A New Client's Interesting Idea

Often my new designs are a result of interactions with thoughtful, 'know what we want', clients. I met some folks at the Woodstock Furniture Show. It was totally the last minute and, I mean, totally the last minute. Other furnituremakers were packing up their booths as we were talking ... Anyway, it turns out they had purchased a house in Manchester ( ! ) where I had sometimes gone to parties in the early 70's ( ! ) when I was a bartender. They are remodeling it and when I went by to check it out, it brought back some interesting, hazy memories ... The origianl owner's pool table was even still there ... I took the photo below throught the sliding glass door as there was no one there and roughly photoshopped in their idea for a mirror, a 4" wide frame covered in galvanized, hung on the stone ... I wasn't precisely sure how to go about it so we had the local metalshop bend up some test pieces, stuck them on the wood with 3M Spray 90 adhesive and cut them to length on the table saw with a thin carbide blade and face shield. So far, so good ... We need to discuss finish colors, if any, and get approval for the copper boat nails we placed in the edge of the mirror. Without the nails it is going to be hard to hold the outside metal edges tight to the wood with just the contact adhesive ... Great concept ! Click the photos to enlarge them ...

The fireplace

With the mirror photoshopped in ... Actually, in the picture, it's too big. The stonework is 7' wide, which I didn't know when I did the picture .. I think 4' will be perfect ...

The cutoffs of the steel parts with the spray 90 on them. The folds on the outside edges wrap around where the mirror sits

We are using 1" plywood for the frame to eliminate complicatons from seasonal wood movement ..

With the copper boat nails on the edge ... I plan to try a little patina solution on the galvanized and the nails just to see what it does, after talking with the clients ....

Updating the Ladderback Chair

Above a French ladder back with wooden seat from the 1800's and a Danish Modern 60's? version by Hans Wegner

Ladderback chairs have been made for over three centuries, in hundreds of forms and sizes by people in many different areas of the world .. I have been asked by a potential client to make a contemporary version of the style, to go with a table they have commissioned. I started with some photos they sent me and one of my own contemporary chairs, the black one shown below ... Since, generally speaking, one can't tell much about a chair from a drawing, we start right in at full size, creating a sketch like prototype which can be refined from there ... We found our first version (top below) a little clunky and leaned back too far ... Our second version is closer and perfectly sittable, but at this point I think I could use some client feedback. I can then quickly explore various slat layouts and sizes in drawings based on the prototype. I think the chair could possibly be a little more comfortable if the splats were closer together but that will change the look ... We'll see where it goes from here ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...

Angles are too leaned back for a ladderback ... The black chair is fine with the solid splat.

Front view of and existing chair desing and the screwed together prototype

Second prototype ... closer, but still feels a little heavy .. This has taken on the feeling of an excercise in how minimal the parts can be and still hold together over time ...

Side view ... a little more like a straightleg ladderback than the top prototype

I'm starting to really like the form and am looking forward to refining it more ...
10/20/09

Chair cad drawing with different cross slat layouts
All the same height, different feel to each one ...

Sculptures

One of my blog readers asked about the 'wood that looks like wings' on the wall in one of my blog photos ... It's a pair of bookmatched redwood burl slabs, each about 28" high x 8' long ... I bought them not knowing what I was going to do with them and now I think doing nothing to them is the best ... They also look cool hung vertically, points up ... They also look cooler when they're just oiled like in this picture ... Here are a couple other sculpture pictures .. click the images to enlarge them ...

painted 3/4" steel

consecutive silver maple slabs

spalted maple 30 w x 54 high

Finished the Woodshed

I was thinking today that I'm a pretty busy guy ... I play golf and tennis pretty regularly, I draw for pleasure, I read (and write) a lot, and now that I've finished my woodshed, I'm about to start paddle tennis season and go back to making some pottery ... sheesh. I love it though. One of my longtimest hobbies is spare time functional carpentry. I was a carpenter for seven years before I started making furniture full time in 1980. It's waaaay more relaxing than furnituremaking (1/8" ? close enough ... nail it ... ), and I just like the process of dreaming something up in its space in the landscape, drawing it, and always having it to tinker with when I get the urge. I plan to write more on this later ...
I've been working on the woodshed below since early April and it started out in my head as something totally simple, a one pitch place to put my firewood for the wood stove we installed last year , like the one below I built in 1975 ... Then, Kit pointed out that it would be the first thing you saw when you drove up ... and then, the design just took off on it's own ... Click the pictures to enlarge them ...

Original in 1975 ... Pine handhewn beams (by my brother-in-law and I, broadax and all) Notice the fine mustache and trim figure

Revised sketch in the Greek revival mode to (sort of) match the house and garage .. Gable end ornaments next year...

A little inspiration from Architectural Digest ... I think I'll pass on the reflecting pool

Early April start, this spring .. Previous posts here and here

As it was this morning .... cleaned up the leftovers last thing yesterday ...

I had this piece of stained glass from my old shop. It was made in 1981 by a friend of ours, Stephen Gormley who has gone on the become an internationally famous glass artist ... Correction. ... a really big deal internationally famous glass artist Check out some of the projects on his website ...

Steve and Dan  1981, actually ... 

Anyway, we took teh window when we sold the Arlington property and I've been looking for a place to use it since we left there in 1997 ... Looks good here ..


Back side ... I put a tarp over the back for the winter .. I'll take it down for the air to flow through again next spring
I might if Sam were to get inspired to contribute some serious help, have a new metal shop in me for next summer ... We'll see ... It doesn't cost much to imagine what it might be like and I have all winter to sketch ... ..
Here are a couple other 'small, spare time buildings'

Kit's garden shed ... this one went on with the back wall unfinished for about 5 years, or maybe even more

Front side from the front porch

The garage and metal shop. Actually, I had a contractor frame and roof the main, two car part, but did the siding and metal shop on the far end as a 'spare time' thing ... That one lasted, I think 3, maybe four years

Back side with the metal shop on the far right and the wood shed just peaking out in front of the house

The sawdust shed ... All for now ... I have to find my treehouse pictures from Arlington....

Update on the 'This Old House' Project

We're working away pretty steadily on the house restoration project . We finished construction of the wall hung tv cabinet this week; we're just waiting for approval of the finish color samples. I think we're running slightly ahead of the construction schedule which is always nice. The cabinet below has it's challenges though it looks simple now that it's done. It's a mix of cherry and curly maple with some small moldings in cherry or walnut around the door panels. The door and end panels are resawn solid curly maple so we like to do the first coat of stain (which is pretty much always the same) before we glue them up. Then we typically get the finished color and first coat of finish on the whole door before we apply the moldings. This process prevents a part of the panel that might be unfinished from showing later as the wood moves from season to season ...

Looks simple ... but, there's actually no real much structure to the cabinet so we had to hang it as it's going to hang on the wall to be sure that the doors will hang true.

When we went to the site this week, we took a pattern. There is a channel cut through to the wall behind the cabinet to accomodate the cable box, which is deeper than the cabinet .. We explored the wall behind and found there are two studs that have to be cut and headed off ... not surre about the ebox shown below ... I'd like to get that in there somewhere ..

This shows the cut through to the wall and the tv mounting bracket. It a Sanus; a nice one. Very shallow and well made

This picture shows the French hook hanging system ... Two cleats on the cabinet; two on the wall.

The electrician gave us this box on Wednesday and hoped we could get it in the cabinet behind to the tv ... hmmmmm

We finished installing the moldings and painted the front door .. The paint seemed too shiny for an old door to us. The shinier the finish, the better the UV protection, but the more you see each and every pimple and defect ... We turned the final coat over to the painters and it will probably be a compromise satin finish ...

Part of our scope of work is to refresh/refinish the fireplace surround (which Jim has already done), and install a new lighted cabinet in place of the wooodbox/shelf thing that's there now ...

Trevor, exploring the lighting

Figured out .. This stuff is nice. The plastic tracks are easy to install and hold the lights securely. It's easy to cut and join once you study it for a minute ..

Rough wired and installed ..needs a top molding and some final paint

We also made a pair of 3" thick, well insulated, pine doors for the utility room. Sam made the hinges, floor bolts and a nice thumb latch ...

Inside latch details

Fixed door bolts

2" thick pine frames covered with 3/4" t&g pine outside, the spaces filled with 2" foam and 1/4" Baltic bircg glued and screwed to the inside

We also installed a small cabinet in the library under the stairs that go to the attic ...

Antique Repairs and Restorations

Repairs ... We love 'em ... If they could only talk; then they'd be even more interesting .... This pair of tables came in one at a time with the idea that we only had to put a leg back on one of them and patch a broken corner. However, they came in with a bureau that was a basket case when it arrived and looked like a million bucks when it left .... We fixed and delivered that piece first and when the client saw how her bureau had been transformed, she sent us the mate to the table above with instructions to tune them up and refinish the tops, which had suffered some serious damages over the years. So, as we worked with them, we dreamed up their story ... Who knows? Here's what we think..... Click the pictures to enlarge them as we go ...

Here's the bureau ... When it came to us, it looked like it had been in a barn for quite a while ... The drawer supports had all collapsed and the drawers didn't run, more than half of the base was off, the moldings were flapping ... Backboards were missing ... Will did a good job getting it all back together. It took a few hours, but it was definitely worth doing ... When it left, it looked great. Here's the deal on the tables ...

The builder was a skilled craftsmen. The inlays are nicely done, the veneers on the aprons appear to be hand sawn, and the tops of the pair of tables are pairs of bookmatched boards, 1,2,3 center middle outside ... The boards match .... not an accident .

We opted for scraping rather then stripping ... We find when we strip we always have to do a lot of sanding and that kills some of the handmadeness of the surfaces ... scraping's better in our opinion if you can do it ... The finish was not original and it was thin and flaky and actually shot off the front edge of the scraper as I worked.

After we got the leg back on there were about 10 places on the aprons and drawer faces that needed patching or regluing ... The aprons were bricklaid in about 6 layers and then veneered with the grain vertical . The red arrow shows a leg reinforced with a pair of hinges !! We left them there. They worked and you have to honor the history ...

We patched in a bunch of missing pieces and recolored them to match

Here's an interesting thing .... The legs were all cut at the point where the arrow is and the legs that are below that point on the tables now have a different finish and are held on by short half inch diameter dowels (we know cause they wiggle and we fixed one that was broken off) and in some cases hinges ... It also looks like the detail that is on the legs at one time was also on the aprons and drawer fronts.

One had a broken corner and a rotten spot that needed patching

Luckily I had a piece of crotch walnut with similar figure to make a patch

All in, all done ... and ready for the next 50 years or so ...