I’ll be honest, I feel like I’ve spent the vast majority of my woodworking career jointing and milling lumber to thickness and squaring things up. This project was something else entirely. It’s a dressing vanity with a decorative swoosh that wraps around one side, across the front, and down the other. There’s real geometry involved, and the finishing sequence matters just as much as the joinery. Let me walk you through how I built it. This was a highly custom piece for a client who couldn’t find what they wanted at the Denver Design Center.
Starting with the Top
Starting with the TopI started with the top because it’s the simplest part to knock out. Getting it into the finish room early means it can be drying while I’m working on everything else. Nothing fancy here, just milling it up, squaring it, and getting it out of the way so I could focus on the more complex stuff.
Creating the Swoosh Templates
The swoosh is the defining feature of this piece, and it all starts with good templates. I used quarter-inch MDF and a jigsaw to rough out the shapes, leaving my line intentionally so I could sneak up on it with the drum sander. When the drum sander’s radius was too large for a particular curve, I switched to a flexible sanding strip to dial it in the rest of the way.
The swoosh has a one-inch offset at its center. To create that offset, I glued my first template down to a piece of MDF so it sat on the router bearing, then used that bearing to cut the offset into the next piece. From there, I could line the curve of my template up to the larger piece and determine the exact height of each section. Once I had that figured out, I marked everything out and made my cuts.
I did this same process for each part of the swoosh, and as I worked, I laid everything out in a dry arrangement in the orientation it would eventually live on the cabinet, then labeled each piece. With a pattern this complex, it’s easy to grab the wrong piece and cut a mortise in the wrong face, so the labeling step saved me more than once.
Preparing the Sub-Panels
The front lower panel is fixed, purely decorative. But I didn’t want any raw plywood edges showing on the bottom or along the front between that panel and the upper drawer. So I edge-banded those edges first, then ran everything through the drum sander to make sure it was flush and smooth before moving on.
Here’s the thing about painting over plywood edges, even when they’re edge-banded: the grain structure of plywood veneer looks different from solid wood edge banding. Plywood is made by spinning a log and peeling off a continuous sheet, which gives the grain a different character than rip-cut solid wood. Paint won’t hide that inconsistency; it’ll actually highlight it. So before I applied the decorative veneer, I laid a base layer of veneer over each sub-panel first. That gave me a consistent surface to work on top of.
Veneering the Swoosh Pattern
With the sub-panels prepped, I started ripping veneer to create the swoosh pattern. As I worked through each piece, I laid them out on top of my templates to see how the grain would flow with the shape. I wanted the grain to follow the curve of the swoosh so everything moved together visually. Once I was happy with the layout, I edge-glued the seams and taped them tight while the glue dried.
After the glue was set, I traced each template shape onto the veneer sheet, did a rough cut at the bandsaw, leaving the line, then double-stick-taped each piece down to its corresponding template. From there, it was time at the router table to bring each piece to its final shape using the pattern routing setup.
Then I glued each veneered piece down to its sub-panel, taking my time to make sure everything was laid out with that consistent one-inch space between sections so the swoosh looked natural and even. I taped everything down before bagging it so nothing shifted, and cleaned up any squeeze-out after the fact.
Leg Joinery and Assembly Prep
For the legs, I cut them to the final length with a stop set on the fence. I set it up so I clear the stop before the blade finishes the cut, which gives the piece a little room and keeps it from getting pinched between the blade and the fence. Kickback is not something I want any part of.
The whole case goes together with floating tenons. Plywood does move a little, but nothing like solid wood, so I didn’t bother floating them in a dado. I just used the Domino to cut mortises into the edges of the plywood and then cut the corresponding mortises into the faces of the legs. Because the swoosh runs from one side all the way across to the other, I had to keep close track of which panel was left and which was right so the mortises landed in exactly the right spots.
Finishing Sequence Before Assembly
Before I glued anything up, I taped off all the areas that would eventually be painted black. It would be nearly impossible to tape that recessed swoosh area cleanly once the cabinet was assembled. The plan was to spray everything with clear coat after assembly, then pull the blue tape. That leaves a slightly raised edge along the tape line. I can run a razor blade right along that ridge and get a clean, crisp line to mask to for the black paint. The swoosh gets painted last, as the final step.
To make the glue-up more manageable, I glued the sides up as sub-assemblies first and let those dry completely before bringing the front and back panels in.
One detail worth noting: the bottom panel is fixed, but the upper drawer front has the swoosh running across it too. I built those two pieces together and veneered them together as one unit, then cut them apart. That way, the swoosh pattern lines up perfectly when the drawer is closed. It’s one of those things that’s much easier to do before you separate the parts than trying to match them up after.
Drawer Pull
This vanity is going in the same room as a bed I also built, which has a similar swoosh running through its design. The bed’s nightstands have a finger-pull cutout in the drawer front, a decorative swoosh shape instead of a hardware pull. I used that same template here to keep the two pieces speaking the same design language.
The nightstand drawers are narrower than this one, so once I ran out of template, I just freehanded the rest of the shape in a way that felt right. It’s an organic thing, and working it freehand let me finish it off in a way I was happy with. The bandsaw handled the bulk of the cut, and then I finessed the shape at the drum sander until it felt good.
The last detail on the pull was routing a cove around the inside edge of the finger slot. You don’t want a client reaching into that opening and feeling a sharp corner every time they open a drawer, so a cove bit at the router table softened it up into something that actually feels good in the hand.
Lower Shelf and Upper Drawer
At some point, I also fabricated a lower shelf. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure if I just forgot to record that part or lost the footage. Either way, I cut notches into the bottom of the legs and the shelf just drops right into them. Glued in place, it’s plenty strong for what it needs to do.
While the sub-assemblies were drying, I milled up lumber for the upper drawer. I squared one end, then flipped it and used a stop to cut the opposite end to length. I say this a lot but I’ll say it again: always use a stop when you’re cutting parts that need to match. It’s not optional if you want consistent results.
Joinery on the drawer is standard dovetails. I also set up to cut a groove for the bottom panel, making sure the groove wouldn’t run through the visible portion of the dovetail. That would look awful, and there’s no fixing it after the fact.
I pre-finished the drawer bottom panel and all the inside faces before assembly. Trying to spray inside an assembled drawer is a mess. The back pressure from the spray gun just blows finish everywhere, and the overspray goes all over things you don’t want coated. Pre-finishing before assembly is always the move. As always, I checked for square during glue-up.
Hardware
I used Blum Tandem soft-close drawer slides. I thought I had footage of the drawer going into the cabinet with that soft, satisfying close, but apparently that didn’t make it into the edit. You’ll have to take my word for it that it works beautifully, or check the still photos.
I’m the owner of Benham Design Concepts, a mixed media art studio where I design and build custom furniture and other works of art using wood, glass, stone, and various metals.
In this blog, I talk about the art I create, my journey, and the things I learn along the way.