Lauren's bookcase

My youngest daughter tuned 3 early this month. About a week and a half before her birthday we decided she needed a bookcase for her growing collection of books.

Why do all my projects always seemed rushed?

Off to the lumber yard.

The piece is cherry plywood and solid cherry. I used cherry edge banding on all the ply. Only the top of the back and the toe kick are solid.

Since my oldest daughter (5) was helping me I decided not to dado the top and bottom shelf but instead use pocket screws and glue. The piece came out very solid.

I wanted to get it to match the darker furniture already in her room so I tired dye for the first time. I used General Finshes Water-Base Pre-Stain Conditioner and this stuff was like cottage cheese. I opened the can and freaked since it was about 8:00 at night and I needed to get this on that night. It looked like sour milk. The next morning I called the company and they answered the phone quickly and told me this was normal. I coated the piece then off to work.
Next stage was their water based dye in Antique Cherry and luckily this looked as expected. I flooded it on let it sit about 5 minutes and wiped it down. Any darker areas could be “buffed” easily to make them more uniform.

I was a little surprised that the solid wood took more of a brown tone than the plywood which took more of a red tone. All were sanded to the same grit should I have treated the solid wood like endgrain?

Final step was a few coats for General Finishes Polycrylic.

Well not the final step. I left the very back unfinished so Mom and older sis wrote Happy Birthday and a note on it. Then I covered it with some shellac .

Over all I think it turned out good. I like the wood dye but need to figure out the reason the hard wood took the brown and the ply took the red. I got it to blend pretty good an no one else noticed. If they had I would have told them it was by design.