I bought some architectural columns and knee walls to go in the large opening between my front hall and the living room, but instead of creating a frame around the space, the columns will butt into the door frame – so I was able to repurpose that frame wood for other things – including the drawer fronts for my second-floor-hall built-in cabinet.

Yesterday, I finally got around to cutting those to size, milling them to about 3/8″ thick, and planing them nice and smooth. That was the easy part. Finishing them to match the rest of the woodwork in my house was a bit trickier.

I’ve been playing around with various recipes for a while, and the closest I can come (without going to crazy amounts of trouble,. e.g. a violin finish) is four coats of garnet shellac (I like the Tiger Flakes from Tools for Working Wood (TFWW)) followed by a coat of Behlen’s Jet Spray Lacquer Toner in Dark Walnut (which is currently also available from TFWW, but Behlen has been sold, so it might not be available in the same formulation for long), with a topcoat of Liberon’s Black Bison black paste wax.

The finish is not a perfect match for the old mouldings – it needs a touch more red and a touch less brown (and a shiny topcoat – the original, now patinated, finish is likely a pine-resin varnish), so I’ve ordered some dark red walnut lacquer toner to give that a try on the replicated three-part mouldings I’ll be installing in the kitchen and first-floor hallway…when I get around to that project.

But for a second-floor back hallway built-in, my current recipe is wholly acceptable.

They all fit perfectly left to right, but I’ll have to take a couple swipes off the bottoms of each for the top-to-bottom fit. Then I’ll glue and screw them in place from behind, and install these bin pulls. Then there’s the paneled doors for the upper part…