Vanity and Medicine Chest

We were working on various projects (including the 2 story mantle) around this fine estate in Peninsula, Ohio, when the clients approached us about their powder room vanity.

They felt that the existing vanity did not match the theme and the trim details through out the rest of the house. The clients gave me 4 specifications to work with for the design.

  • Incorporate some of the fluted details we created in their kitchen.
  • Use Cherry as the species.
  • Incorporate some of the mantle details.
  • Finally, if there has been a design floating in your head that you have wanted to use for years, go for it.

I have spent my entire career making sure I can deliver a vision that a client has in mind. So I was very excited to hear their last requirement.

For a long time I’ve wanted to build a piece of furniture or cabinets that have traditional overlay doors, but recess the traditional cabinet face frame / doors a couple of inches. I always thought it would add more depth and dimension to traditional cabinets and would be a really custom touch outside of the 3 traditional cabinet design options. Also we had just finished a giant mantle for these clients and I thought this design would create mini columns and we could detail them exactly the same, but on a smaller scale, than the mantle. This in combination of the fluted work from the kitchen, crown mould and baseboard from the rest of the house, would all be represented and tied together in this one off, one of a kind vanity / medicine chest unit.

I never drew paper drawings for this project. Within a few hours of the clients mentioning a vanity for the bathroom, I drew the whole thing out on plywood with a Sharpie. We changed a lot of the dimensions and got rid of a soffit idea that I proposed to install above the medicine chest. And we actually built the whole thing from these Sharpie drawing.

Along the way, we incorporated hidden lights above the faucet, above the medicine chest, hidden outlets, hidden light switch, outlets and a slick HVAC grill in the toe kick.

Troy Lutes, who is a finish carpenter that has been with us for years, applied the stain and varnish by hand on this project and it is as smooth as smooth can be.

We would like to thank the clients of this project. It was so much fun to design and create this with them, even their teenage son gave his input on the design. Again, without them we would not be able to exercise our minds for design and our passion for the finest details.

 

 

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