After a few holidays in the US I found myself with an unhealthy problem; i’d gone and bought myself a lot of shoes. And I mean a lot. After only having a singular pair for years, I’d sort of went overboard with the great selection and prices over there. I woke up one morning to the grim realisation that I own over fifteen pairs of shoes, and since they were lining up in they walk-in I decided to do something about it.
Since I couldn’t exactly part with any of them, I employed my new friend SketchUp to make a mock-up of a, well, shoe cupboard.
Keeping it as basic as I could, I measured out a few pairs and made room for eighteen pairs of shoes – not for expanding my “collection” mind you, just in case I stumbled upon some that I’d forgotten about. Really.
To my surprise the cabinet wasn’t exactly that big; less than a metre high, about a metre wide and about 40cm deep.
I didn’t want drawers because they took up too much space, so I went for shelves with flip-down faces to keep dust out and make it look tidy. I was almost finished when I had a look at my current drawers. They had change scattered all over them – I don’t usually spend my change and end up dragging a suspiciously heavy bag into my bank (and only usually to receive thirty or forty dollars for it). Since I didn’t have a great place to put it, I figured I’d work out a nice and minimal way to keep the change tucked away somewhere.
With the extra room I gave the shoes I worked out that I could put coin chutes down the back on each side, which reach down to the bottom shelf. A coin-slot cut flush into the side of the cupboard could let me drop my otherwise useless five and ten cent pieces down to whatever I placed underneath the coin slots.
Because it wasn’t all that tall, I thought that I’d solve another problem and put a thin drawer just above the shelves for loose paper, bills I want to forget about or any other junk that would normally add to the clutter. After which I was finished, so I added some texture to see exactly what I could expect.
There’s a local furniture store (they have no website, so no free advertising) that specialises in custom made orders, so I thought I’d drop in and show them what I wanted to make. To explain it better I printed out a couple rough mockups from screencaps I took of the plan in SketchUp, added a few notes and printed them out. Here they are for reference:
After explaining what I was after, I produced the mockups and pointed out a few things that I wanted them to be clear on. They paid no attention to this though because (to paraphrase) “They’d never seen plans like this *ever*, how did you do these?”. Looks like they’ll be using SketchUp soon. 
They seemed intrigued with the no-handles, strange drawer and flip-down face cupboard, and their ten year old thought the twin coin-chute was “awesome”. Looking around the shop I could see why; nothing looked half as weird as what I’d given them. After asking me some questions ($70 to get it stained and colour-matched to my bookcase, something you just couldn’t do for that little time and money) they said they’d work out a price and get back to me.
The next day they called and gave me a quote which I leapt at. They said they’d fax through a mockup (“even though it’ll look much like the ones you already gave us”) that I had to sign off on. After which it would be three to four weeks to make.
Their hand drawn mock-up looked a lot more rudimentary than the ones I’d given them (and I can see why they were interested in what I was using) but the basic shape for the shoe cupboard was the same, if not a little squared off. As it suited me fine I signed away and started the waiting game.
Four weeks passed so I finally dropped in after work one day to “just see how things were coming along”, which is a lot more indirect than to, “find out if you’ve forgotten to make my damn cupboard”. Luckily they’d only just got the word to pick it up from the warehouse and after staining it they’d call me sometime that weekend to collect it.
I got the call around lunchtime on Saturday that it was ready to pick up. Not having the slightest clue if the finished product would be anything like what I’d designed, I was imagining the worst so I could be pleasantly surprised. Upon arrival they directed me to the loading bay where I promptly walked straight past my shoe cupboard. It was totally different to anything I could’ve imagined.
On first appearances (and from that angle) it looks almost spot on, but almost every single bit of it is different than the plan I gave them. Instead of a list, here’s a comparison in SketchUp, with the original plan in the foreground:
So taller, wider, with 20mm exposed doors and a strange amount of spare area around the top drawer. I’m more than happy with it, but after so long of having the plan in my head it was very different.
Overall using SketchUp to make plans for furniture is a great idea, but the key to it is being able to get the maker to understand exactly what you want. I had two pages of notes with mine, but I’d suggest having a page for every side. If you feel confident enough, make them sign it. 
For anybody that’s interested, here’s the SketchUp files of the cupboard I made. I’ve measured up the finished product and have added that beside the one I drew up, so you can see how close they got it to my original idea.
