Building A Banquette


Before and after of breakfast nook space

Why am I building a banquette?

In August 2024, I left my role at Raptive to recover from burnout and take a career break in preparation for working on whatever’s next for me. I reflected on my experience leading up to that point, and found (among a variety of things) that what I lacked for a long time was the ability to enter a state of flow.

I had been there for three years since the acquisition and was thankful to work on a variety of fun projects with good people. However, my days gradually became divided into smaller and smaller units, with focus and stakeholders frequently shifting. I craved the hands-on work and the reward of being able to see progress and impact directly. The creative space to just build.

Also, last year we bought our first house. As an aside, it’s still unbelievable to me that we did it. I’ve lived in San Francisco for a decade, and for this whole time I assumed that something would push me out. I didn’t think that I’d ever be able to afford to stay here longer term, with the cost of (among a variety of things) housing. But, the acquisition allowed us to, which I am grateful for.

So, I’m in this new house, about to quit my job, wanting to work on a hands-on project that’ll give me regular states of flow and the ability to see progress. So I start reading more about woodworking as a skill that can maximize the value of this new space.

And there’s a specific space that would benefit from the attention: the breakfast nook. It’s a small room adjacent to the kitchen and dining room. It’s got big windows and beautiful afternoon light, even a little peek of the ocean. The problem is, it’s so small that most furniture is either too big or small.

The banquette vision

I felt that a custom piece of furniture would allow me to maximize the value of the space by allowing us to use every inch for our specific needs. Of course, eating breakfast is a need, but the more important use case for us is lounging around. Preferably with cat.

Pinterest has thousands of breakfast nooks, but none built to lounge on. There were a lot of reading nooks as well, but none built to eat breakfast at. So, I envisioned a mashup of a daybed with a breakfast nook bench while also integrating as much storage as possible.

The research and design

Although I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted online, I still found a lot of great inspiration:

Banquette with Fluted Timber Detail - Little Red Industries

I really liked how this one maximized storage using drawers underneath the seating area. And even cooler that they used pre-built flat pack cabinets.

@findmaggiemay Instagram - Banquette Build

Maggie May is a DIY influencer, and her banquette Instagram story was a particularly helpful video step-by-step that I found of creating a banquette. It went into how different tools were used to cut the pieces and there was enough detail in the videos to follow it as a step-by-step guide.

DIY Built-In Bench - Youtube

This video solidified my choice of using plywood sheets instead of 2x4 dimensional lumber to create the structure for my build. After watching this video, it was clear to me that using plywood was going to be my best option.

Watching these examples, I was able to reverse engineer / create a Sketchup design.

image of sketchup design

At this stage, I found this Steve Ramsey video on Sketchup basics to be what I needed to figure out how to model things in 3D.

From there, I used a free tool called CutList Optimizer to figure out how much plywood I would need, and how to cut it.

And with that list, I had what I needed to order a plywood delivery.

MacBeath Hardwood in Berkeley, which is one of the only places I found in the bay area that sells pre-finished cabinet grade plywood. I chose Maple because we liked the light color and it was the cheapest out of the different options. The nice thing about their store is that they cater to hobbyist woodworkers so their shop has a lot of specialty tools and finishes in addition to a robust selection of wood species.

The only other place I found that sells pre-finished plywood in the vicinity of San Francisco is Beronio Lumber. They have a smaller selection that would be relevant to a hobbyist as they cater more to building contractors doing general construction, but they do have some pre-finished options, and they’ll cut it down to fit in the car for free which is nice.

Materials

Total cost:

Construction

The project was essentially building 3 boxes and a backrest. Two of the boxes would have drawers, and one with a lift-top.

For cutting the wood, I used a Kreg Accu-Cut and circular saw to cut the 4’x8’ plywood panels roughly, then cut the pieces out more precisely on the table saw. I was surprised at how accurate of a cut can be made on a budget-grade contractor table saw. Something that really helped with all of the cuts was upgrading the blades on all of the saws to the “finish” grade blades that have more teeth. With these new, sharp blades, I was able to achieve mostly clean cuts without needing to tape or score the cuts.

For joining the wood together, I used a combination of pocket screws and confirmat screws. The pocket screws were chosen for their fast, easy, and reversible installation. The confirmat screws were for added strength. I also thought that confirmats were just an interesting fastener and wanted to try them out. They are less common in woodworking and more commonly found in flat pack furniture. It is a screw that also acts as a dowel for extra strength. I did not use any glue since I wanted to have the option to disassemble in the future of needed. Not sure when I’d need to, but I like having the option to hit “undo”.

One notable aspect of the build was that none of the boxes or backrest connect with each other. This sounds like a bad idea for a piece of furniture that’s meant to be “built-in”, but I found it helpful in a couple of ways. First, because each piece is built individually, it made it easy to do all of the work in the garage, and then move the components individually into the room, which kept the room clean. Second, thanks to the felt pads I added to the bottom, each piece is small and light enough to slide on the hardwood floor, which means it’s easy to access behind if needed, if I need to clean or something falls between the furniture and the wall. Having each part separate also made it so that I could be less precise with the dimensions of everything, especially since the cushions cover any gaps.

The Results

Learnings

  • The most common method isn’t always the best method for you - For example, the majority of DIY banquette guides follow the same path of using 2x4’s for the framing. For my use case, that would be the wrong choice as it would significantly hamper my ability to maximize storage, so I used plywood instead. I also found that most builds involved creating permanent joints with glue and lots of connection/integration points to the room (for example, removing trim, screwing every item to the studs), which I felt was unnecessary. I instead chose to use fasteners that can be easily removed and minimized attachment points to the wall. I trade strength for the ability to easily remove, move, or modifythe banquette in the future.
  • Get feedback early - Many improvements were made in the design stage that I only found because of feedback from my wife. For example, the build was originally going to be constructed as a single solid L-shaped object. As I was describing the assembly, she asked, “how are you going to move that up the stairs from the garage?” Which is when I realized that I could break it into 3 smaller pieces that are not joined together but sit next to each other. This made everything easier, from being able to work with smaller pieces of plywood to allowing for some wiggle room when putting the pieces together
  • It’s okay to be imprecise - Online woodworking hobbyists tend to be obsessed with precision. And there is a subculture within it that celebrate tools and methods of working with wood that achieve extreme precision. This is especially true for furniture making. Throughout this project, especially right before assembly, I was worried that due to my skills and tools that I would not be able to meet the precision requirements to make this project work. For example, the drawer slides officially allow for half a millimeter of “give” in order to slide smoothly. That’s not a lot of room for error when your cabinet is a couple of feet wide. However, I found that even though I was not squaring every edge, using imprecise hand power tools, that my drawers still slid in and out and things generally fit together. Of course, on close inspection, the imperfections are visible, but for the most part, it came out nicer looking than I thought it would.
  • The fun part is improvising - Although I used this project as an excuse to get a bunch of new tools, there were parts of this project where I had to improvise a solution based on what I had on hand. For example, the drawer pull cutouts were something where I used the drill bit that came with the cabinet hinge jig to carefully cut two large holes, which I then combined by using the jigsaw. Most of the videos I saw used a template and a router instead, but lacking the appropriate router bit, I just went for using the less precise method, and I was happy with the results.