My wife had bought a cabinet before I knew her that holds a single Garbage can. The person who made the cabinet used solid oak for the whole cabinet but then just slapped it together. He/She made it just to make a buck at the shows. The joinery is terrible. They also glued the panel in the door. It has broken out twice.
I replaced it with this cabinet that I built. It holds two garbage cans, one for garbage the other for recyclables. There is a drawer along the bottom to hold garbage bags. My wife also stores other stuff down there. I also made it so that garbage could not fall outside of the garage cans. On the old one whenever you changed the bag you would have to sweep out the cabinet bottom.
The cabinet itself is made out of oak plywood with a solid oak face frame. (Actually the bottom shelf that the garbage cans sit on is birch; I didn’t start with a full sheet of oak plywood and didn’t want to go buy a piece for a shelf not seen everyday.) The doors are solid oak frames with a ¼ plywood panel. The drawer is birch plywood with a solid oak front. The top is solid oak.
I found out I don’t like using those quick clamps for edge gluing boards. They don’t give enough pressure and a hard to position properly. They do work great for assembly. I usually use them to hold things together while I nail them with my brad nailer. I am going to buy some more pipe clamps.
The Finnish is Minwax® Wood Finnish, Early American (230). This is an Oil Based Stain. I applied it with a foam brush and wiped off the excess after only five minutes with an old t-shirt. A quick hand sanding with 220-grit, then a coat of Minwax® Fast-Drying Polyurethane (Gloss). Another quick hand sanding with 220-grit, and another coat of poly. After the second coat of poly we use fine steel wool to smooth out the surface before the final coat of poly is applied. After the last coat is dry buff the poly by hand with an old t-shirt
Following are the drawings I made during building to figure everything out. I like to use small yellow legal notepads. I design as I go along. This project I had to design it to fit the garbage cans I bought as well as the Garbage Bag boxes I buy from sam's club.
