$15 Night Stands - Easy DIY How to - Follow Along Start To Finish 
In this Video I make a set of night stands and each one only takes three 2x4s to make! This easy woodworking project will sell good with good or make them and keep them for yourself! This is the perfect project for beginners as you can follow along and build them yourself!


https://bradyhommel.com/build-plans

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My Favorite $8 sanding tool! - https://amzn.to/3PdkbXW
Drawer pulls i used - https://amzn.to/3pb4NAO
Early American Stain - https://amzn.to/3JNEDgM
Milwaukee drill driver kit - https://amzn.to/40tzu4N

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Email - bradyhommel@gmail.com

Can you believe I built each 1 of these with 3 2x4s?

You can't even find a piece of sh** at a yard sale for that price.

And I'm going to show you exactly how to build them.

So go get yourself 3 2x4s and let's build this.

Alrighty we're gonna jump right into this build.

There's a lot of YouTube videos out there that'll tell you not to use like lumber from Home Depot or Lowe's to build furniture and while it's not the best lumber to build furniture I highly disagree with them.

I think using things like your standard 1x6s, your standard 2x4s is a great and fantastic way for beginner woodworkers to learn.

That's how I learned and I believe that's how a lot of people learn.

For example, these are made entirely out of 2x4s.

A 2x4 is planed to a specific dimension, so it's perfect if you don't have a jointer, if you don't have a planer, but just want to get started in learning.

And it also makes it perfect for pocket hole joinery.

So each of these cost about $15 to build.

So before you go spending all this crazy money on a walnut and maple, learn with this.

Use it, learn it, then jump into the more expensive hardwoods.

1 of your 3 2x4s is gonna be dedicated to the top so pick out your straightest 1, whatever 1 you want for the top, and we'll get to gluing this up.

Alright I want the finished width of my nightstand to be about 18 inches but for gluing it up I'm gonna cut 5 pieces out of this at 19 inches just to keep it a little long, and then it'll get trimmed down after the glue dries.

So 5 pieces out of your first 2 by 4 at 19 inches.

Alright, I'm going to try to make this like a really beginners friendly project.

Usually you're going to want to joint them to glue up a tabletop.

I'm not going to do that because I'm trying to make this really beginner friendly.

So with your 5 pieces, you want to bring them over to the table saw.

I'm going to take about an eighth inch off 1 side flip it over and then I'm gonna take it down to 3 and 3 sixteenths and make all 5 of these 3 and 3 sixteenths it'll give you a final dimension which is gonna end up being our depth of 16 inches.

Alright with the top all set, now we're going to take another 2x4, so we're going to start with the legs.

Okay, so for the legs, I'm going to want to cut 2 pieces out of this 2x4 at 24 inches.

24 inch legs is gonna make our finished nightstand about 25 and a half, which is right around typical for a nightstand.

Cut 2 pieces out of each of these at inch and a half.

So it'll make 4 pieces inch and a half by inch and a half.

Okay, so with what's left out of this 2x4, this is the 2x4 we just cut the legs from.

We're gonna cut 2 pieces at 12 inches 1 piece at 14 inches This is gonna make up our side panels as well as our back panel With these apron pieces we want to get these down to a finished width of 3 inches.

So it's basically rinse and repeat as last time.

I'm going to cut this rounded edge off, flip it over, except this time I'm going to set the fence to 3 inches to give this final width of 3 inches.

With these at 3 inches, we're going to want to stay right at the table saw.

You're going to want to set the center of your table saw blade to exactly 3 quarters of an inch.

So take your time with that, just make sure the center of your blade is exactly 3 quarters of an inch from your fence.

What we're going to do now is we're going to re-saw all these pieces right down the middle into 2 pieces that we can glue up for the aprons.

Go through this way, keep the same face up against the fence after that, flip it over and run it through that way.

And that'll give you 2 bookmatched pieces.

It's not the safest way to resaw a board, but if you're careful, you can get it done.

But if you're not comfortable with it, definitely use your band saw because that's a safer way to do it.

Okay, so now all we wanna do is glue these up, all 3 of them.

What we're just trying to achieve here, just get our aprons at a 6 inch width.

Okay, so what I'm gonna do here now is take my 4 pieces that are gonna make up my side aprons and just glue them up together.

Just gonna glue this seam and this seam, not this seam.

I think I got enough space where I can glue all up with this 1 clamp Okay, now we got our top legs 3 of our side panels now we got to get the drawer front and drawer box made.

We got these little grasses on sale, They were on the brink of death and we brought them back except now my dog just eats them.

By the way I got a video on those planter builds too if you want to check it out.

Okay so now with the last 1 this is gonna be our drawer box.

I don't know what I was doing when I picked this board out so hopefully this works out okay.

Okay so the length of our drawer box I'm gonna cut this to 12 and 3 quarters.

The insides of the drawer box That's gonna run the width is gonna be 12 and a quarter So cut 1 piece at 12 and 3 quarter 1 piece at 12 and a quarter I'm not gonna get into depth how I did the drawer box.

I did a dedicated video to that a few weeks ago Okay, so it's the same thing I'm gonna cut an eighth inch off square these up to 3 inches because the depth of my drawer is going to be 3 inches, and then once again rip them down the middle.

Okay your 2 12 and a quarter pieces are going to get pocket holes drilled here, here, here, here.

As I said, I made a dedicated video on this.

If you're actually gonna make this, it's like 5 minutes long.

And I go through the whole process of building the drawer box from start to finish.

Okay, so we know our back piece is going to be 13 and a half inches finished.

So we're going to cut this to 13 and a half inches.

Okay, so with this piece we want our piece above the drawer to be 1 inch thick.

And the next piece is going to be an inch and a half that goes below the drawer.

Also another thing you're gonna want to do out of that piece of wood, my camera died so I lost the footage I didn't get the footage of it, me cutting it, but I ripped a piece for the drawer front to just under 3 and a half inches.

It's about 3 and 3 eights by 13 and 7 eights long.

That's going to be your drawer front for the drawer box.

For our 3 panels, our 2 side panels, our back panel, we're going to connect these with pocket holes.

Same with our front ones that are going to go above and below the drawer.

Those are going to be pocket holes as well, But these are going to be 3 quarter inch pocket holes.

These are going to be for inch and a half.

All righty, guys, now it is time to start assembling this thing.

So what I'm gonna do is start with the front of this 1 inch piece is gonna go on the top so what I'm gonna do first is glue that in there.

Now from the top you're gonna want to measure 6 inches down on each side.

So now bottom piece you want inside the 6 inch line.

Now you're gonna want to take your 2 side panels.

These are the 11 and a half inch ones and we're gonna want to pocket hole them so that they are flush with the inside right here.

This is when it pays to have the right tool for the job right here.

Got a nice little right angle attachment.

so now I got the front all connected, the side panels put in.

As for right now, I'm going to leave the back off.

I ripped down a piece of 2x4 that's 11 1⁄2 inches long and it's about 7⁸ thick or so.

And that's going to go right flush with the bottom.

This is going to be what your drawer is going to ride on.

This is going to have no drawer slides or anything like that it's just gonna be wood on wood just to keep it easy so this I'm just gonna glue and brad nail right here with inch and a quarter brad nails.

All righty, now what I'm gonna do is just put the drawer front on the front.

Just wanna make sure it's centered even on each side.

For the bottom I usually have this hang over it about a sixteenth of an inch just so there's a little gap at the top here when it's installed.

After you got it set where you want it, pre-drill.

Then you're gonna want to push it in to where it's flush on the front.

Once it's flush where you like it on the front, That's when you turn this around.

And now you're gonna wanna put your back panel right against the back when it's flush at the front.

So that way you can't push it in too far.

Take a nice sharp pencil, mark where that back is.

Now your back panel is gonna go get installed right up to that line.

Alrighty a couple hours later we're back with the piece we started with.

Okay, so it's at the 16 inch depth I want, which is good.

But now I just got to square this up and make it 18 inches width.

To do that I'm gonna be using my crosscut sled on my table saw.

Okay so before I move on to finishing, since this is made just out of construction grade 2x4s, there's no sense trying to sand this and make it look good because it's just it's not gonna be a finely finished piece of furniture.

But what you do with that is you take advantage of it and you just make it rustic.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use a combination of my jigsaw and my Sawzall, and I'm just gonna rough this up a little bit.

I'm gonna pretty much give it kind of saw marks and in the end, this is gonna look like a really nice finished barn wood piece, but it's built on a 2 by 4.

So basically with the jigsaw, you can really put it up against it and just run it backwards.

And then by the time you sand this and stain it, it'll give it a really cool finished look.

For the bigger pieces like your panels, you use just a finely, I'm using metal blades actually use metal blades because they're a lot more fine.

The wood blades would be too aggressive for this And the same thing just run it backwards And just another thing I like to do is just take a normal drill or impact and a little screw and make old nail holes.

The best part about distressing this stuff is just there's no right or wrong way to do it and you really can't mess it up.

Now once you get stain on that and it's sanded, it's gonna look really nice.

Okay, so now we wanna move on to sanding, Which is actually a pretty important part of this because you don't want to mess up everything you just did Okay, so as far as sanding goes you're not gonna want to start off at like a really really low grit like usual Like 80 grit first of all, this was already planed and then we went through and distressed it so you don't want to get rid of that.

Pines a very soft wood if you put 80 grit right to this even 120 grit it's gonna take away all this character you just created like that.

So what you want to do I'm gonna use 240 grit and just lightly sand it so that there's no you know basically you're not gonna get a sliver you want to smooth it over but keep a lot of the character so use a high grit and just run through it pretty good alrighty guys now finishing I did throw on a quick coat of the pre-stain conditioner and now I'm going to use early American stain.

I'm just going to spray on a couple coats of polycrylic.

After the polycrylic is dry, attach your tabletop with tabletop fasteners of your choice.

I usually use the figure 8 or the z-clip ones.

And then use a drawer pull of your choice.

I picked these up on Amazon for like 8 bucks and it came with like a 10 pack.

And here's a look at just how good that rough cut looks just with the Sawzall and Jigsaw used.

Just gives it a really really unique look cuz just stained pine on its own just kind of screams do it yourself but giving it just this extra character just really adds to it and really makes it look like it's not built with 2 by fours.

Hey guys give this video a watch next I think you'll like it.

I've got tons of more builds coming up a lot more creative ones.


Speaker 0: Can you believe I built each 1 of these with 3 2x4s? I did. You can't even find a piece of sh** at a yard sale for that price. And these are nice. They're pretty nice.

And I'm going to show you exactly how to build them. So go get yourself 3 2x4s and let's build this. Alrighty we're gonna jump right into this build. There's a lot of YouTube videos out there that'll tell you not to use like lumber from Home Depot or Lowe's to build furniture and while it's not the best lumber to build furniture I highly disagree with them. I think using things like your standard 1x6s, your standard 2x4s is a great and fantastic way for beginner woodworkers to learn.

That's how I learned and I believe that's how a lot of people learn. For example, these are made entirely out of 2x4s. A 2x4 is planed to a specific dimension, so it's perfect if you don't have a jointer, if you don't have a planer, but just want to get started in learning. And it also makes it perfect for pocket hole joinery. So each of these cost about $15 to build.

So before you go spending all this crazy money on a walnut and maple, learn with this. Use it, learn it, then jump into the more expensive hardwoods. Alrighty, let's build this. 1 of your 3 2x4s is gonna be dedicated to the top so pick out your straightest 1, whatever 1 you want for the top, and we'll get to gluing this up. Alright I want the finished width of my nightstand to be about 18 inches but for gluing it up I'm gonna cut 5 pieces out of this at 19 inches just to keep it a little long, and then it'll get trimmed down after the glue dries.

So 5 pieces out of your first 2 by 4 at 19 inches. That was a little loud. Alright, I'm going to try to make this like a really beginners friendly project. So I'm going to try using minimal tools. Usually you're going to want to joint them to glue up a tabletop.

I'm not going to do that because I'm trying to make this really beginner friendly. So with your 5 pieces, you want to bring them over to the table saw. I'm going to take about an eighth inch off 1 side flip it over and then I'm gonna take it down to 3 and 3 sixteenths and make all 5 of these 3 and 3 sixteenths it'll give you a final dimension which is gonna end up being our depth of 16 inches. Alright with the top all set, now we're going to take another 2x4, so we're going to start with the legs. Okay, so for the legs, I'm going to want to cut 2 pieces out of this 2x4 at 24 inches.

24 inch legs is gonna make our finished nightstand about 25 and a half, which is right around typical for a nightstand. Cut 2 pieces out of each of these at inch and a half. So it'll make 4 pieces inch and a half by inch and a half. Okay, so with what's left out of this 2x4, this is the 2x4 we just cut the legs from. We're gonna cut 2 pieces at 12 inches 1 piece at 14 inches This is gonna make up our side panels as well as our back panel With these apron pieces we want to get these down to a finished width of 3 inches.

So it's basically rinse and repeat as last time. I'm going to cut this rounded edge off, flip it over, except this time I'm going to set the fence to 3 inches to give this final width of 3 inches. With these at 3 inches, we're going to want to stay right at the table saw. You're going to want to set the center of your table saw blade to exactly 3 quarters of an inch. So take your time with that, just make sure the center of your blade is exactly 3 quarters of an inch from your fence.

What we're going to do now is we're going to re-saw all these pieces right down the middle into 2 pieces that we can glue up for the aprons. Go through this way, keep the same face up against the fence after that, flip it over and run it through that way. And that'll give you 2 bookmatched pieces. You 2 bookmatched pieces. It's not the safest way to resaw a board, but if you're careful, you can get it done.

But if you're not comfortable with it, definitely use your band saw because that's a safer way to do it. Okay, so now all we wanna do is glue these up, all 3 of them. What we're just trying to achieve here, just get our aprons at a 6 inch width. Okay, so what I'm gonna do here now is take my 4 pieces that are gonna make up my side aprons and just glue them up together. Just gonna glue this seam and this seam, not this seam.

Actually, you know what? I think I got enough space where I can glue all up with this 1 clamp Okay, now we got our top legs 3 of our side panels now we got to get the drawer front and drawer box made. The last 2x4. We got these little grasses on sale, They were on the brink of death and we brought them back except now my dog just eats them. By the way I got a video on those planter builds too if you want to check it out.

Okay so now with the last 1 this is gonna be our drawer box. I don't know what I was doing when I picked this board out so hopefully this works out okay. Okay so the length of our drawer box I'm gonna cut this to 12 and 3 quarters. The insides of the drawer box That's gonna run the width is gonna be 12 and a quarter So cut 1 piece at 12 and 3 quarter 1 piece at 12 and a quarter I'm not gonna get into depth how I did the drawer box. I did a dedicated video to that a few weeks ago Okay, so it's the same thing I'm gonna cut an eighth inch off square these up to 3 inches because the depth of my drawer is going to be 3 inches, and then once again rip them down the middle.

Okay your 2 12 and a quarter pieces are going to get pocket holes drilled here, here, here, here. Okay, my drawer box is done. As I said, I made a dedicated video on this. Just watch that. If you're actually gonna make this, it's like 5 minutes long.

And I go through the whole process of building the drawer box from start to finish. Okay, so we know our back piece is going to be 13 and a half inches finished. So we're going to cut this to 13 and a half inches. Okay, so with this piece we want our piece above the drawer to be 1 inch thick. And the next piece is going to be an inch and a half that goes below the drawer.

Also another thing you're gonna want to do out of that piece of wood, my camera died so I lost the footage I didn't get the footage of it, me cutting it, but I ripped a piece for the drawer front to just under 3 and a half inches. It's about 3 and 3 eights by 13 and 7 eights long. That's going to be your drawer front for the drawer box. For our 3 panels, our 2 side panels, our back panel, we're going to connect these with pocket holes. Same with our front ones that are going to go above and below the drawer.

Those are going to be pocket holes as well, But these are going to be 3 quarter inch pocket holes. These are going to be for inch and a half. So just make sure you switch them out. Just like that, and then repeat. All righty, guys, now it is time to start assembling this thing.

So what I'm gonna do is start with the front of this 1 inch piece is gonna go on the top so what I'm gonna do first is glue that in there. Now from the top you're gonna want to measure 6 inches down on each side. Make a line across, line across. So now bottom piece you want inside the 6 inch line. Okay there's your front.

Now you're gonna want to take your 2 side panels. These are the 11 and a half inch ones and we're gonna want to pocket hole them so that they are flush with the inside right here.

Speaker 1: This is when it pays to have the right tool for the job right here. Got a nice little right angle attachment. Get in there. Tighten it up. Okay

Speaker 0: so now I got the front all connected, the side panels put in. As for right now, I'm going to leave the back off. I ripped down a piece of 2x4 that's 11 1⁄2 inches long and it's about 7⁸ thick or so. And that's going to go right flush with the bottom. This is going to be what your drawer is going to ride on.

This is going to have no drawer slides or anything like that it's just gonna be wood on wood just to keep it easy so this I'm just gonna glue and brad nail right here with inch and a quarter brad nails. Do the same thing on this side. All righty, now what I'm gonna do is just put the drawer front on the front. Just wanna make sure it's centered even on each side. For the bottom I usually have this hang over it about a sixteenth of an inch just so there's a little gap at the top here when it's installed.

After you got it set where you want it, pre-drill. Inch and a quarter screw. Then you're gonna want to push it in to where it's flush on the front. Once it's flush where you like it on the front, That's when you turn this around. And now you're gonna wanna put your back panel right against the back when it's flush at the front.

So that way you can't push it in too far. Take a nice sharp pencil, mark where that back is. Now your back panel is gonna go get installed right up to that line. Now your drawer slide right in. Alrighty a couple hours later we're back with the piece we started with.

Okay, so it's at the 16 inch depth I want, which is good. But now I just got to square this up and make it 18 inches width. To do that I'm gonna be using my crosscut sled on my table saw. Okay so before I move on to finishing, since this is made just out of construction grade 2x4s, there's no sense trying to sand this and make it look good because it's just it's not gonna be a finely finished piece of furniture. But what you do with that is you take advantage of it and you just make it rustic.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use a combination of my jigsaw and my Sawzall, and I'm just gonna rough this up a little bit. I'm gonna pretty much give it kind of saw marks and in the end, this is gonna look like a really nice finished barn wood piece, but it's built on a 2 by 4. So basically with the jigsaw, you can really put it up against it and just run it backwards. And then by the time you sand this and stain it, it'll give it a really cool finished look. So that's what works good for the legs.

For the bigger pieces like your panels, you use just a finely, I'm using metal blades actually use metal blades because they're a lot more fine. The wood blades would be too aggressive for this And the same thing just run it backwards And just another thing I like to do is just take a normal drill or impact and a little screw and make old nail holes. The best part about distressing this stuff is just there's no right or wrong way to do it and you really can't mess it up. Now once you get stain on that and it's sanded, it's gonna look really nice. Okay, so now we wanna move on to sanding, Which is actually a pretty important part of this because you don't want to mess up everything you just did Okay, so as far as sanding goes you're not gonna want to start off at like a really really low grit like usual Like 80 grit first of all, this was already planed and then we went through and distressed it so you don't want to get rid of that.

Pines a very soft wood if you put 80 grit right to this even 120 grit it's gonna take away all this character you just created like that. So what you want to do I'm gonna use 240 grit and just lightly sand it so that there's no you know basically you're not gonna get a sliver you want to smooth it over but keep a lot of the character so use a high grit and just run through it pretty good alrighty guys now finishing I did throw on a quick coat of the pre-stain conditioner and now I'm going to use early American stain. I'm just going to spray on a couple coats of polycrylic. A couple coats of polycrylic. After the polycrylic is dry, attach your tabletop with tabletop fasteners of your choice.

I usually use the figure 8 or the z-clip ones. And then use a drawer pull of your choice. I picked these up on Amazon for like 8 bucks and it came with like a 10 pack. And here's a look at just how good that rough cut looks just with the Sawzall and Jigsaw used. Just gives it a really really unique look cuz just stained pine on its own just kind of screams do it yourself but giving it just this extra character just really adds to it and really makes it look like it's not built with 2 by fours.

Hey guys give this video a watch next I think you'll like it. Thanks so much for watching this build. I've got tons of more builds coming up a lot more creative ones. Thanks for watching

See all Brady Hommel Woodworks transcripts on Youtube

This only takes Three 2x4s. Huge Profit