Sawdust on the Floor

I guess I shouldn’t really be complaining I have a great woodworking shop.  Well it could be a bit bigger, and there are a few tools I would like to add.  But I would be willing to bet that every one reading this has the same sentiments about their shop.  But being honest, the one thing my shop really lacks, and that is a separate area for finishing.  When I have a project that is in the process of having the finish applied, all other work in shop comes to a complete stop. I have found the hard way that wet finish and sawdust do not mix. And this is where I stand. The bathroom vanity has gotten a good coat of stain, and in fact the first coat of polyurethane has been applied. So until I am able to get all of the finish top coats applied to the vanity, I can’t make any more sawdust.  My only option left is to start planning the next stage of this upgrade. 

The next logical part of this project is for me to build and finish the wall mounted mirror that will reside over the vanity.  The article in the “This Old House” magazine that we are using for inspiration had an “Arts and Craft” Mirror that we really liked, so that is what I am striving to duplicate. Building the mirror really shouldn’t be that big of a task, it’s not an overly complicated design piece.  However; the trick will be to marry the vanity and mirror with the rest of our existing bathroom layout so we have a cohesive look.

The dimensions of the bathroom mirror pretty much are dictated by the space we have to work within.  Like the vanity in the original pictures from the “This Old House magazine”, our vanity will be installed into an inside corner.  The one in the article has a right hand corner; ours will reside in a left hand inside corner.  The wall behind the vanity extends another 57″ to the right; along this wall you will find a small window and end of our bathtub. 

The distance from this inside corner to the window measures only 33 ½” horizontally, not a lot of room to work with.  After some discussion we decided that we wanted a couple of things to occur in this small space.  First we want the mirror to be centered in this horizontal space; we also wanted the mirror to be flanked by two sconces.   Doing a little measuring of sconces we already have in the house and some on line shopping at Bathroom lighting  we have shopped with before.  We came up the following for a layout.  The mirror will measure 20” wide by 40” tall. This will leave 6 ¾” of space on each side of the mirror.  I hope my math is right on this, otherwise I will have a lot more work to do.

Taking our cue of the TOH article we want to include the same horizontal band shown in the concept picture in our bathroom.  We plan to install the band so that the top edge of it aligns with the top edge of the existing window trim.  As in the concept picture the mirror will extend down from this horizontal band.  The sketch at the left is what we are planning on doing.  The existing window is cased in some cove molding that I made in the shop.  We originally we wanted to keep, the cove molding, but now we are leaning more toward removing it and replacing it with flat casing.   As much as I like the cove molding, I just think it will look wrong next to the flat trim of the mirror.

Taking a closer look at the concept picture, it looks to me like the mirror is actually a door for a medicine cabinet.  Building the mirror as part of a medicine cabinet would be fun, but have done some prior work on this wall; I know that there is a vent pipe running vertically directly behind the center line of the vanity. So it looks like I don’t get to build another medicine cabinet. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t make the mirror appear as if it were part of a medicine cabinet.

I plan to make the mirror out of 4/4 red oak stock.  The mirror itself will come from an old plate glass mirror that the builder installed in our house, some 32 years ago.  I don’t know about you, but I just hate to throw things like that away, so it has been in my shop all that time, just collecting dust. It will have to be cut down to fit the new dimensions of the new mirror, but I think I will wait to do that until the mirror is done, just in case I goof on the math.   

You know I was just thinking, since the vanity already has a seal coat of polyurethane on it on it, I could probably just cover it up, move it out of the way and get busy working on the mirror.  Then I could apply the remaining finish coats to both the mirror and vanity at the same time.  Wished I would have thought of that sooner. But then I was anxious, Ok maybe the right word was apprehensive about how the green stain would actually look so I wouldn’t have wanted to wait on applying the stain.    Reading this I know understand why my wife says I sometimes drive her crazy. Oh well, I think I will go make sure that the vanity is dry so I can move it and get to work.  See Ya.