I normally lurk and post over at Breaktime, but I have a question that will get better answers if posted here.
I am in the process of remodeling a bathroom, for a client in my handyman business. The customer has selected very high-end fixtures, and wants to use an antique sideboard for the vanity. The sideboard is made of walnut. Although I have not yet seen it, I have the dimensions. And it’s not big enough for the sink.
The client simply says “no problem…take the top off, use that to extend the sides so that its deep enough for the sink. Then we’ll just get a marble top made for it.”
So I have this vision of putting an antique sidebboard on my table saw and splitting it down the middle. Then slicing up the top, so that the whole thing can be made deeper (front-to-back) by about 6″, adding some biscuits and glue, and voila — the 19″ dimension is now 25″. (And of course, I’ll be ripping the bottom out too, to allow for the pipes; disassembling the drawers and gluing the drawer fronts in place, so there’s room for the sink.)
Has anybody ever done this? Will my plan make a vanity which is strong enough to hold a fifty pound sink (and a marble top) for the next 30 years?
For what it’s worth, I’m trying to talk her into using a Corian top. I figure that the lesser weight is probably a good idea.
Any advice is greatly appreciated, and probably needed badly.
Thanks in advance.
Dave
Edited 2/11/2003 8:24:31 PM ET by YesMa’am
Replies
I'm a little confused. You want to make the front-to-back dimension larger, right? So why are you "splitting it down the middle"?
At any rate, I wouldn't try to do it the way the customer has suggested. I've modifed old furniture to new uses, and you just can't make a small modification. The seams in the sides won't look right unless you sand and refinish. If you do that, it won't look antique any more, and besides it would be less work to build a new one. Instead, I'd make space to the rear in some way that wasn't trying to be the antique. For instance, you could make what looks like a little wall extension behind the sideboard. It would be your six inches deep, as tall as the sideboard, and a little narrower than the width of the sideboard. The new marble top would cover both the sideboard and the wall extension. Or, for another instance, make a walnut-sided box that you stick to the back of the sideboard. It'd be smaller than the sideboard, and hide behind it. It'd be that same 6 inches deep. One way to think about it is that it is a spacer that connects the sideboard to the wall. Again, the marble top covers both the sideboard and the spacer.
Oh... And don't let her talk you into using the sideboard's existing wood top as the vanity top. Water kills wood, particularly if it has an antique finish which probably has cracks in it.
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