DIY Modular 3 Drawer Base Cabinets

In this post, I’m sharing how to build your own mix and match DIY 3 drawer base cabinets with trim.

Unlike your typical kitchen style base cabinets, these cabinets don’t have a toe kick. But instead, they have added trim detail to make them look more like furniture.

They’re part of a modular mix and match furniture system that I’ve been working on, and I’m so excited to show you all the possibilities.

If you’re ready to see how to build the foundation of the series (get it…because they’re BASE cabinets?) let’s dive into the how to below.

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What to know before building

I designed these 3 drawer base cabinets as part of a modular furniture system that allows you to mix and match various pieces. That makes it easier than ever to create your own built ins, media consoles, office storage, and more.

I made them in two sizes: a wider version and a narrower version.

These pieces can totally work well on their own, but I designed them to be arranged with the matching armoire cabinet and/or glass door cabinets in a variety of different layouts. Here’s just one idea:

You can build just one cabinet or several to create your own custom masterpiece!

OVERALL DIMENSIONS

The overall dimensions of these 3 drawer base cabinets are approximately 22 ¾″″ deep x 30 ¾″ tall. The wider one is 30″ wide and the narrow one is 16 ½″ wide.

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How to Build a 3 drawer base cabinet

If you prefer to watch, I’ve shared the full build video with tons of tips, behind the scenes, and additional details on my YouTube Channel here.

Love watching how-to videos? Subscribe to my YouTube channel for plenty more where that came from!

Prefer to print? Grab the printable 3 drawer base cabinet building plans available here:

Tools & Materials

NOTE: Exact qualities/lengths of materials will vary based on the size cabinet you’re building (wide vs narrow). The exact materials and cut lists can be found in the plans.

Step 1: Assemble Cabinet Box

Like most cabinet assemblies, this one started with cutting down the plywood to assemble the main box.

I built the cabinet body using ¾″ plywood, so I cut down two sides, a bottom panel, and three plywood strips. All the dimensions and cut diagrams can be found in the printable plans.

RELATED: How to cut plywood sheets

Then, I drilled pocket holes into the ends of the strips and bottom panel to assemble the cabinet box like shown below using pocket hole screws.

RELATED: How to use a pocket hole jig

FYI: The three strips go toward the top of the cabinet. Two go flush to the top edge (one at the front and one at the back) and are used to secure the top panel later. The other goes flush to the back edge and is used to secure the cabinet to the wall if you want to use them as built ins.

Next, I routed a rabbet around the back of the cabinet to install a ¼″ plywood back panel into.

TIP: You could definitely skip routing and just staple (or nail) the back directly to the cabinet, but recessing the panel hides the edges from being seen on the sides.

Next, I assembled a simple face frame using pocket holes and screws. I used 1x2s for the sides and top, a 1×4 for the bottom, and ¾″ square dowels for the drawer divider pieces in the middle.

For the ¾″ dowel pieces, because they’re so small, they only fit one pocket hole on each end. So when I attached them on the face frame, I used wood glue on the ends to keep them from twisting.

Then I glued and brad nailed the face frame onto the front of the cabinet box.

Prefer to print? Grab the printable building plans for this project here.

Step 2: Install Top Drawer

Once the main cabinet box was together, I installed three pair of drawer slides.

Because I installed a face frame, I first needed to screw some ¾″ plywood spacer strips behind where the slides will go. These will help “push” the slides out into the face frame opening.

The top drawer here gets 18″ slides and the bottom two drawers get 20″ slides.

RELATED: Learn how to install drawer slides

I built a very shallow drawer to fit into the top section of the cabinet, then glued and nailed a ¼″ plywood bottom panel onto it.

After the top drawer was built, I installed it into the top opening of the base cabinet, then cut a piece of ¾″ plywood to use as my drawer front.

The top drawer gets a “slab” style front, but the bottom two drawers get a frame style front. We will come back to the bottom two drawers later, but I wanted to go ahead and install the top drawer because it’s easier to screw on the drawer front without the countertop in the way.

BY THE WAY: The images here show building the wider cabinet, but the narrower cabinet assembly is EXACTLY the same process…it’s just narrower in size. You can find the full cut list and dimensional diagrams for each size in the plans.

Step 3: Attach Top

Before adding the top, I removed the drawer from the cabinet using the tabs on the slides so I could access the inside.

I cut a piece of ¾″ plywood for the top and edge banded the left and right sides. But for the front edge, I cut a piece of mini base cap molding and glued it on. This covers the plies and gives it some extra trim detail as you see below.

I secured this top panel through the top supports of the cabinet from the inside.

TIP: If you’re planning to put several of these modular cabinets together for your project, you may consider skipping adding individual top panels to each cabinet and cut one large top to cover all the base cabinets, instead. This reduces the chances for gaps and uneven joints along the top.

Step 4: Add Trim Detail

One of my favorite parts about this project is the trim detail. It’s not OVERLY trimmed out, but the subtle details make it look much more like furniture vs boring kitchen style cabinets.

The trim detail along the top panel already helps with this, but I also cut and glued some cove molding (shown in pink), some lattice trim (shown in yellow), and baseboard molding (shown in green) onto the front of the cabinet.

Because this is designed to be modular and the pieces butt together, I cut the trim flush on the ends, but if you weren’t butting cabinets onto the side, you can wrap the trim around the sides, too.

Step 5: Install Large Drawers

Now let’s shift gears back to the remaining drawers. I made the middle drawer slightly smaller than the bottom (in height), but these could be identical in size, if desired.

RELATED: How to build a drawer box

I cut ¼″ dadoes into the sides of my drawer boxes to install ¼″ plywood bottom panels, but if you don’t have a table saw or a router to cut dadoes, that is OKAY!

Alternatively, you can simply glue and staple or nail the ¼″ plywood panels onto the bottom of the drawer box sides. Dadoes aren’t necessary.

Normally, I assemble my drawer boxes using pocket holes and screws on the front and back sides. The pocket holes are then covered by the drawer fronts…usually.

However, this time, I wasn’t installing solid drawer fronts, so the pocket holes wouldn’t be covered. So instead of pocket holes, I just screwed these boxes together using wood screws through the sides.

That way the fronts stay “clean.”

Once the drawer boxes were together, I installed them into the cabinet. I found it easiest to remove the section of the drawer slide that mounts to the box and screw this directly to each side of each drawer.

Then, I could slide these right into the cabinet.

RELATED: How to install drawers

For these bottom drawers, instead of using a solid front, I just built frames from 1x2s using pocket holes for the drawer fronts. This is a great way to “fake” a shaker style drawer front.

Then, I laid my cabinet box (with drawers installed) on its back, arranged my fronts on my boxes, and carefully glued and brad nailed them in place.

Laying it on it’s back made it easy to ensure my gaps were even on all sides (⅛″ gaps) while gravity helped hold everything in place.

By the way: This is why I didn’t use pocket holes to assemble the drawers. These small frames wouldn’t have covered the holes.

And at this point, assembly is complete! All that’s left is finish.

Step 6: Finish, Mix & Match

Quick backstory: I built several of these cabinets to complete this modular system. But I didn’t build them all at once. I built two to start and for those, I used Minwax Water Based Stain in Driftwood.

I LOVE the color, but with water based stains, you have to work in small sections. So it’s best to finish each piece before assembling (which is why you saw some photos with stained parts in the post above) and that makes everything take forever to build.

So when I came back to build the rest of the cabinets, I decided to switch to an oil based stain so I could finish everything once it was completely built. That said, the best color match I could find was a mixture of 5 parts Minwax Provincial and 1 part Minwax Simply White.

It’s not EXACTLY the same color, but it’s close. Once that was dry, I added knobs to these cabinets and I am LOVING how they’re turning out!

For the rest of the matching pieces, be sure to check out the armoire cabinet and the glass door base cabinets as well.

I’m also planning to add some matching desks and upper shelving units to this set soon for even more mix and match possibilities!

If you’re ready to build your own, grab the printable building plans here!

Looking for more custom DIY cabinet ideas?

Enjoyed this project, but looking for more custom cabinet ideas? Here are a few of my favorites you might enjoy browsing. Click the image(s) below to see how to build each one:

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Until next time, friend, happy building!