Finishing Up

As a final touch-up I add a small chamfer to the walnut inlays using a block plane and a chisel.  Then, I cut holes for the outlets, spend a couple of  hours cleaning up the edges of the carvings, then a couple more sanding the panels, and finally apply a two coats of polyurethane varnish.

Installing Them

I put some pine blocking in at the top and bottom of each place the column is to go, to give me something to screw the new column covers to.  These need to be removable in case I need to replace the countertop.  The side pieces are captured in grooves in the back of the carved pieces, which are screwed to the blocking I just installed.

The other side:

Next is to install some moldings to cover up the screws holding the covers in place.  Recent discussions with others have me started making the molding using a couple of my old wooden planes:

Eventually, I also hope to replace the switch covers with some hand carved versions.  This is, unfortunately getting too long to get into that yet, though - and these may be the subject for another couple pages some day soon.  I will update this page with the final install of the moldings when I get them done.