labor day

 

 it's hard to believe it's labor day, historically thought of as 'the end of summer'.  the calendar says we have three more weeks, and i like to think of summer going until the golf courses close and paddle tennis season starts.  so, in my head i at least, have 6 more weeks of summer.  the weather has been sooo spectacular here the lately, that i've been distracted from my writing.  taking a break i guess.  there has still been a lot going on though.  we picked up the desk above from the local arts center where i had loaned it to them last year for their receptionist, hoping to sell it.  we realized that it needed to be 'on its own' in one of the galleries, so we brought it back to the shop to refresh it ... good as new now, and still available.  see the link above or the 'stuff for sale' link in the 'pages' section off to the right there ..

below are a few of the things that have been happening the last couple of weeks.

we finished a base for a 60" round coffee table.  the design was by a new york interior designer and the top was fabricated by our friends at kb woodworking in cairo, new york .. they are the go to folks for fancy veneer work of all kinds ...

our part was pretty simple and involved a curved form and a little joinery .. we shipped it to the designer's finisher for bleaching and it will eventually end up on the east end of long island ..

and we finished up a collection of pieces for a house that will be finished shortly.  we'll be delivering them all on the 11th ... above is a new version of a sideboard we first made back in 2009.  a little different arrangement of the dimensions, and the mirrors and so forth, but essentially, the same piece.

and sam made some funky custom door pulls for a local builder's new frig.  it was a collaborative design, and they came out pretty cool .. the door panels were made from a tag sale bed headboard.  pretty creative project all around.

and trevor and i visited a project we did back in 2009, a house in grafton where we did a lot of work.  after five years, there were some rope lights that needed replacing, and the client was concerned that the weight of the center speaker (very heavy) on the ends of the cantilevered shelf support had bent the shelf.  we'll be making a new version with a thicker top piece and hopefully, we can slide the old one out and the new one in without messing with the wiring, which was pretty complicated, to say the least.

on the way back, we visited another project to check templates for an upcoming railing project that sam will be starting before long .. the rolling door and stools below are also part of that one ..

reclaimed chestnut ... installation check in the upstairs of the metal shop ..

four more of these stools

and the rest of the new house project .. a claro walnut slab coffee table

a dining table and six chairs

and the two swiveling lounge chairs from this blog post

 

chris is working on another pop up tv cabinet .. more on that as it comes together later this week .. 

and we had our first wedding among the 13 cousins ... that would be lizzie, in the white in the middle, sitting on the porch of her new house ... true to the family spirit, they are building it themselves, in their spare time, and for the party, the living room was stacked floor to ceiling with the flooring.

the manchester chamber of commerce railngs

 sam finished the new manchester, vt chamber of commerce/welcome center railings yesterday by adding the 'handicap access' railings.  they needed to be simple and uncluttered, yet strong and light.  he used 1.25" square tubing with center supports and side braces to the wood posts.  there are little plant hangers on the side supports to hang plants on in the summer.

 nice little detail on the ends of the rails and a tricky connection to the stone and concrete work.  the support sytem will be paved over soon.

one of the modified 'greek key' end elements

a fine job on the building renovations by bill drunsic, the owner, teresa findeisin, architecture, along with dan scarlotta of vermont traditional builders, wells, vermont, who headed up the construction.

a new railing project

jim and i pretty much finished up a new railing project at stratton mountain today. sam and jim had installed all but one of the 10 new steel sections that sam fabricated last week and today, we cut, fit and installed the wooden handrails and metal post caps ... glad that's done ... of the twenty cuts, 7 we're angled definitely, and few of the others were square because the posts were installed when the house was built oh, 20 years or so ago, there were almost no two angles or handrail ends the same ... and that involved almost uncountable trips up and down the stairs to the chop saw on the porch .... my legs were humming by the time we were finished ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
view from below ... a definite design change from the original railing below ... our job was to update the existing sort of a 'swiss chalet' look
a little more contemporary and timeless now ...
like always, we started with sam's cad drawing,
from which we made templates on the cnc
and constructed the 10 sections
we did some test fitting and minor adjustments
before we painted them at the metal shop
and made a metal post cap for the clients' approval ...
next we made and finished the recycled chestnut handrails
and cut them to fit today ... tedious, fussy fitting and lots of cuts, but they all fit great in the end.
the masons from brickwerks were working today, putting a new stone face on the fireplace, and when they are finished, we will build and install the two cabinets in the photshopped mockup below. the cabinets are a shortened version of one of a pair we made about 7 years ago. wanna see a bigggg house ... check that link ... the cabinet in that photo is 5' wide and 10' high ... these will be about 54 x 85 .. the post about the tv bracket was to work out the details for the cabinet on the right ... we are also coming down the home stretch on a recycled chestnut table for the dining area of that same house ... more on that later ... all for now ...