Wooden furniture pulls - a simple DIY project

In this article we will show you how to make simple wooden furniture pulls. You can also see the video here:

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We made for our children’s bedroom a small cabinet with two white painted MDF doors. For these doors we needed some simple wooden handles. We chose to build them out of ash wood and to stain them with walnut stain. We protected them with primer and water based varnish.

Follow these simple steps and you will have beautiful pulls for your furniture:

Set the planer machine at 24 mm.

setting the planer machine at 24 mm in order to have two ash wood boards for our furniture pulls — Setting the planer machine at 24 mm

2. Plane some wooden strips so that you get them to 24 mm by 24 mm. They will be used for both parts of these simple handles. You can use any kind of wood you want. For us, ash wood was the best choice, due to its hardness and to the beauty of the ash wood fiber.

planing the ash wood sticks in order to use them for the two simple wooden furniture pulls — Straightening the ash wood strips

3. Cut the ends of the wooden strips in order to remove the snipe (if it appeared after planing)

we cut the small pieces of ash wood sticks needed for our DIY project — Cutting the small pieces of ash wood

4. Mark the length of the long pieces. We marked them at 25 cm. This length will be the length of our wooden furniture pulls.

marking the length of our simple wooden furniture pulls on the ash wood sticks — Marking the length of the furniture door pulls

5. Cut the long pieces of wood at 25 cm, as marked.

we cut the pieces of ash wood sticks at the length needed for the furniture pulls — Cutting the ash wood strips at the length needed for the furniture door handles

6. Mark the small pieces of wooden strips. We needed four 3.5 cm long pieces of ash, two for each wooden handle.

we marked the small pieces of ash wood sticks needed for our diy project — Marking the small pieces of wood

these are the marks used to cut the small pieces of ash wood — The marks for the small pieces of ash wood

7. Glue together the three pieces for each handle. We used polyurethane adhesive in order to be sure our wooden furniture handles will never break.

polyurethane adhesive was used in order to stick the three pieces of ash wood — Polyurethane adhesive used to stick the three pieces of ash wood

8. Tighten the pieces together with clamps. If the clamps are not that good, use some buffers in order not to damage the handles.

F clamps used to tighten the two wooden furniture pulls — F clamps used for tightening the two wooden furniture pulls

9. Remove the excess of polyurethane adhesive using a sharp chisel. Be sure to remove all of it. Otherwise, when staining, ugly stain spots will appear.

we removed the polyurethane adhesive excess by using a sharp chisel — Removing the polyurethane adhesive with a chisel

10. Sand flush the ends of the wooden furniture pulls. We used the belt and the disc sander. It’ s quite simple to sand the surface by using 80 grit sandpaper. You only have to remove the small differences left from the glue up of the two parts of the handle.

we sanded the ends of the ash wood furniture handles — Sanding the ends of the furniture handles

11. Sand the faces of the wooden furniture pulls. We used here the same method as described above.

sanding the faces of the wooden furniture handles — We sanded the faces of the wooden furniture pulls

12. Sand the furniture pulls faces and round the sharp edges. For the long sharp edges we used a finishing sander. With a little practice you can round them almost perfectly.

we sanded the drawer pulls, on the faces, by using the finishing sander — Sanding the sharp edges of the pulls

13. Round the sharp edges at the ends. Here, we turned back to the disc sander only because the edges of the ends are too short to be sanded in other way.

we rounded the sharp edges of the wooden furniture pulls by using the belt and disc sander — Rounding the sharp edges of the furniture doors handles

14. Finish them by sanding by hand: the back, the faces and all the rounded edges. We used 120 grit and 320 grit sandpaper, so that our ash wood furniture handles finally had a fine surface.

we manual sanded of our simple furniture pulls — Manual sanding of our DIY furniture pulls

This is the aspect of our wooden furniture handle, after all these steps.

our simple DIY furniture pulls, before applying the walnut stain — The DIY furniture pulls after sanding

15. Drill the holes for installing these simple furniture pulls. You also can use these holes for staining and varnishing the wooden handles. To avoid breaking of the pulls, drill through both pieces of wood and use longer screws when installing.

we drilled the holes in order to be easier to install the wooden pulls on the furniture doors — Drilling the holes in order to install the furniture pulls

16. Stain the handles with what color of stain you want. We used walnut stain. Be sure you wipe the excess stain. Otherwise, some dark spots might appear.

we stained the simple furniture pulls with walnut stain — Staining the furniture pulls

17. Apply a layer of water based primer, after the stain has dried. Do not sand the surface before applying the primer because there is a risk to also remove the stain here and there.

after the stain has dried, we applied the water based primer — Applying the water based primer

18. Sand the wooden furniture pulls with 320 grit sandpaper. The surface should be very smooth. Remove any dust with a rag. Now, the wooden handles are prepared to the final touch.

after the primer has dried we sanded the simple furniture pulls with 320 grit sandpaper — Sanding the ash wood furniture pulls with 320 grit sandpaper

19. Apply a layer of water based varnish and let it to dry.

20. Install the simple ash wood furniture pulls. For that, mark the position of the holes on the door, drill the holes and fit the pulls in place using screws. Use long enough screws to make sure they reach the second layer of the pull.