I am beginning the completion of my first casework, a bathroom vanity. The plan is to put inset drawers/door into it.
My question is, what sort of finish do I use on the drawers? The inside of the vanity is white melamine, so I do not need to worry about the main storage behind the door, however I know not to use oil…as it will stink! Is poly ok? I was thinking about shellac, but I do not know if it would be tough enough for the daily abuse of personal items (brushes, hair dryers, etc).
Thanks!
Gary
Replies
Gary , most any type of film finish coat will be great , I use lacquer.
For the past couple of years, I've been making my drawers from prefinished baltic birch. I use 5' x 5' sheets for the bottoms and make the sides, fronts, and backs from the "strips" that come in various widths and have rounded and finished edges.
With a bit of planning, all raw edges are buried, so once the drawers are made and fitted, they're done until installation. The added cost of the prefinished birch is recovered by not having to finish them.
Gary,
One option is to go with a water based finish. You can even mask off the face and use an aerosol spray water-based poly on the drawer boxes. After the first coat dries, give it a light sanding with 320 to deal with any fibers that have raised, then go with two more coats.
Keep in mind, no steel wool or tack rags when using water-based.
Good luck with the vanity!
Frank
Let me clear up a point. You don't want to use any oil based finish inside an enclosed space. "Oil based" is varnish, poly varnish, poly, Danish oil, tung oil etc. "Inside" would include the inside surfaces of the carcase or any part of the drawers except the outside front of the drawers.
Acceptable finishes are shellac, waterborne acrylics and most lacquers.
I wouldn't worry about the stink from varnish. I finished a bathroom vanity recently and on all the exterior parts used Pratt & Lambert 38 varnish thinned so I could apply and build it up as a wipe-on varnish. The vanity gets water sloshed onto it from quick-and-messy hand-washers and has held up flawlessly. The odor was gone by the time I installed the piece, thanks in part because the varnish was thinned.
I think you want more water-protection than shellac can really give you. I used shellac on the interior of the drawers because I wanted some protection (the females in the house store their make-up and various beautifiers in there) but didn't want to trap a varnish odor in the enclosed space.
Norman
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