Tearing Out the Built-In Shoe Cabinet and Building a New One — Mini DIY Renovation

Building the new shoe cabinet

Wallpaper hanging was new and rough — but now we’re back to familiar territory: woodworking. Time to build the cabinet.

Lumber

The entry is “the face of the house,” so I splurged a bit: visible exterior surfaces are ash (Japanese tamo).
Hidden parts are pine and cedar.

Ash glulam ordered from Marutoku Shop online.

Ash glulam, 600 mm × 4,200 mm × 20 mm thick — 18,700 yen
Ash glulam, 360 mm × 1,200 mm × 20 mm thick — 6,670 yen
(Prices as of October 2023.)

For English readers, ash hardwood boards are available on Amazon: Search Amazon for ash hardwood boards.

Crosscut to size with a circular saw.

All the panels cut.

Carcass assembly

Quick dry-stack to check that everything fits — looking good. (No fasteners yet.)

For the panel-to-panel joints, I’m going with biscuit joinery.
(Biscuits alone couldn’t pull warped boards flat, so I ended up using screws as a backup — see below.)

I documented biscuit joinery (using a palm router as substitute for a biscuit joiner) when I built the bedside table — see this article:

Same approach this time — chuck the biscuit-joint slot bit into the palm router and mill biscuit slots.

For the spots that need a regular slot (not a biscuit slot), I switched to a normal router bit.

Slots cut — dry-fit the carcass.

Turns out the top panel is slightly warped, so it lifts off the side panels at one corner.
Biscuits alone aren’t going to pull a warp out.

To pull the panel flat, I’m adding a screw.

The whole point of going biscuits was that I didn’t want screw heads on the visible exterior.

So I’m hiding the screw heads with wood plugs (counterbore + plug, like a furniture-grade fix).

Prep: drill a counterbore around the screw position with a Forstner-style bit.
I marked the depth on the bit with painter’s tape (5–10 mm or so, if I remember).
Once the panels are clamped together, drive the screw down into the counterbore.

Now glue the biscuit joints.

Apply Titebond to the slots and biscuits…

Mate the panels.

And drive the screw down through the counterbore to pull the warped panel flat.
(I’ll plug the counterbore later.)

For the back panel I used cheap cedar tongue-and-groove from the home center.

Screwed straight on (back panel is hidden, so visible screws are fine).

Carcass standing up.

Now to plug the counterbore over the top-panel screw.

Drop wood glue into the counterbore,

insert a wood dowel/plug, and saw the plug flush with a hand saw.

Screw plug installed.

(I’ll sand it flush later.)

Fitting the doors

Test-positioning the doors.
Looking pretty good.
Time to fit hinges to the doors.

The hinges:

Sugatsune Industries
Olympia Concealed (Euro) Hinge, full overlay with C-style cup, 360-C26-19T

Beyond shoe cabinets, concealed Euro hinges are a great choice for any DIY door.
You can adjust front/back, left/right, and up/down even after installation, so a bit of cut error is fully recoverable — perfect for a hobby DIYer like me.

＜Door side＞
Drill a 35 mm-diameter cup hole with a Forstner-style bit.

Set the hinge into the cup hole and screw it down.

＜Carcass side＞
Hold the door (with hinge attached) up against the carcass, mark the mounting-plate position, and screw the mounting plate to the carcass.

※ Concealed hinges have a clip release on the hinge arm — you can take the door off (and put it back on) without removing the screws.

I covered concealed-hinge dimensioning in my chest DIY article — see ↓

　

Then a problem!

When I closed the left door, the door edges fouled each other and it wouldn’t close all the way (next photo).

That’s a normal kind of mishap — trim a sliver off and move on.

Doors close cleanly now.

Varnish

I want this cabinet light, so I’m skipping any stain — natural wood color through clear finish.
Hardwood like ash looks great on its own; no reason to stain it.

So just matte clear varnish.

Surface prep

Same surface prep as for any finish: sand it.
Used #240 sandpaper.

You can go straight to varnish from here, but for this piece I went the proper route and laid down a sanding-sealer undercoat first.

Once the sanding sealer is dry, knock the surface back lightly with #400 sandpaper.

Ready for varnish.

Brushing on varnish

Brushing time.

I want to keep the natural wood feel, so matte clear it is.
Brushed on with a paint brush.

Once the first coat dries, knock it back with #400 paper and lay down a second coat.

Repeat: brush coat → dry → light sand → next coat.
The surface gets smoother each pass.

I gave the top about three coats.

Installing the cabinet

Pretty much done — time to mount it in the entry.

Mounting and securing

Carry it to the entry where the original cabinet was.
Ash is heavy — moving the carcass is real work.

Screw the cabinet to the wall.
Important: the screws have to go into a stud — anything else won’t take the load.
I used a stud finder to locate studs behind the wall.

Then hang the doors.

Adjustable shelves (where the shoes sit)

Now to install the shelves the shoes will sit on.

I bought 13 mm-thick cedar at the home center, and had them cut it to size at the cut counter.

From offcuts, I made small cleats (shelf supports).

Rip the offcuts into thin strips.

Screw the cleats to the inside walls of the carcass.

The cedar shelves sit on top of the cleats.

Did the same for each shelf.

Door pulls

Last: door pulls.

Picked up pulls at the home center. They’re the through-bolt type — drill a hole, pass the bolt through from the back of the door, and tighten the pull onto the bolt from the front.

That’s the whole job.

Done

Done!

Letting the natural wood color speak made the entry feel much brighter than before.
Hardwood grain just looks great.

Dropping the upper section also opens up the entry — a real difference in how the space feels.

Big learning project: my first time hanging wallpaper.
And the woodworking half — building the cabinet — was its usual reliable kind of fun.
Very satisfying DIY.

・Removing a shoe cabinet is much easier than it sounds (typically just screws).
・If your replacement is exactly the same outside dimensions as the original, you don’t even have to redo the wallpaper behind it.
If you’re looking to change the feel of your entry, this is worth a serious try.