A wine cellar with a cherry taste
What a joy to create a piece of furniture with just enough constraint for my creativity to flourish! I'm in fact the kind of person who like to work with constraints rather than a blank canvas. It might seems that "build a 25 inches wide cabinet with doors that locks" is not a big constraint but still! Let's get to work!
I'm a big fan of drawers. They are the best way to store things that need to be accessed regularly while staying organized. My shop is filled with drawers! So when I'm asked to build a storage for wine bottle, you guessed what I had in mind. Unfortunately, that complicated things a bit! You see, 25" is very narrow. Add a slightly overhanging top, the sides, the space for the doors hardware, the drawer slides, and the drawer itself... you are left with about 17" of usuable space.
That's what dictated the proportion of the piece. I believe it would have looked more balanced a bit wider but that's what it is. To maximize the number of bottles stored, I went with 3 levels: 2 for the lazy bottles who lay flat and 1 for the standing ones. So basically, I quickly got to this sketch:
In order to maximize the number of bottles per drawer, I built a wooden support to alternate them head to tail. You can store 6 bottles in each of the top drawers:
Regarding the locking doors, I wanted them to look simple and operate simply. They don't have handles; you open them with the key. The right door secures the left one in place by overlapping it. Yet when they are close, the door are on the same level because they slot into one another. It's sublte, but it's my favourite detail of the entire project! That and maybe the feet ;)
This project was really pleasant for me to work on. I like the balance between old and modern in the aesthetic of the piece. I hope you will have as much satisfaction as me to watch those drawers soft close:
