards. This time we used 12 mm thick boards. We cut four pieces for the bottoms of the drawers and some strips for the sides.

For building the drawers:

we drilled holes with a 3 mm drill
we countersunk them
we applied water based adhesive on the edges
we secured the sides with 4 cm by 4 mm screws

we built the drawers for the floating nightstands out of 12 mm thickness MDF boards — The MDF drawers

Preparing the drawer boxes for painting:

we filled the holes with two parts wood putty
after the putty dried, we sanded the excess using the belt sander
we sanded all the edges flush, also using the belt sander
we hand sanded the sharp edges of the drawer boxes

This was the quickest way to build the drawers. After painting the drawers, the surfaces become very smooth.

we used two components polyurethane putty to cover the screw heads used to build the drawers — Two parts putty for filling the holes and cover the screw heads

Oak wood drawer fronts for the two mid century nightstands

For the drawer fronts, we used oak. We chose a beautiful oak plank, wide enough to make the fronts out of one piece:

we cut the board into 4 shorter pieces
we planed and squared all the faces
we cut them to the required size
we rounded two corners of each one to match the rounded edges of the nightstands

the two rounded corners of the oak wood drawer fronts match the rounded inner corners of the white floating nightstands — The oak wood drawer fronts with two rounded corners

We used a finger pull router bit to route the edges of the drawer fronts.

the finger pull router bit we used for routing the pulls of the wood and MDF drawer fronts or furniture doors — The finger pull router bit

To make sure all the pulls have the same length and depth, we built a simple router template out of some MDF scraps.

we used a simple routing jig in order to route quickly the pulls of the white floating nightstands — The simple routing jig

The final step was was to sand them:

we sanded the faces and the edges using the belt sander and 150 grit sandpaper
we hand sanded the rounded corners, the end grain edges and the sharp edges
we used the mini belt sander to sand the routed pulls
we hand sanded the routed chamfers and their edges
for the hard to sand areas we used the multitool
in the end we filled the knots with two parts putty and we sanded again the excess

we used two components polyurethane filler to fille the knots and other imperfections of the oak wood — The two components filler

All the components of these mid century floating nightstands being ready, we applied the water based primer, the water based varnish (for the drawer fronts) and white water based paint (for the MDF boxes and the drawer boxes). We sanded each piece with 320 grit sandpaper after each layer applied: