Hubby How To – DIY Floating Nightstand with Hidden Drawer

Learn how to build shelves with a hidden drawer to create a clean and elegant nightstand with our step-by-step guide. Discover the essential tools and materials needed, along with tips for a smooth and accurate assembly process.

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Imagine this. You’ve spent many hours creating a beautiful headboard and now you hate your clunky, bulky nightstands. Maybe your wife suggests that you just add shelves so you have nightstand surface without distracting from the headboard. But you still need a drawer for all those things that nightstands tend to accumulate. May we present to you “Floating Nightstand, Hidden Drawer”!

So if you’re looking to build a floating shelf with a hidden drawer (for a nightstand or whatever other purpose you need), then grab our DIY plans and follow each step in this How-To post.

Tools + Materials for DIY Floating Shelf with Hidden Drawer

We’ll be honest, this is an advanced build. It requires experience with woodworking, using a table saw and router, and a good set of plans. You will find a complete list of everything you’ll need down below. This design can be made from either plywood or solid wood. We made ours from solid wood, but these instructions will cover both approaches. In the tool list below, you will see which tools are required for which version.

DIY Plan

• Grab from our Site Shop or Etsy Shop

Tools

• Drill & Adjustable Depth Countersink & Screwdriver bit set & Drill Bits
• Tape Measure
• Framing Square
• SawStop Table Saw (Protect those fingers!)
• 10″ Saw Blade
• Digital Angle Measuring Block
• Random Orbital Sander with 3M Xtract Cubitron II Sandpaper
• Plunge Router 
• 1/2″ Down Cut Bit
• Router Bushing Set

Floating Shelf Build Process

If you’re new here, check out our DIY Resource Hub to help find any answers to questions about our DIY plans and give you guidance on getting started on a project! Now let’s jump into the build process for this Floating Shelf with a Hidden Drawer.

Step 1: Get Plans & Materials

The first thing that you need is to grab our DIY plan set available in our Site Shop or on our Etsy Shop for this build.

With the plans downloaded, you will need to get all the materials. The floating shelf plans have a shopping list that makes it easy to get only exactly what you need. Some of the materials and tools are easier to order online, so you’ll find those items linked above. 

We used Sapele for this build. We had a bunch of offcuts from our Platform Bed Frame Build that we used to make the headboard and the nightstands. It is a gorgeous wood that is a much more sustainable alternative to mahogany. We love its natural color, but it also looks fantastic when you apply Rubio Monocoat’s Oil Plus 2C Black color to it.

If you decide to go the plywood route, look for one with a beautiful veneer. These can be difficult to find at big box stores, so we highly recommend looking for a lumber supplier in your area. Keep in mind that most cosmetic veneers are very thin, which can make sanding risky, so look for a sheet with as few flaws as possible to prevent a huge headache later.

Related – How To Read Engineering Drawings & General Project Workflow For DIY Plans

Step 2a: Solid Wood Method: Form Panels

Use this method if you are going to create your own panel from solid wood boards instead of plywood. This is the method we used. If using plywood, skip to Step 2b.

1. If the boards are close to ½” thick, then take the boards and cut them into strips. If the boards are more than 1 ⅛” thick like ours were, cut them into strips and then cut each strip in half.
   1. Keep in mind that the width of the strip cannot be wider than your ability to resaw them. Since we don’t have a very powerful bandsaw, our width was limited to the max cutting height of our table saw. 

Definition – “Resawing is the process of sawing down the thickness of a piece of wood, or cutting it into a thinner way. It can be done on a bandsaw or table saw.” – Citation

Truing up the lumber using our DIY crosscut sled

Measure distance between fence and blade

Cutting inital strips from large lumber piece

Cutting each of those strips in half

Planing each strip after they’ve been cut in half.

Final cut strips to be assembled as a solid panel

2. Once you have all of the strips cut, plane them to be just a hair over ½”. Leave a little extra material on them so that you can sand each panel after they are glued together and end up with panels that are roughly ½” thick.
3. Once the strips are planed, you need to join them together to make a panel. To prevent any misalignment, it helps to add an alignment feature. Dowel and Domino’s work well if you have the tools for them, but we opted for biscuits since we inherited a biscuit joiner. Simply set your tool to make its joining feature near the middle of the board and then add the feature to each of the boards. Keep in mind that the first and last boards will only need this feature on one of its two sides. 

Marking out the locations for the biscuits

Align biscuit joiner and cut

Finish biscuit slot

Add glue in slots.

Insert biscuits into slots

Spread glue on other side and slot together.

Add all the clamps!

I mean all the clamps and some scrap wood cauls

Learn From Our Mistakes

4. Insert the joinery features and glue the strips together. Use plenty of clamps to ensure you have tight seams between strips.
5. After the glue has dried, scrape off any excess glue and use your sander with 80-grit sandpaper to clean up the boards.

Be sure to wait to cut the panels so you can achieve a flawless grain wrap in the next few steps.

Scraping off glue on the newly formed panel

Glued up panel ready for sanding.

Sand the panels to remove any leftover glue.

Tada! You now have panels and are ready to get to the hard part of the build. That was a lot of work huh? So why would we do that instead of buying plywood? 

For us, the biggest reason is sanding. We used plywood when making the floating nightstands for a headboard build, and while that certainly made the process easier, it also came back to bite us. More than once, we accidentally sanded through the veneer and had to come back and cut the veneer away to try and replace it. By using solid wood, we can sand as much as we want and have complete flexibility in the future if we ever need to fix any dings or other damage.

Step 2b: Plywood Method: Form Panels

If you chose plywood, then this step is much easier. All you need to do is layout the pieces following our layout guide in our DIY plans. Then use a track saw, circular saw, or jigsaw to cut them roughly to size. You can then use a table saw to square them up and get them to their final dimension.

Just be sure to leave the top and side panels attached for now so you can achieve a flawless grain wrap next.

Measuring and marking pieces

Using Track saw for initial breakdown

Table saw to breakdown further into pieces

Step 3: Cut Other Pieces To Size

In addition to the panels used for the nightstand and shelf boxes, you also need a drawer front, drawer sides, and french cleats. Refer to your plans for the dimensions on all of these pieces and the preferred grain orientation. 

Cut out each of these pieces on the table saw. Start by cutting each piece square. Then you will turn the blade and make all of the bevel cuts at once in the next step.

Step 4: Cut The Bevel Rips

Set the table saw blade to 45°. You will do all the rip cuts first. By doing this, all of the pieces for the floating shelf drawer box will be the same final dimension, and you won’t have any tearout at the front corners. 

Once the drawer box is cut, you can use this opportunity to cut your french cleats and the long edge of your shelf front as well. 

Setting saw blade

Cutting bevel rips

Step 5: Cut The Beveled Sides (Mitered Corner)

Does it bother anyone else that mitered corners on boxes are actually made using a bevel cut? No? Just us?

To get the best results on these corners, we highly recommend using a crosscut sled on your table saw. If you’ve never made one of those before, we have plans and an entire article about how to make ours. It will change your table saw game forever!

Using your sled (or other method of your choice), carefully cut the shelf panel into three individual pieces. Use a stop block to ensure the two side pieces are the same width. It is important to limit this cut to a single blade kerf to preserve the wrapped grain effect. It’s a subtle detail with huge subconscious benefits and a great way to level up your piece.

Do A Test Fit

Once the shelf panel is cut up, test assemble the pieces and use them as a reference to cut the shelf front. You’ll want to incrementally cut this piece to get the perfect fit, so take your time to make sure everything fits perfectly.

If you choose to use solid wood, this piece can be a hair too big and you can push things into alignment after the glue up. If you use plywood, you will need to be exact. But regardless of what you used, you need to make sure you don’t cut the shelf front too short or you will need to recut the piece.

Related – A Beginner’s Guide On How To Use A Router

Step 6: Optional: Cut Relief for Wireless Charger

If you want a wireless charger hidden inside the drawer, we highly recommend hiding it inside by using an under-mount style charger. In order to ensure the best charging, it helps to get the charger as close to the top surface of the shelf as possible. Routing out a relief in the underside of the shelf helps minimize the amount of wood between the charger and the top surface. 

Woodworking Tip: To make this easier to sand, size your relief to be slightly larger than your sanding disks so you can use a random orbit sander.

Since this relief isn’t visible, you could simply freehand cut this with a router. Personally, we don’t like to take the risk that the router runs away from us, so we recommend making a template. We oversized our cutout so we could use a bushing with our downcut bit that helps prevent tear out.

To cut out the template, you can freehand it with a router or use a bandsaw or jigsaw. Once your jig is ready, clamp it to the shelf and install the bushing and bit on your router.

Learn From Our Mistakes

Once everything is ready, slowly cut out the relief. 

Woodworking Tip: Start from the center of the relief and work your way out so that your router is always supported. You can use a scrap piece of wood as thick as your template if you need additional support.

Step 7: Test Fit The Shelf Box (Outside Box)

Now that all the shelf pieces are ready, it is time to test fit everything together. If you are confident with your joiner, you can add a joiner feature to the mitered corner. We only had #10 biscuits though and they threatened to break through our ½” panels, so we did not add a joining feature to the mitered corners. 

To help with alignment, you can add tape to the edges to hold them together. Then just fold the pieces up and check that everything is square. 

Step 8: Glue Up Shelf Box (Outside Box)

Now that you know everything fits together correctly, you can glue it together. This can be pretty tricky since you are only gluing up ¾ of a box. It can help to cut spacers from scrap wood to create that 4th side and keep the sides square. 

This is a difficult glue up. Take your time, go slow, and check the box with a square often. It does help if you have more than one set of hands (another reason we love doing projects together!). We definitely didn’t get ours perfect, but since it was made from solid wood, we were able to clean up our corners and fix a slight out of square using sandpaper.  

Step 9: Test Fit Drawer Box (Inside Box)

Once the shelf box is dry and the clamps are off, it is time to test fit the drawer box. First, check that the drawer bottom fits inside the shelf box. You want about a 1/16” gap to allow for some play in the drawer slides so everything moves smoothly.

Once the drawer bottom fits perfectly, check the drawer sides. Put the pieces together and check to see if you have a ½” gap on each side. It is better to have a slightly larger gap than a smaller gap since it is a lot easier to add a shim than it is to remove material. You should be able to freely move the drawer slides. If they are too tight, trim a hair off of your drawer sides to make some room. 

Step 10: Glue Up Drawer Box (Inside Box)

Once the drawer box is perfectly sized, it’s time to get it glued up. With everything still put together from the test fit, the easiest way to glue this up is to just pull the drawer out of the shelf body slightly. From here, you can lift up the back piece of the drawer body, put down glue, and then clamp it in place. Once that piece is clamped, you can easily use it as a reference to clamp down the rest of the pieces.

Step 11: Install Drawer Slides

After the drawer box is dry, you are ready to install the drawer slides. Start by attaching them to the drawer body. Simply rest them on the drawer bottom and align them to the front edge of the drawer box. Then clamp the drawer slide in place and screw it to the drawer box. 

Now for the tricky part. With the shelf box upside down, you are going to flip the drawer body over and set it in the shelf box. Now add a shim under each corner of the drawer box to create a clearance gap to make it slide properly. The goal is to have the drawer bottom flush with the bottom edge of the shelf sides. Playing cards work great as shims here.

Next, scoot the drawer box back, partially extend each drawer slide, and press the ends against the inside face of the shelf front. You can use clamps to hold the drawer slide in place while you screw it in. Then work your way backwards to secure each drawer slide in two more places. You may need to disassemble the drawer slides to get to the final screw location.

Step 12: Test Assembled Drawers

Once the drawer slides are installed, you can reassemble them and test how well they slide. If they are sticking, try loosening each of the screws. If that helps, you may need to shim behind the drawer slides to create the right fit. 

If loosening the drawer slides didn’t help, then the fit may be too tight or out of square. First start by checking everything with a square. If that is all good, then measure the gap between the drawer box and the shelf box. If it is less than ½” or the gap isn’t square, you will need to sand either the drawer or the shelf until they are square and slide smoothly.

Step 13: Add Handhold & Sand

Congratulations! You are in the final stretch, the hard part is over, and it’s time for final details. For example, we want a handhold to make opening the drawer a little easier. We actually did this before the glue up on ours, but if you clamp everything in place, you can ensure perfect alignment by doing it after everything is assembled. Simply make a template, clamp it down, and route out your pattern.

Sanding

Once that detail is done, take the pieces apart (drawer, slides, etc), and get to sanding. If you choose to use the Rubio wood finish, then you need to sand to 120-150 grit for the most durable finish. We actually took ours up to 180 grit to get a softer feel and slightly lighter color. You don’t want to go past 180 though or the finish won’t be able to build up a thick enough wax layer.

Now is also the time to soften any edges on your piece. We chose to forgo our typical ⅛” roundover and left all of our corners sharp on this build, but we still used a piece of sandpaper to knock the edge off and prevent it from splintering

Step 14: Optional: Add Cutout for Headboard

If you want your nightstand to overlap a headboard like we did, then you will need to make a cutout in the back of the nightstand. The design only allows for a 1” headboard notch that is completely hidden since that is the thickness of the french cleats. If your headboard is thicker than that, you will need to add an additional board between the french cleats and wall. This won’t be as seamless, but it will still work.

To add a notch, we elected to use the table saw to cut the shelf body and ensure everything is square. This was definitely a bit nerve-wracking, so be sure to use a scrap piece of wood to test your cuts before making them on your actual finished piece.

Step 15: Apply Finish

Once the pieces are sanded, it is time to apply a finish. We used Rubio’s Oil Plus 2C in Black. Rubio is one of the best quality finishes we’ve found and it is a very eco-friendly product. We have several articles dedicated to Rubio Monocoat and the finishing process, so be sure to check those out for our recommendations.

Be sure to tape off the spot where the french cleat will glue to the drawer box in order to help it stick better later. You could glue the french cleat on first, but it is difficult to get finish into the corner between the cleat and the drawer body.

Tape up all the areas that we did not want finishe applied to.

Applying rubio to the inside box

Buffing rubio on the outside box.

Step 16: Attach French Cleat

After the finish has dried, you can complete the assembly. All you have to do is glue the french cleat to the drawer box. We recommend adding a few screws to this connection for additional strength.

Step 17: Mount On The Wall

Time to get these shelves installed! Start by finding the studs in the location where you’d like to install the shelf and mark them on the wall. If you don’t have a stud finder, a great way to do this is by using a magnet to look for the screws that are holding your drywall to the stud.

Once you have the studs found, mark the height you want the nightstand shelf and screw the cleat to the stud. Since there is a good chance that the cleat will not be able to screw into two studs, you will need to use drywall anchors to add further strength to this connection and to keep the box level. This can be quite the process which is why we bothered to make french cleats for this shelf in the first place. It is much easier to get a french cleat positioned where you want it then it is to get an entire self.

Once the french cleat is in position, bring over the drawer box and hook it on the cleat. Since the drawer is so thin, this cleated connection probably won’t be strong enough to resist the twisting load of a shelf this deep. Therefore, it is a good idea to also drive screws through the drawer body and its cleat, and into the stud as well. For extra safety, you can add a few more screws into drywall anchors to make sure it won’t go anywhere.

Tada! You have floating nightstand shelves on the wall!!

Step 18: Optional: Add Power and Charger

Finally, you can add a power supply and wireless charger, if you opted to do this option. If you can, try to route your power supply from an outlet behind your headboard and then sneak the cable in between the drawer body and shelf body in order to completely hide the cables. 

Now all you need to do is add a wireless charger. Position the wireless charger so it is as close to the top of your shelf as possible without interfering with the shelf’s ability to slide. Once you know that height, you can put the charger holder shelf from the plans under the wireless charger and screw or super glue it to your drawer box. 

Yes, you heard us. Super glue. We won’t judge. We understand if you don’t want to take your shelf off the wall again to have to attach the charger holder. Just get the shelf installed and put the wireless charger on top of it. If you find it is moving around, you can always use a piece of double-sided tape to hold it in position. 

Now close the drawer and give yourself a pat on the back. You did it! This was a tough one and you deserve a break. Which is perfect, because there is likely already a bed right here. Take a nap! You’ve earned it!

charger holder so that a phone can charge wireless through the shelf when placed on top.

Wireless charger and power supply in standard nightstand size

Notch cut for power supply cable to route behind the headboard.

More DIY Projects & Tools

Now that your floating shelf with a hidden drawer is complete, you have a sleek, functional piece that adds elegance and storage to your space. Be sure to check out more of our DIY projects and guides to keep leveling up your woodworking skills!

• 15 Amazing Woodworking & DIY Projects With Plans And How-To Instructions
• Hubby How To – DIY Modern Headboard With Floating Nightstands
• Hubby How To: DIY Hanging Daybed Swing Plans
• Hubby How To – Modern DIY Platform Bed Frame
• Recommended Tools & Products

The Ultimate Wood Finish? Rubio Monocoat Review & Color Test

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We hope you love this build! Let us know what you think in the comments below!

Disclaimer: This post includes affiliate links, and I will earn a commission if you purchase through these links. Please note that I’ve linked to these products purely because I recommend them and they are from companies I trust. There is no additional cost to you.