Study built in bookcases and main bath vanity

Even though I havent posted any updates in a few weeks I've been pretty busy on the house. We also had to get the house ready for the big cookout on the 4th. It's hard to entertain guests in a construction zone. It turned out great though.

After finishing the deck last week I turned my attention to building the bookshelves in the Study. In this post I mentioned how I was going to use some of the front porch columns from the old Anderson house in the design. Unfortunately I didn't have enough salvaged 1x12 stock for the rest of the bookcase so I've had to use some new wood, worse yet it's not even Southern yellow pine, it's white pine. Lowes and Home Depot dont carry 1x12's in Southern yellow pine except for a few special pieces. I hate white pine but in the end I really dont think it will matter all that much. The bookcase is going to be stained dark walnut and very little of the white pine boards will be exposed once the books are in. The two main columns in the center are what will show the most and they are the old columns from the Anderson house, the two outside columns are a mix of older and new white pine but only 2" of their face shows, I'll probably do a faux grain on the face of them. Most of the shelves are white pine with the exception of the shelves that are directly above where the doors will be, those are Southern yellow pine.




I still need to build the top portion that will connect the two bookcases.

The other main project I worked on was the main bathroom vanity. We found this vanity totally by accident. We found some free old doors on Craigslist over a year ago. When we went and picked them from the couple that was giving them away their neighbor just happened to stop by. We got into a conversation about how we loved antique furniture and how we were in the process of searching for an old house that we could restore. He mentioned that he had some old furniture in his shop that he had intended to restore but had never gotten around to it and offered to give the pieces to us. He ended up giving us the vanity (an oak dresser), an old gas stove from the early 20's, and a very old, ornate victorian love seat (just the frame actually). He found the dresser on the curb years back about to be picked up by the trash truck.


Not much to look at but I knew that it could be fixed up very nicely. Once we got this house I knew it would be perfect for a bathroom vanity.

I stripped all the ugly brown paint off of it and stained it with a combination of mostly english chestnut and a little red mahogany and then polyed it.





We found the mirror frame in an antique store in Alabama, I have an old mirror that I need to get cut down to fit it. The sink is hand painted in Mexico and the faucet is brushed copper from Nottingham brass. I've already rebuilt the two top drawers to fit around the sink. The brace between the second and third drawers go will be removed. Then I'll biscuit join the drawer fronts together and cut them in half vertically to make two swing open doors. I still have to find some nice brass hardware for them.