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Home / Projects / Vanity in White Oak

Vanity in White Oak

A bathroom vanity crafted from quartersawn white oak, incorporating antique hardware and tiles

Photography by Kendall Reeves, Spectrum Studio of Photography and Design

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In response to the disappointing news that chemo — number 12 out of 12 — has been postponed for a week due to this morning’s blood test results (absolute neutrophils and platelets are too low 🥲), here are a few of my current favorite things: Our front porch, a catalpa blossom, and the catalpa tree covered in blooms.

Don’t get me wrong — I’ve been dreading this last infusion. But I was ready to see the backside of it. Another week of feeling good and being able to taste food is a pretty good consolation prize!
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#therewillbecake #home #pancreaticcancer

The sun came out after 4” of rain, and with it c

The sun came out after 4” of rain, and with it came a beautiful breeze. So a couple of geezers went to the park for a walk. What a lovely day!
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#happy #cancer #pancreaticcancer #gratitude #goodlife

My current kitchen job has a curved cabinet for on

And now for something different: chunky wooden kno

And now for something different: chunky wooden knobs. I still have final fitting to do; a few doors need to have their hinges let farther in, as with this little door. I’m working on wrapping up the main cabinets before chemo next Tuesday so I can prime and paint during the last week of June.
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#customcabinetry #madefromscratch #maplecabinets #soapstonecountertops #womanownedbusiness

One of the topics we touched on when I spoke with

Hinged (as opposed to unhinged). Yesterday was a s

Hinged (as opposed to unhinged). Yesterday was a short one, spent hanging the doors in my current kitchen job. I will finesse the fit next week when I add doorstops, catches, and really start to pull this thing together with trim.

Hinges are 2-1/2” ball-tip butts from Rejuvenation. These are pretty well indistinguishable from the original hinges in many early-20th-century buildings. The pin is removable, a great help when fitting doors. While there is a little movement between the hinge leaves and the pin, I find that tad of slack makes it easier to hang doors than it is when I use fixed-pin butts made to really tight tolerances.

I have been buying hardware and light fixtures from this company for decades, and I am well aware that they were purchased a few years ago by a big conglomerate. While the change in ownership has certainly resulted in vast reductions to the variety of early-20th-century designs they used to sell and a focus on current trends (my eyes are tired from overexposure to mid-mod minimalist-everything), I continue to find these hinges a very good balance of period-faithful design, user-friendly tolerances, and price. No, they are not manufactured in the States.

One bit of advice for anyone trying these for the first time: don’t even think about using the screws that come with the hinges while you are fitting the doors unless you are looking for an exercise in frustration; the screws are the weak part of this product. You must use temporary screws, preferably steel. This time I am using some number five countersunk slotted-head brass screws from @jamestowndistributors .

Finally, I am aware of the large drawer face at lower left in this shot. It’s back in the shop to be fitted with its face support, which will keep it flat. We have had hot, extremely wet weather the past week and the windows at the job site are open while we are working there, which has resulted in a dramatic increase in relative humidity and the kind of movement you would expect from wood as a result.

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#bungalowkitchen #insetdoors #traditionalcupboards #customcabinetry #periodkitchen #rejuvenationlightingandhardware #rejuvenationlighting #notsponsored

After mortising the doors for my kitchen job, I ha

After mortising the doors for my kitchen job, I had to do a little last-minute work on this chair, one of a pair that I should have delivered to Chicago in March, 2020. My clients paid me in full and told me to wait until things were safer. They’re coming to get them this Sunday. I’m going to miss them. Tony couldn’t resist the blanket so he lay there while I worked.
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#shopcat #pandemiclife

Getting there. Today I returned to work at my curr

Getting there. Today I returned to work at my current jobsite for the preliminary fitting of doors. This job has 10, now all fitted to tolerances appropriate for a paint finish. I used pennies to gauge the fit of the upper doors and slightly thicker fender washers for the sink doors (at the bottom, but a penny’s gap at the top). Tomorrow I will mortise the doors for butt hinges, then take them back to hang and take care of the closing stile spacing.

I’m using the Lie-Nielsen No.5 that Jim Ferrell gave me after the first class he took with me at Kelly Mehler’s school in 2007. (The school is now @pinecroftwoodschool ) The Jawhorse that @strazzafurniture recommended to me a few years ago is ideal for this job.

The doors are solid maple with traditional tenons and panels fit in grooves. And today was special because the soapstone counters from Quality Surfaces went in. So lovely.

Thanks to @katiedigital for the photo of me working.
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#customcabinetry #bungalowkitchen #traditionalcabinetmaker #craftswoman #livingwithcancer #pancreaticcancer #kitchenthink #pandemicremodel #bloomingtonindiana #nrhillerdesign

Current work. Kitchen design jobs have taken over

Current work. Kitchen design jobs have taken over the guest bedroom. I am having a blast coming up with context-sensitive, functional kitchen designs for some of the most mind-bendingly challenging spaces in old houses from the early 19th- through early 20th-century, among them an 1830s house in Upstate New York, a 1904 in Providence, Rhode Island, a 1910s house in Kentucky, and a worker’s bungalow in Chicago built in 1895. I have to take my figurative hat off to these clients; they have lived in some of the hardest-to-organize spaces I’ve seen over the course of a 40-year career in this field. The satisfaction of coming up with a plan that honors the history of each place and respects the architecture is immense.

I’m also completing the process of gathering images for “Shop Tails,” which @lostartpress is now designing. Joy! This shot is from time at the pool with my sister @magdahiller our mother @mladler6 and grandma, Esse, circa 1966.

The colors of this Morris pattern fabric helped a client think about coordinating counter and tile choices with the pale gray blue green stove she is buying from #lacanche . I often suggest that people look to fabric and paper patterns they love for guidance in choosing colors for secondary elements once they’ve set their heart on a foundational piece or material. It’s a helpful trick I learned years ago when pondering which colors to use in our kitchen, referring to a piece of wallpaper by #trustworthstudios .

I got little work done last week because the side effects of chemo were so intense, but the weekend is proving productive.
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#cancer #shoptails #workinprogress #familyalbum #1960s #makingthingswork #grateful

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