I Dropped My Drawers!

So the bath upstairs was "complete" in the sense that the plumbing worked but one of the biggest things that I needed to tackle was drawers. They're a rather big deal and a mark of quality in the cabinets - a detail that counts. 

My original intention was do dovetailed drawers. I'd even been testing them by building some boxes to work out spacing and such. 

The trouble is that I've really fallen in love with baltic birch plywood. Not the fake stuff but the real honest to goodness stuff from Russia made with thick void free plies of great veneer quality wood. It machines like a dream the edges are beautiful in that modern european way. It doesn't hurt that the stuff is just way nicer to build with. 

So, what kind of drawers to make that would show off joinery, work well with BB ply and be strong and long lasting? 

This is my solution. It's a rabbeted joint glued and then mortised with a floating tenon inserted and sanded smooth. This is one of my test joints. I liked it. I built a coffee knock box and literally beat it to death and could not break it. I'm very happy with this solution. 

So, since I'm going to be making a whole lot of drawers I decided to test them out by making the four for the upstairs bath vanity. 

All the edges are rounded over with a 2mm roundover bit in the router and then sanded smooth. 

The detail in the back of the top drawers is to clear the drains but still have a maximum amount of space in the drawer. I'm all about using every inch of space. I hate wasted space. I'm sure it comes from living in a NYC shoebox of an apartment in the East Village but I can't see wasting space - makes no sense if it's there for the taking. 

Then I installed vertical grain walnut drawer fronts. Basically the bath cabinet is like a very final test for the kitchen. The matched vertical grain looks great and for this cabinet I edged it in actual 5mm solid walnut instead of edge banding. I like it but it was crazy time consuming for very little gain. I'm not convinced.