This is the top in one piece for both night stands. A lot of people hate sapwood. I don't. Sapwood is the lighter colour. Its found towards the outside of the tree. The darker more uniform colour was once sapwood too, but as the tree ages it gets harder and changes to the colour we expect to see. In this case the red in cherry. The sapwood is more like a creamy maple.

This is a glue up of 4 individual boards cut from a 9 inch 8 foot long board. I like to rip all my boards to less than 6 inch so these boards are all roughly 4 1/2 inch wide. Playing with the grain direction I discovered this pattern which looks like the figure 8 pattern.