Hello friends. It’s been a while since I have written about any DIY nonsense over here on the Jake.News. But I figured that since the Jake.News channel is probably more credible than many of the other news sources out there in the year of our lord 2025 (and what at year it has been already!!), it was about time to drop some slightly above mediocre (depending on who you ask) design yadda yaddas. So here we go- I call it Sweden meets Catskills.
Here we have a vanity that was installed during the pandemic years also know as the COVID years. I’ll spare you all of the backstory except to say that Britt and I tore this bathroom down to the studs (including the floor [and the 600 LB cast iron tub]) in 2020. We didn’t really go bananas with the finishes at first, since we didn’t really understand, at that point, how much time we would actually be spending at this place. Since the downstairs bathroom was one of the first rooms that we rehabbed, there was some Ikea in the mix. To be completely fair, there is nothing wrong with Ikea. Ikea is actually awesome for many, many applications.
The vanity that we originally dropped into here us is the HEMNES / ORRJöN, which is not a bad looking piece. We upgraded the pulls from the get-go by drilling a couple of extra holes and putting some handlebar-style grips on there instead of the little knobby numbers that it came with. But neither Britt nor I really loved the thing once the bathroom was completed.
Here is an early photo of the installation before the shower was even finished-
There we were in December of 2024, spending a couple of consecutive weeks upstate over the holidays with a newly minted garage, which now provided us with a place for cutting and other fabrication away from the elements, even in the dead of winter. Britt had the idea to use some left over rough-cut pine that we had used as siding for the garage to gussy up ye old HEMNES vanity. Her idea was to make the front of the drawers a little more rustic looking to go with the “cabin” flow that rest of the house exudes. I said yes. I apologize in advance that from here to the bottom of the post most of the photos are crappy iPhone snaps.
For starters, the width of the rough cut pine siding was 8″. So we were going to have to join two pieces for both the top and bottom drawer fronts. All good; I picked the cleanest sections of siding and cut them to length (plus a couple of inches for margin), then cut the extra width off of the shiplap edge so that the two sections could join flush. What’s more rustic than having a joint in the front of both drawers?! Aye.
No Wood Working Project is Complete Without Glue and Clamps!
Once all of the glue dried, I measured out and cut the slabs to the actual size of the drawer fronts.
Pine has Knots. We Leaned Into It.
Once the fronts were actually the correct size, Britt jumped in with the sand paper-
I think she did a really great job of getting rid of the grime and splinters without ruining the rough cut look–
Anyway, when it came time to varnish, we realized that the only option we had on hand was deck sealant. Not a terrible option, in my opinion. She was skeptical.
When the sealant dried, Britt gave them another sand, and I drilled the copious amounts of holes in the back, required to fasten them to the rest of the drawer assembly. I installed the top drawer into the vanity for reference purposes-
Britt’s immediate feedback was that the deck sealant made the wood look too yellowish (AKA she hated it). I gave a big sigh and asked her to let me finish the project. We both agreed that if she still felt that strongly about it in a year from now, that we would try again. So, for at least a year, we will have some (yellowish) rough cut pine vanity drawers to look at while sitting on the bowl. Goodnight.
