If you look for long enough, you can find space that isn’t used quite as much as it should. Space that isn’t pulling it’s weight. If you have separate bunks (as we do in our Finesse24) then the narrowing area between the bunks is such a space. You can swing your feet into it in the mornings, or maybe hang up a handy fire extinguisher. But you can also use it for surprisingly useful storage, and if you spend a lot of nights on board, this can be turned into a very efficient mini chest of drawers.
The key to this idea is that the drawers need to be the same trapezoidal shape as the available space. It is impossible to run the drawers on two parallel runners, and- it turns out- this is a good thing. Using a single runner means that the drawers never expand and jam (well, not so far, anyway!). Each drawer sits on a frame; each frame consists of a short wooden
An inverted drawer and its frame
square section piece at the rear, a long section at the front and three wooden bars connecting them together. The centre bar is raised slightly and its job is to act as the guiding rail for the drawer above it. The drawer fronts were made from 1″ iroko sourced
Raised centre bar acts as guide rail for the drawer, which slides on the outer rails
from eBay and the front sections of the frame were also iroko. I built two lower drawers- one for each of us to keep Essentials (OK, pants and pyjamas) – a third shallow drawer above them for spectacles and medicines etc- and over these was a cavity for gloves and hats etc, covered with a 1″ iroko slab top.
Assembled as a stack in the shed at home, then the frames were screwed home onboard.
The construction is solid enough to sit or stand on (to look out of the hatch) and the top has a slight fiddle lip to retain errant cups. And it’s so useful when you need some fresh Essentials and you don’t want to rummage through your bag under the berth.
Very nice work…