I’m still making progress on the bathroom, and feeling incredibly motivated and excited about it. Tomorrow, I’ll share the DIY steps detailing how I finished the vanity (if you missed Part 1 of this DIY project, you can see it here), but I’m in a bit of a hurry to get out the door this morning to get to a lunch for my brother’s birthday. But I couldn’t NOT show you how this vanity turned out because I’m just so excited about it!
I’m pretty sure that this is the first piece of wood furniture I’ve ever built that needed to look as close to perfect as possible right after the build because it’s just going to get a clear coat and nothing else. I’m not a cabinet builder or finish carpenter, so I generally rely heavily on wood filler and caulk to make up for my lack of professional skills.
That’s a fine plan when a piece of DIY furniture is going to be painted. But when the piece is going to be left in its natural state with just a clear coat because the goal is to show off the gorgeous wood, there’s a whole lot less wiggle room in the building process, and there’s no relying on a lot of wood filler and caulk to make up for lack of skills.
With all of that said, I’m pretty proud of how this vanity turned out. It’s not perfect, but it’s the closest to perfection I’ve ever gotten.
I went ahead and put the pulls on because I always like to drill the holes for pulls and knobs before painting or clear coating a piece of furniture. I don’t like taking the chance that I’d mess up a brand new finish on a piece while drilling holes for pulls. But those are easy to remove before I finish the vanity.
Here’s a close up look.
I was a little nervous that the walnut veneer and the solid walnut wood wouldn’t blend together enough since these components all came from three different places (the legs from one place, the lumber from a local place, and the veneer from a third place), but I think they all blend together very nicely. I hope it stays that way with the clear coat!
The drawers have full extension soft close drawer slides. So while the drawers aren’t very wide or tall, I do have a full 18 inches of depth for each one.
I had originally planned to stain the drawer boxes with my new favorite walnut stain (Behr water-based wood stain), but now I’m unsure. Maybe I should just leave them the color they are and just clear coat them. Y’all can let me know what you think. Would you leave them as is and just clear coat? Or would you stain them to match?
I do need to make one small addition. I started building the carcass for the center storage cabinet yesterday (more to come on that later as well), and I changed my plan for this cabinet.
My original plan was to have the vanities 24 inches deep, and the center cabinet 27 inches deep, which means that the center cabinet would stick out three inches past the vanities. Ever since I came up with this design for this wall, I’ve imagined the center cabinet being deeper than the vanities.
But I realized that if that cabinet is 27 inches deep, I won’t be able to reach the window to open and close the window. I don’t like having windows that I can’t reach. So I changed plans, and decided to have the vanities be three inches deeper than the storage cabinet, which still gives us plenty of room for storage while allowing me to reach the window.
While the countertop of the vanity will butt up against the side of the storage cabinet, the table base of the vanity was never meant to touch the side of the storage cabinet. So now, with this shallower depth on the storage cabinet, that means that at certain angles (even with the countertop covering all of this area), this side will show. It’s an easy fix. I just had to order a short piece of 1″ x 6″ walnut (which should be here this afternoon) so that I can cut a piece to fit between the legs on this side. The wall side won’t need it.
But that’s a very minor change/addition that needs to be made, and it’s just one of those things that happens as a project progresses and changes have to be made.
So let’s not end there. Let’s end with this beauty. ?
Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.
I hope you’ll join me on my DIY and decorating journey! If you want to follow my projects and progress, you can subscribe below and have each new post delivered to your email inbox. That way you’ll never miss a thing!
