Design: sketch up is your friend

Geez, sorry it has been so long, over a year... I will try and do more. I am going to focus on design for a bit. Planning makes the project easy to produce and will increase how much you will use it. Design can take a plan bring it to life and make it build-able. Most of the time I have used Google's Sketchup which I have found to be stable and have all the features that a hobbyist level woodworker/tinkerer will need. Some features would make complex design faster to build, but learning to use them would take longer than just plugging through. So here it goes (full model at the end). I like to start with the foot print and over-all size and add details from there.

It is hard to see here but this is just the footprint made by drawing four lines. A couple tips here, first hitting L gets you to the line tool, learning a couple of the hot keys will make drawing your model faster. Second when you have to tool selected align it to the axis you want to place the line on and type the length of the line in inches and hit enter. This allows you to have faster precision in your drawing.

Next tool, push/pull. Select the push/pull tool (P) click in the middle of the box/footprint you just made and type the height you want in inches on your number pad. The next bit is up to you. Sketchup does not allow for advanced modeling options like manipulating drawers (open and close) so you only have to draw the face of the drawing. Make sure remember that the idea of using MDF is to keep things cheap. Plan on using wood runners instead of drawer slides ($.50 instead of $20), look for inexpensive drawer pulls and ways to make it your self or improvise.