A Guide to Bathroom Vanities with Exotic Wood Veneers for a Pricey Look Without the Price

 HomeThangs.com – theHome Improvement Super Storehas made their goal to deliver the right product to the consumer, with that in mind, shopping and home design tips, as well as special product selections are being introduced.

There’s nothing more beautiful than furniture made with high quality, exotic wood. Natural wood has its own natural luster, with intricate natural patterns and deep, varied colors, and even a little natural shimmer and shine – no stain needed. But rare woods are becoming increasingly rare – difficult to find and expensive to obtain – and many of the most desirable patterned woods aren’t even suitable for solid construction. Using exotic wood veneers is the ideal solution, because they’re just as beautiful, but less expensive, more flexible, and can be laid over a different kind of solid wood to combine beauty and stability.

HomeThangs has introduced a guide to bathroom vanities with exotic wood veneers, as well as a selection of products to educate the consumers and help them find the right piece to match their taste and fit their space.

1. Instead of turning a log of, say, mahogany into boards, the wood is heated and soaked with moisture to make it pliant, then sliced extremely thin, about 1/42 of an inch, to create a smooth, flexible sheet. Slicing rather than cutting eliminates sawdust waste, and making the boards so thin increases the amount of face material by about 4,000%. This dramatically compounds how much use one can get out of a single piece of wood, and dramatically reduces the cost of the same beautiful wood look, making a gorgeous mahogany vanity like Barrister Bathroom Vanity with Mahogany Veneers from Sagehill Designs for example, something that an average homeowner can afford.

Carlton Corner Vanity With Cherry Veneers From Xylem

2. One of the advantages of cutting wood so thin is that, while full sized boards or planks tend to have a lot of variation in grain, a series of several sheets of exotic wood veneers are nearly identical. Because they’re removed so closely together, and with so little waste in between, the pattern from one sheet to the next is almost the same. That means that multiple veneer sheets can be used to create symmetrical or radial patterns. For example, Carlton Vanity from Xylem uses sequential veneer sheets to create a checked pattern of alternating, symmetrical waves.

Walnut Vanity With Burled Walnut Veneers From Legion Furniture

3. Veneering became incredibly common during World War II in response to material rationing, and if anyone has a bad initial reaction to the word “veneer” it probably comes from the products that were manufactured in that period. Because adhesives were also being rationed, it was common for veneers to simply peel off the furniture. These days, though, we have better adhesives and better access to them, so exotic wood veneers are truly bonded to the piece of furniture, and won’t peel off with time. For example, Burled Walnut Vanity from Legion Furniture is a furniture-quality piece made from the best materials and designed to last a lifetime.

Oxford Vanity With Cherry Wood Veneer From Avanity

4. The most common exotic wood veneers are mahogany or cherry, cut it into thin sheets, and then adhered to a sturdier but less expensive base material, often MDF. This effectively disguises the underlying material as expensive kind of wood, offering the stability of a more solid material, the cost of a cheaper material, and the appearance of a very expensive piece. For example, Oxford Vanity from Avanity combines a solid wood frame with MDF paneling and rich cherry wood veneers, giving the best of all three.

Warm Chestnut Normandy Chest Vanity With Birch Burl Veneers From Hardware Resources

5. Exotic wood veneers can also be used not so much to disguise a less expensive material as to highlight the beauty of the veneer material used. For example, Normandy Vanity from Hardware Resources is made of 100% solid birch, a totally solid wood vanity, but instead of opting for a standard wood grain, it layers the front and side faces with birch burl veneer to give the vanity a more elegant pattern.

Legacy Vanity With Maple Burl Veneer From Avanity

6. There are a couple different kinds of “patterns” that are considered valuable for exotic wood veneers. First and most desirable is the burl. This type of wood is only found in places that a tree has been damaged and grown outward to repair itself – usually in a big, warty-looking bulb near the base of the tree. This material is extremely hard and has an amazing chaotic pattern. But burl wood is not only extremely expensive, it’s also terrible for construction – hard to work with, and not good for supporting weight. Instead, its primary use is in exotic wood veneers. For example: Legacy Vanity With Maple Burl Veneer From Avanity.

Mount Vernon Vanity With Crotch Patterned Veneer From Kaco

7. Another common pattern in exotic wood veneers is “crotch” wood, which is a v-patterned wood created where a tree has branched into two forks. Again, harder to get than just a regular piece of wood, and again with an amazing natural ripple pattern that turns a bathroom vanity into a beautiful, antique-quality piece all by itself. For example, Mount Vernon vanity from Kaco uses the veneers only on the door faces, but the natural simmer and movement of the wood grain bring the whole piece to life.

8. Veneers can be used for smaller wood accents as well as larger panels or for all-over coverage. The Dorchester Vanity by Kaco for instance, has two layers of different patterned veneers cut into different shapes for a sophisticated, furniture-quality finish in a reasonably priced bathroom vanity package. Exotic wood veneers add amazing natural beauty to bathroom vanities that one can’t fake or replicate.

HomeThangs.com is not only a home improvement superstore, it also provides expert design tips and a comprehensive shopping guide, taking the ideas from professional interior designers, and offering tips to the consumers on how to pick the products to best suit their needs.