Carpent With Ewan

What's this in the drawer of my new coffee table? It's a shark called Ewan, and he's going to show me how to reinforce it!

These drawers just ain't strong enough. The bottom bit slots into some grooves that are just a few millimetres deep, and once these drawers are laden with magazines, that base bit will buckle and fall through. We need reinforcements!

Here is the drawer that we are about to reinforce, alongside one I prepared earlier. Get ready for the ride of your life!

Measure twice, cut once. Or, in our case, measure once, draw a pencil line on the piece of wood once, take it through to the kitchen once... whoops, I'm getting ahead of myself...

...put some newspaper down once (pleases the sharkette no end). Sawing is definitely a job for someone with opposable thumbs, so Pete did this bit.

When you are finished sawing, put the saw on the work surface rather than leaving it on the kitchen floor. I learned this the hard way. Note also that when you pick the newspaper up, it will be covered with a dusty reside, created whilst sawing. This dusty residue, created whilst sawing, is not too dissimilar in colour and texture to sawdust.

After checking that your pieces of wood fit, apply a thin line of wood glue to the edge that will be your vertical...

...and a thin line of wood glue to the base. Assuming that gravity points downwards in your region, make sure that your drawer is upside down when you do this. There is no point reinforcing the top of the drawer. Also make sure that your thin line of wood glue is close enough to the edge of the base that it will make good contact with the piece of wood, when you put it in place.

Put the wood in position and press it firmly into place. For every hour that the glue says that it needs to dry, allow four seconds. This drawer is ready to put back into position in a rip-roaring one minute, thirty six seconds!!!!!!!