Kitchen Learning Tower
Kitchen Learning Tower
Kitchen Learning Tower
An amateur guide to building a kitchen helper. These plans can be adjusted to create a
single or double kitchen helper.
Materials
Wood
Hardware
Tools
Compound Mitre Saw 1 A circular saw / jig saw will work in a pinch
Forstner bit 1 1”
Speed Square 1
Measuring Tape 1
Taking the compact router (or CNC machine) approach, you basically set up a fence with a truly
straight edge and clamp it down onto your plywood. If you look closely at Figure 2, you’ll note
that I have both pieces of plywood clamped together, with a fence on top. That fence will guide
my router blade to cut through both pieces of plywood at exactly the same place. Note: if you’re
new to routers and cutting bits, you can’t simply cruise through 1.5” of wood at once. You need
to take multiple passes, a fraction of an inch at a time. Read your owners’ manual. It goes
faster than it sounds. Figure 3 shows how the compact router interacts with the clamped fence
& plywood. In the end, you’ll get nice, perfect edges like in Figure 4.
Figure 4: That’s two pieces of plywood stacked on top of one another. You’ll keep them clamped
together this way for nearly the entire build.
You can really put these view holes wherever you want...except the zone in the middle where the
platform goes. Feel free to use my rough measurements. Or make up your own. See Figure 5
for details on what I did. If you choose to include view holes, draw the cutouts on your plywood
polygons, which should still be clamped together (i.e. draw the cutouts on the top one). Figures
6 and 7 show you what this step looked like in my build.
Figure 5: this drawing is not at all to scale. And you’ll note that my finished helper includes a notch
taken out of the very bottom as well (not pictured here).
Using a truly straight edge and some clamps, set up fences for your router to glide across.
Once your fences are measured, clamped, re-measured, and re-measured, go to town with the
router. Figure(s) 8 will show some pre/post fencing and routering.
Figure 9: We’re looking directly at the 20” guide line now, and the lines around it that denote the
bounds of the ¾ plywood. On the far right side, you’ll see the 18” lines.
There’s a reason why your plywood polygons are still clamped together: you need to make sure
your platform guides are exactly the same. Figure 9 shows a speed square lined up with a guide.
Figure(s) 10 show you how you should leverage that speed square to draw yourself reference
lines on the bottom piece of plywood that are identical to the top.
Figure 11
This step is essentially the same as Step 3, with one major caveat. You’ll set up fences with
straight edges and clamps again. And you’ll use the compact router and a cutting bit to cut into
the wood, guided by those fences again. The key difference is that you will not go all the way
through the wood. This should be possible to do in 1 pass with the router. Set the router to go
approximately halfway through your plywood (error on the side of carving out less plywood), and
cut yourself a recess. See Figure(s) 12 for a view into the setup and the finished product.
Use a 1” forstner bit and a power drill to drill your pilot recesses roughly halfway through the
plywood polygons (from the same side as you just carved out your platform guide recesses).
Those 1” circular recesses should be located near the edges of your plywood, with about ½”
buffer between the edge of the circle recess and the edge of the plywood. Figure 14 shows you
a view of the finished Helper from above the left side of the photos is the vertical (counter-top)
side of the Helper. The right is the slanted side. On the vertical side, my pilot recess is located
10” down from the top of the Helper. On the slanted side, my pilot recess is located 4” down
from the top of the Helper. That extra pilot recess you see...was a mistake. But it shows you the
fact that putting a recess too far inward from the edge may make the standing area too narrow
in the end.
Here we go:
1. Pick your length.
2. Cut down two 1” dowel rods to exactly the same length.
3. Stand the polygons upright (preferably with another person’s help), slotting the dowel
rods into your pilot recesses.
4. Drill small pilot holes, beginning from the outside of the polygon through the center of
the dowel rod.
5. Drive a 2” screw from the outside of the polygon through the center of the dowel rod.
6. Repeat 3 more times for each polygon-dowel connection point.
Cut 1: You need to brace the front (verical) side of your Helper on the bottom. I was using scrap
plywood for mine at this point, but you could use a 1x6 or 1x10 here as well. In short, get a piece
of wood that’s about 6”-10” wide (and ¾” thick) - and cut it to the width measurement you made
at the beginning of Step 9. That board will get screwed in (no recess) from the outside of the
polygons just like the dowels were. You’ll see in Figure 15, mine sits about 2” off the ground.
Figure 15: a view of the bottom support board. This board is screwed in to secure the bottom of
the vertical (counter-facing) edge of the Helper.
Cut 2: Same length as cut 1, but you can get away with a less wide board (4”-6”). This board gets
screwed into the bottom of the sloped side of the Helper - approximately 2” off the ground, and
square to the ground.
Figure 16: The step sits on top of a support board that is also perpendicular to it.
Slide your platform into the height you currently want to use (remember you should have 12”,
16”, and 20” slots) and secure it just like the dowels, supports, and step: with pilot holes and 2”
screws.