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Project Photos (page 7)
Feel free to send a note with question/comments. Enjoy!
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Decisions decisions....
One of the more interesting decisions we make every year is what to make
friends and family for Christmas. It's enjoyable trying to think of something
that can actually be used or enjoyed and doesn't end up
as clutter later on. We're hoping we came up with a decent idea with these
flower aquariums.
The glass bowls are made in Germany but are available through
Lee Valley Tools .
They're pretty simple, being a glass bowl and a silicone lid into which you
put flowers. Then you add water, a dash of vinegar and presto!!
Instant centerpiece!
The bases were made of saved wood, left-over from other
projects. Left to right back row they're mahogany (that I found in our new
house), myrtle with a maple base, cherry, walnut and cherry (now front row),
cherry, maple and walnut,
For a closer look at one of the cherry bases,
you can look here .
Construction was fairly involved with each base made of ten individual
pieces, built into three sub assemblies and eventually completely assembled.
Finish on them all is a simple oil and wax combination. .
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Shouldn't every stool have wheels?
From the depths of my childhood I remembered my younger brother having a most
excellent toy! It was a stool...a red stool, and it had wheels.
Not having the original, I started putting the concept on paper, added a
little common sense (I did say a "little"!) and these are the result.
Made of poplar and constructed using deep dado's and rabbets, they're good
and tough. The design makes them stable when standing on in front of the
sink while brushing teeth, and the used roller-blade wheels (yes...they still
have their ball bearings) and custom-fitted stretcher make for fun
transportation between the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. When in "truck" mode,
the sides of the stool prevent Lego and other treasures from falling out and
the legs of the stool are shaped to create handles.
Strong, sturdy, bright and fast....what more could a
three year old want?!
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What every boy needs...
Storage for stuff!! The new house has brought new requirements for furniture
as well as the sense of "rooting" needed to actually furnish the rooms in
a somewhat permanent fashion. One of the kids needed a place for stuff so Carolyn put
pencil to paper, sketched this credenza and said "build it!". From Carolyn's
sketch I made a series of detail drawings based also on the constraining
dimensions of the room and space.
The pine was found in Buckley WA. It was home-milled using an old circular
saw mill and stored in a barn for years. A friend and I bought it all and
I brought my half with us when we moved. As the bed is pine, it's a good match.
We milled the wood from the rough stock (we filled eleven, 30 gallon garage
cans full of shavings!) When that was finished I started cutting, glueing and
clamping. OK, I did a little cursing too.. (shhh!!)I also learned a thing or
two about how air-dried pine can move and twist. While cool to see, it can be
quite disconcerting when your recently flat plank now resembles a pretzel!
Regardless, some 40 hours later, here it is!
The cupboard doors are raised panels, each cupboard having an adjustable
shelf. The center set of drawers is on 100lb ball-bearing slides and have
thick plywood bottoms...strong enough for the stuff of a young man. One shelf
on top is adjustable, the rest fixed and the shelf design was perhaps the
largest design and build challenge of the project. The ends of the shelves
are cantilevered; with no means of support so designing them to be strong
enough took a bit of head scratching.
The knobs are baseballs and footballs, the finish a simple water-based
polyurethane as it's fast to dry and virtually odourless.
he shelves are now full of treasures as they were supposed to be and no...we're
not allowed to see what he's got in the drawers!
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Old to new again
In the late 70's the owners of our house build a gorgeous cedar deck for their
new cedar hot tub. Judging from the construction they spared no expense and
I'm sure the deck and tub were enjoyed for years.
But that was before we came along and bought the house and by the time we got
the deck - well, I condemned it. Late this last summer we took it down but did
so nail by nail so we could save as much of the wood as we could. Then I
pressure washed what we saved and stored it.
That same old wood was planed jointed and acclimatized in the shop until it
was stable enough to begin this gate. What resulted was some incredible old
growth western red cedar. The design is our own but we took inspiration from
several nice gates we'd seen.
The rails and stiles are a full inch and a half thick. The field and pickets
are 1 inch thick. All the main joints are pinned mortise and tenon with the
pins being made from a piece of arbutus (madrona) that was from a friends
place in Olalla WA. The lower field is also mortise and tenon (for strength)
as is the bottoms of the upper pickets. The tops of the upper pickets are
dowelled and also sit in a dado. The hardware was purchased from a used
building supply store. The black marks are remnants of old nail and bolt holes
that I decided to leave. They're filled with epoxy though.
I'm hoping that with a little care this old wood that's been part of the house
for so long can stick around for years to come.
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