An Art Deco Bar Cabinet

We delivered a nice Art Deco influenced sideboard/bar last week ... It was a fun and challenging project. Someone referred to it as 'Dean Martin's Bar' ... I lived in Palm Springs in 1970 for a winter, and it would have been right at home in the house we rented for sure ... The design was a quick sketch I doodled off after a series of rejected CAD drawings ... Sometimes the quickest drawings are the best ... Anyway, there was more to building this then first meets the eye when you look at the sketch. Click the pictures to enlarge them ...

Trevor fluted the legs on the cnc ... we stopped the detail at the tops and bottoms of the door/panels

Will then mortised the legs and created the back and side panels

We couldn't come up with any way to easily do the concentric squares, so we filled the micro pin holes with hide glue and walnut sawdust and sanded them off the next day ... worked sweet and even took the stain and paint ...

Panels finished and case parts ready to assemble

Assembly without the panels

After we applied the moldings to the 1/2" mdf doors, we had to rabbet the door edges and install solid wood edges ... hence the masking tape in this photo

Corner and door close up.....stainless steel knife hinges from Brusso Hardware

Trevor put the lights in even though they were cut from the budget ... We had them on hand from another project and it didn't seem right without them ...

Then we mocked up up the metal end pieces and mirror frame size and got those dimensions all finalized

The finishing process for this piece involved applying a coat of fairly strong brown/red aniline dye, sanding that pretty aggressively and then applying a second coat of the stain along with some black latex paint at the same time ... That mix was sponged around until 'it looked right' and then polished about a half hour later with steel wool and paper towels ... This paint/stain mix makes a nice durable finish as is, but we always add a couple top coats of oil varnish mix for a little shine ... I finished my kitchen with this finish 10 years ago and with a little damp spongeing it comes back to looking pretty much like new ... I have reoiled once or twice in the last 10 years ...

Before the oil coats

after

With the steel galleries by Sam in plce. They had threaded rods welded to their bottoms and were bolted on from under the frames ... We REALLY liked this piece and felt it was one of the most differect and strongest designs for the year ... Happy New Year !