Bertch Craftwood Bathroom Vanity Style

Look from the door edge inward and you can count the steps. The outer edge of the frame is eased and profiled, not square. The frame face runs flat for a band, then turns down in a cove to the panel recess. The panel comes back up out of that recess with a bevel, and then — this is the part that separates Craftwood — the flat center field is outlined by its own raised step, set in from the panel edge. Four changes of plane before you reach the middle.

The drawers are built the same way at different scales. The wide top drawer is not a slab: it has a long, narrow recessed field surrounded by a heavy moulding that reads like a picture frame laid on its side. The two stacked drawers beside the door each carry a small raised panel with the same stepped border, so the ornament repeats three times down the right side of the cabinet. Nothing on this front is left plain.

All that relief needs light and room. Under one ceiling fixture a Craftwood front throws real shadows, and the cabinet reads as furniture rather than as casework — good in a formal powder room, heavy in a small windowless bath with dark walls. On a wide vanity the repeated panels settle into a rhythm. On a narrow one they can crowd. We would rather you see the door at the width you actually have before deciding.

Craftwood is part of Bertch’s Classic series — framed. Classic is Bertch’s framed series, built in solid hardwood and offered in more door styles and finishes than any other — stains, painted colors and hand-applied glazes across eight wood species.

Bertch builds these on 3/4" solid hardwood door frames with raised or flat panels, 5/8" solid hardwood drawer boxes dovetailed front and back, and plywood floors, backs and shelves with a natural birch veneer interior. Undermount soft-close drawer glides and concealed soft-close hinges come standard.

Every Bertch vanity is built to order in Waterloo, Iowa: configurations, storage solutions, tops and finishes are selected per project, nothing is off-the-shelf. Bertch warrants its products to be free from defects in material or workmanship for as long as they are owned by the original purchaser.

This is the door a glaze was made for. Hand-applied glaze pulls into the cove, the panel bevel and the stepped border, and dries darker in the corners where it cannot be fully wiped back — which is the whole effect. On Craftwood that means every one of those plane changes gets outlined, and the panel reads as though it had been in the room a long time. It is the strongest aging effect of any door in the series.

Paint and stain take it differently. A painted color puts all the attention on the profiles, because the surface is even and the only variation left is shadow. A stain adds grain on top of the relief, which can be a great deal at once — on a figured species the cove and the grain compete for attention. If you want Craftwood in a stain, we usually steer toward a quieter species and a mid-tone color.