Thread: Vanity Basin shelves/drawers project

Hi there,

I'm looking for some guidance on the construction of a bathroom vanity basin, the idea for which is a combination of something seen in a Reece showroom and something floating around my head for a while. Here is what the version in Reece looks like:
http://www.reece.com.au/products/hires/9501456.jpg

Basically I have some drawers already, which are IKEA Godmorgon, which has a high-gloss white finish on the drawer fronts. They are designed to be wall hung, and to have a one-piece ceramic top attached to them which has basins formed into it.

I'm not a fan of the basin tops, so my plan is to have the drawers sandwiched between two thick timber panels, then sit a bowl type basin on top.

The versions I've seen in Reece obviously used some type of hollow-core timber, since it's about 60mm thick and would weigh too much if it was solid (plus it's clearly laminated/veneered and hollow sounding to thump). I'm guessing there's some kind of lattice in there like a hollow core door. IKEA do similar stuff with their LACK & EXPEDIT range of shevling, which is about 50mm thick and hollow, but with solid parts at key areas for joining.

It's this thick wooden panel type look I'm trying to acheive. I'll need to make the core of it myself, since it will require solid pieces in key areas to attach to the drawer unit, and to mount the basin to on top. I'm thinking I'll use a combination of dressed pine & thin stips of MDF side on for the frame and throughout the hollow sections, respectively. And sandwich this between some 3 or 6mm MDF sheets. I'll end up with 2 panels at
1800 x 480 x 60.

My question is, once I've constructed these panels, should I then just go about obtaining some timber veneer to cover the panels? OR should I use lamiex type stuff since it may get wet? Or do I try and find some pre-veneered MDF to use in place of the 3 or 6mm sheets mentioned above?

I've never glued timber veneer before, but have successfully done so with laminex, so I'm sure I could manage with a little practice.

An alternative I guess would be to try and find some thin (10mm ir so) tongue and groove boards and glue these together and lamiate them to the timber panels, but I imagine this would be much more difficult.

Any other tips or hints in general would be greatly appreciated.

A guy wanting to do something similar posted recently and had this picture of what he was after. I'm after the similar thick panel look (but probably thinnner, that looks about 100mm), but I'm attaching it to drawers which sit underneath, then another piece under that.
Untitled25.jpg picture by jzfredricks - Photobucket