Children furniture from plywood

I made these two pieces of furniture from plywood some 2 years ago. They were both intended to be used by my son (3 1/2 years old at the time). My main consideration for building both pieces was keep the cost of materials low but get something reasonably nice looking and, most importantly, sturdy.

The piece in the first picture is a small mobile table that is probably the most used piece of furniture in the house. My kid likes it a lot since he can drag it anywhere in the house without asking an adult for help. He uses it for activities like writing and painting, eats on it, and what not. When some of my friends saw the this table, they wanted one for their daughter. I made one for them that is very much the same but has heart-shape cutouts form the sides instead of square cutouts.
The table is build out of 3/4” plywood with biscuit joints. This piece took about one afternoon to build.

In the second picture you can see a toy storage piece. It got populated with toys before the finish was completely dry on it and has been extensively used since. It is build from 1/2 plywood using dados for the shelves and but joints for the small pieces of plywood that prevent toys from falling out. While I expected the table to be solid since it is build from thicker plywood, I was surprised how sturdy the second piece is. It took me about one day of work to build this piece. Some friends spent that much time looking through the stores for something remotely as good and in the end decided is easier to help be build one for them as well (which we did).

The finish on both pieces is polyurethane. Both these pieces survived 2 years of abuse without any sign of failure. While not exactly fine furniture these type of pieces are surprisingly easy to build and more than appropriate for a small child that might be hard to convince that his furniture cost a lot of money thus he/she should be more careful.

I’m posting these projects in the hope that they will inspire you to build something similar for your grandchild or granddaughter (or son/daughter if you are in your thirties like me). They are indeed child approved.

-- -- Alin Dobra, Gainesville, Florida