Tiger Maple Bathroom Vanity

I had an opportunity to build a new bathroom vanity for a friend. We chose maple and decided that tiger maple would work. I had a pretty good supply, so I set to work. The case is all 3/4” pre-finished maple plywood. The face frame is held together with pocket screws and the frame is fastened to the case with glue and pocket screws. The exposed end panel was going to be finished, so I used a one side only pre-finished plywood panel here.

The drawer boxes are 1/2” baltic birch plywood banded with maple veneer on the top exposed edges. The drawer bottoms are 1/4” maple ply with and MDF core. It is a true 1/4” in thickness, flatter and dimensionally more stable than even plywood. I use this exclusively now since plywoods are not the same thickness and even differ from company to company these days. The only difference is that it is about twice the weight as the plywood.

The doors are cope and stick with the same 1/4” MDF core maple plywood used for the panel. With so much going on with the face frame, door frames and drawer fronts, I chose to not use a figured maple for the door panels. All these pieces are 1/2” overlay with soft close euro hinges and soft close accuride drawer slides.

Woods with gnarly grain like tiger maple have a lot of end grain exposed all across the surface and benefit from dying rather than staining. The dye penetrates more deeply into the end grain and popping the tiger stripes. I custom mixed the dye to match the wood color in the bathroom. I use alcohol with Transtint dye and make the solution a bit lighter in color than I want. I do this because you can build a darker color with dye by adding successive coats to bring up to the color you want. This also allows me to keep the color more even across the piece. On top of this I used a coat of boiled linseed oil and finally two coats of sprayed on catalyzed lacquer, rubbed out between coats.

Update: added picture of installed vanity. I also did the rest of the work on the remodel. New floor fixtures and countertop etc.

-- Bill G - West Springfield, MA