Hi,
The chest will be in the region of 36″ long and 18″ in depth and height.
These are all estimated dimensions at the moment but so far I’ve had no reason to change them. I’ll be planing the stock to final size tomorrow; I’ll give final dimensions then.

Regarding your question on your lid, if you’re going to do something like my design, I’d be inclined to have a cross piece in the middle and break the top down into two half sized seats. That way, any stuff left on top can be pushed to one end while you open the other seat to gain access to the storage. I did this approach on a bench I made to go with our dining table and have always been glad I did.

A bit more progresso report:

The grooves hot been cut into the four legs. The design is such that I can cut the grooves all the way alone each leg so it makes things easier for me. The groves are 3/8′ wide and fit the ply I’ve got for the panels perfectly.

All the stock has now been cut to final size. After consultation (aka haggling/arguing) with my client, we have arrived at a final size of: 36″ long, 22″ high and 18′ deep. I will apparently be making her a new bed next spring – hence the change of dimensions (the overall bed dimensions and plan have been worked out in advance).

I managed to get three out of four of the legs finished with mortices today – time was against me.
Hopefully, I’ll get time to finish the other leg tomorrow.

Shaping the legs should deal with the grooves but I’m toying with adding socks in a contrasting wood just to add to interest to the project.

I managed to do a bit more work on the hope chest.

I took a day off on Friday and started work on the Tenons.

By the end of the day, I had the first end frame completed.

I was able to spend some more time in the workshop today and the end result is that the entire main frame is now completed.

Everything is nice and tight and all the joints seat with no gaps at all.
There’s still a little bit of fine tuning to do before I start work on shaping the rails and legs and I have to add the centre uprights to the large panels too. A test fit with a spade bit of the ply shows a good fit; just enough give to allow me to slide the ply into the grooves without have to have a free-fight with the project. The entire thing was dead square when I took off the clamps so I’m pretty happy with the direction that this project is going.

On the minus side, I’ve not had much time to do anything on this project lately.
On the plus side, what little time I did have has resulted in all the milling being done for both this and my next project.

Those trestles that the wood’s on are the legs to a desk my daughter urgently needs (she’s studying Graphic Design at Uni) and the lowest most boards are the desktop I’m putting together for her.

The rest of the timber is the rest of the parts for the hope chest.

The bad news: I was recently made redundant*,
The good news: more time in the workshop.

I’ve cleaned up the parts and finished the shaping.
The two end sub-assemblies have now been glued together and are waiting for the big glue-up tomorrow.

* still in discussions with my wife to see if now’s the time to move into woodworking full time.