Project: Cherry Vanities for Master Bath (COMPLETED)

[Jim Becker]

The first thing I did was sort and stack everything to insure I had everything I ordered and to best utilize the components for looks, etc.

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Sanding the inside of a box is no fun, so I pre-sanded the interior sides of pieces as well as the bottoms pre-assembly.

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Assembling dovetailed boxes isn't rocket science...a little glue brushed into the corners, slide them together and...measure for square!

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And to insure they stay that way while the glue dries, a couple of brads to engage the bottom will suffice. (I seem to remember his Normness doing that a lot of that kind of thing early in his NYW career... )

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Once the glue sets, the drawers need sanding to level the dovetails. These are the first two...the two for the guest vanity that replace the "experimental" ones I created months ago but was not very happy with. These are sized to use slides for smoother operation...something nice in a bathroom.

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[Jim Becker]

You'll note from the color change in my shirt that it's the next day already...

And that next day brought more drawer sanding...12 drawers worth, in fact.

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But in the end, I had 12 drawers ready for slides. I am frankly leaving them unfinished. They look great as they are.

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Installing drawer slides is pretty basic, but "jigging up" can help the task considerably. Each of these vanities have a stack of four drawers that is on the side closest to the side walls in the installation location. (mirrored vanities) The top drawer location is pretty much determined by the other two that are in the same horizontal plane. But the three below that top drawer need to be equally spaced vertically (approximately, at least). To make this easy, once I installed the bottom slides, I made up a jig out of some scrap MDF that could be used to vertically space the next set up from the one below it. The relief cuts are to allow for those areas on the slides that are above or below the general plane of the unit.

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As I mentioned installation is pretty straight forward and what took a little longer on the first vanity, due to all the measuring and jig making etc., went fairly quickly on the second one.

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At the end of the day, this is pretty much the result...all the drawer slides mounted and tested...ready for completion of the drawer fronts in parallel with the doors. I'll be moving in that direction tomorrow, hopefully, after a few things I need to do around the house. (on vacation this week)

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[Don Bullock]

The panels already look wonderful!

Attachment 71243

...

Wow!!! That's an understatement. Those are beautiful.

Your project seems to be really coming along now. Thanks for all the detail. I'm finding your narrative very interesting and helpful. I may have to do something like what you're doing in the future.

[Dave MacArthur]

Great! I really enjoyed the step by step post--that takes a lot of time for you to create, but it is exactly the thing folks can find a tip here or there in. The panels look nice, and I enjoyed getting a look at the fabled slider!Thanks much!

[Jim Becker]

US Labor Day week I was still on vacation, but rather than traipsing round up north in Quebec like the week before, I spent a lot of time in the shop working on the master bath vanities that are the object of this thread. That was good as it kept me moving on the project (more things to do when these are done) and I was able to watch the framers take piles of lumber and turn them into our home addition.

This sequence starts with making those critical cuts in the single board that makes up the top three drawer fronts in the vanities. Very scary and definitely a "measure three times, cut once" situation, at least for the one that is directly over the stack of three more drawers...

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Once the drawer fronts were cut apart, they were attached to the drawer boxes with screws. I found this to be a little more frustrating than normal as the drawer slides "move" a little and getting things lined up just so was a pain. (I do have a few extra holes in two of the drawer boxes because of this, but no issue to fill...and they are out of sight)

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Here's the first vanity with all three of the top drawers "done", as it were...

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And the second...

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Due to the need for plumbing to get to the top of the vanity for the above counter "bowls", the inner drawers that surround them are narrower. But the drawer fronts are continuous. Here's how that works out...and the break between them mirrors the break between the two doors that will live below.

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[Jim Becker]

Each vanity has three more drawers that need fronts, so I poked through the lumber rack and found the two boards I had reserved. I'll not go into detail about preparing lumber outside of showing a picture of straight-lining one of the boards. After that, it was jointed flat and then thicknessed normally.

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The milled components were then brought back to the saw and cut to full width.

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The point of this was to initially make the stack of three drawer fronts exactly equal in height to the door stiles which was checked at the bench.

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Next, I used the same shims I would be used in fitting the drawer fronts (some plastic laminate) to trim the edges at the saw with the exact same setup.

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Back to the bench and the sum of the drawer fronts plus the shims still equals the height of the stile.

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[Jim Becker]

To this point, these six drawer fronts were left a little long. So the final step before fitting them to the drawer boxes was to trim them to length...a quick pass on one end to insure a 90º relationship to the top and bottom and then the other side using the stop on the miter bar. All six were then exactly 14 1/4" long...which matches the one above them in the top row.

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And, of course, they needed to then be attached to the drawer boxes. These were a little easier than the top row, but had to be shimmed both on the bottom and on the side for spacing.

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But I could clamp directly to the drawer box which was impossible with the top row due to carcase interference.

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The end result...

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And at that point, I was at the end of the day...or nearly so. Before wrapping up, I took a few minutes to lay out on an alternate "stile" the location for the 35mm hinge cup holes and then create them at the drill press. This not only allowed me to setup the drill press for the real stiles, but also created a test piece I could use to insure that my carcass mounted hinge components properly lined up.

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[Jim Becker]

The next day, it was time to work on assembly and fitting of the cabinet doors. On the carcasses, I used jigs to mark for the hinge mounting screws. For these inset doors, the line would be the standard 56mm back from the front of the drawers on the partition, but on the outside where there is the corner post, the measurement calculated out to 62mm. It only took a few minutes to make another jig for that alternative measurement and then move on to marking for the holes.

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Once marked, the logical step was to drill pilot holes...

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Using the piece I created the day before, the hinge mounts could be tested...first the left side...

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...and then the right.

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Here is a close-up shot of the test stile "in action".

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[Jim Becker]

Something I learned the hard way with the doors on the guest bath vanity was that one should sand the inside edges of the rails and stiles BEFORE assembly...

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From that point, putting them together was easy, albeit it was very important to keep all the components in the proper position on each door. All the top rails, for example, are from one board and in sequence across the two vanities. Same for the lower rails. The stiles are handled similarly. And, of course, the veneered panels DO have a top and bottom...mixing something up could cause a real heartache once the glue was dry!

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As I chose to use pocket screws to assembly my doors, as I did in the guest vanity, I glued fillers into the holes just prior to thoroughly sanding the doors. These were not cherry...I didn't have any...but I wasn't really concerned about the being a different color and didn't want to wait to source them in cherry. They are on the inside. Yea, in a perfect world, but...

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Once assembled, the doors looked great!

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"On the last day...." I sanded the doors and fitted the hinges. These cabinets are now completely ready for final finishing. That includes getting the BLO on components that have not already been treated; a couple applications of de-waxed shellac to further enhance the color and then top coating with Target Coatings' new hybrid water borne alkyd varnish product. Hopefully, I can get started on that next weekend as I have a lot more projects for the addition to get on and get done in the next few months.

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[Ryan Bess]

Jim,
I'm know that this has been mentioned to you in the past, but let me be another to thank you for the extraordinary effort you make to present such a thorough step-by-step documentary of your work. It's great to be able to see expert tips on some of the things we all do on a (daily, weekly) basis!
Ryan

[Matt Meiser]

Looking good!

[Jim Kountz]

Jim,
These look great my man! Those door panels are striking really nice. Where did the inspiration for your design come from for these vanities?
Good job.

Jim

[Joe Mioux]

When did you get your hair cut?

[Greg Funk]

Jim,

Excellent work! Looking forward to seeing the finished pieces. Thanks for the meticulous detailing of the building process.

Greg

[Jim Becker]

Where did the inspiration for your design come from for these vanities?

Well...it started with the vanity for the guest bath. You'll note the very first picture in that thread is where it poured out of my brain and onto a piece of scrap paper. That was the prototype for these...sorta. I say "sorta" in that I changed some of the carcass construction techniques on these two larger units based on lessons learned, etc., with the first project.

I wanted a "furniture" look, something akin to a Shaker feel, and QS and figured cherry. I also knew from the start that I would be using above counter bowls which made it possible to have drawers all the way across both the 36" guest unit and the two mirrored 48" master bath units.

The guest vanity featured re-sawn cherry crotch for the two book-matched doors. That was very scary, but I pulled it off somehow. For these, I couldn't find enough acceptable material to do solid panels and turned to veneer which was safer and cheaper. Oh, ok, not really...I had to buy all the stuff to do the veneering. LOL! But I wanted the same feather crotch figure in the book-matched doors and that was the method I determined was going to give it to me. Those doors really do set the pieces off, too. I really can't wait to see the end result when all the oil and finish is on the pieces and they are installed in our new master bath in a few months...