Vanity Slab Counter Tops in Fairfield County
- Taylor Souter
- Aug 1, 2015
- 3 min read
Before we even think about taking a trip to the lumber yard, we sketch up a design of the proposed job. This helps to ensure that both the client knows what to expect, and we know what it is we have to build. Once the client approves or makes any renditions to the design, we can then start the build phase. To go along with the Teak Vanity, we also made one in Maple and another in Butternut. Instead of a standard wood counter top, like we did with the Teak, these two will feature a live edge wood slab for the top.
Butternut isn't a very common species to find in woodworking; being that it is fairly soft and the grade of wood mostly found is quite rustic, it often gets overlooked. However, if you're looking for something that has beautiful color and a little character, it can be a great choice. It's grain pattern is similar to that of maple and cherry, but the color is a tantalizing amber brown, contrasting between the annular rings which produces a certain flare when the sun hits it at just the right angle. Our client designed the base, adding open shelving and setting back the flanking sides to add some visual interest.
Instead of going with a similar color wood for the counter, they chose something to contrast the base cabinet. After sifting through multiple websites for a worthy piece, we decided upon using Monkeypod. This is a tropical species and is very rare to see in the Northeast/New England area, as it mainly stays in its domestic region. The grain is similar to Mahogany species, being mainly straight and having medium to large pores. However Monkeypod is prized for its contrasting colors of golden and dark brown, and sometimes highly figured grain patterns.
The Maple vanity is meant to go along with the master bathroom, so it's the biggest and most intricate of the three. We really made all the stops on this cabinet. We laid up our own Quilted Maple veneer on MDF, ensuring that we got the exact figure and grain that we needed to book match and run the grain through top drawer fronts, giving the look of one continuous piece of wood.
For this counter we chose to stick with the same species of wood and chose a Hard Maple slab. Now this really was a hunk of wood; the raw slab that we received was over 10 feet long, 35 inches wide, and 2.5 inches thick. We were very fortunate to have found this piece from WoodVendors; a great source for slabs and pretty much any species of wood you can imagine. These guys were great to work with, they pulled slabs out of their warehouse and let us know if there were any defects that would cause problems for us. Below is a picture of the slab, which came all the way from Washington state.
You can get a general idea of what the wood will look like from looking at a rough slab, but you never really know what surprises will be in store until you plane down the face. This slab was so large that we had to bring it to the local lumber yard to surface both sides. When it emerged on the other side of the planer, we knew we had made the right choice. The figure in this piece was better than one could have hoped for. The grain was more exceptional than on some pieces of select veneer; pictures hardly do it justice.
This project came together nicely and we were very fortunate to be given the opportunity to build these three distinct vanities, which will hopefully bring the owners joy every time they look at them.
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