One Man's Trash...

Is another man's wife's makeup vanity. So, we'd been looking for a cabinet to modify into a makeup vanity for the master bath for a while. I was sort of starting to think that I was just going to have to make something from scratch. I knew I could build something from scratch, but didn't really want to spend the time that I knew it would take to do it right. Let's face it, I'm not a cabinet maker. (Though I've found that I am a pretty good cabinet modifier.)

Anyhow, just as I was ready to start planning a custom cabinet, this little stack of drawers (minus the top drawer) showed up in the ally. The house on the corner just sold and apparently the basement was stuffed with junk that the new owner wanted to get rid of. I know this was in the basement because it smelled like a damp basement, I mean really smelled. So, I threw this smelly thing into the back of the van and got to work measuring. The smell has since abated.

I wound up cutting part of the top drawer section off, both because it was missing the drawer, and because I wanted to achieve a lower overall height. Next, I cut the back 4" off to achieve the proper depth.  After doing this, I had to reinforce the whole back since I had cut out so much of the structure of the cabinet.

Plans this week are to strip the whole thing and get a few coats of shellac on it over the long weekend. The pictures below show the whole thing mocked up to check how everything fits. When it's finished, the baseboard will continue around the bottom of the cabinet and the top will be white marble (another salvage yard purchase, though I have to have the marble cut to the right size and have the edge finished) The Drawers are a little wider than I would have made them if I had started from scratch, but there's still room to fit a small vanity-bench to the left of the drawers if you were to slide it in length-wise.

In the end, I know this will look better than something I could have built with so little time and money invested. Under all of that paint is a really well made, solid oak cabinet with dove-tail drawers. It's probably as old or older than our 82 year old house and should look right at home. I can't wait to start stripping it...