Libraries We Have Built Over The Years

I ran into some long time clients yesterday at the local hardware/general store. We were talking and they mentioned they were considering building a library next year and could I send them some pictures ... I rounded up a few and realized that rather then send them in an email, I would post them here with some comments and explanations. Most of the these projects were before I started writing this blog so there is not much in the way of construction photos .... They are not all libraries, but exhibit some of the various book storage design possibilities ... Click the photos to enlarge them ... More pics later ....

This stained cherry library had some beautiful details...The soft lighting for the miniature decoys over the windows, a fly tying desk., a 'secret' gun cabinet with lighted storage and opposite the wall shown above, a complete home office ... I have that picture somewhere ...
A classic natural cherry home office and bookcase circa 2004 I think. The clients and I got a couple design awards for this one, a portfolio award from Custom Woodworking Business magazine and one from the VWMA.
The opposite wall with a custom, built in fly tying desk ...
A mini library. This room was about 8' x 10' but we squeezed in two walls of floor to ceiling bookcases, a desk and a beautiful door with stained glass ... This wall is adjacent to the one above with the door in between them.
Not a library per se, but a really fine cabinet full of stuff. Down lighting on each shelf, uplighting on the top of the case ... An incredible collection of objects and only a very small portion of the client's extraordinary all original decoy collection.
My largest project ever and my favorite drawings ever ... This was way before CAD for me and I recently stuck these to the ceiling of the closet in my office ... If you enlarge this one, you can see the whole room. The photos below really don't do the room justice. For this project I had to take on a partner, Andrew Pate of Andrew Pate Designs in Cambridge New York for this one ... He had a much larger shop than I did at the time and more experience in long distance built ins than I ever want to have ... Yikes! What anxiety. Will this thing fit? It's four walls, floor to ceiling in a Upper East Side Pre War ... I mean, really ...
A. from drawings above ... Well it all fit ... It was a huge installation and four of us had to spend more than a couple nights in the city ...
B. from drawing above ... Lots of details ... The wood was cut from the clients' Vermont land; dried in New York State; fabricated and assembled in Arlington and Cambridge; finished before delivery; and delivered to NYC and installed there ... It was also the year we moved from Arlington to Dorset .... Did I really do this? I guess.
C. Lots of details ... The stereo all pulls out; the vertical 'drawers' on either side of the tv pull out and hold boxes of flies ... Not shown, wall d. above, and the fly tying desk and custom rod and reel storage. The arrow in the sketches above points to a view of the room ceiling if you're lying on the floor. There was a challenge there to make that all make sense too ... Wonderful clients, wonderful project ...
And, you can always paint them ... This project we finished this summer and it actually has a blog link ... The Wall
The installation day
In the shop ... See the blog link for more info on this one
And here we have a totally minimalist approach ... live edge curly maple and fir supports ... All for now ...

The Furnished Walnut Paneled Room

This morning, I saw the finished room that we have been working on, (and here), counting the design process, since the first of the year. It looked great. The architecture was by Liz Calabrese of Calabrese Architects and the interior design, fabrics, wall and floor coverings, colors, and some furniture was by Mary Jo Gourd of Ramsay Gourd Architects. While I kind of had a vision of it in my head as we were working, it had even a better warmth and depth as a completed project than as a visualization in my mind's eye ... The light coming in from the windows made it a little tough to photograph, but I think you can get the idea. We're going to put a folding, black speaker cloth door over the stereo equipment under the Claro walnut desk (bottom photo) and build a bar (we worked up an interesting concept to pursue this morning) for the longer wall opposite the fireplace. There are still personal touches to add, but, on the whole, I could move right in .... Click the pictures to enlarge them ...

Beautiful, bright, screened in porch on the south side

A game table area

The bar will go against the longer wall

Back to the beginning ... the door will go on the now open equipment cabinet under the desk

A Claro Walnut Slab Table

This post actually starts back in February when I wrote abut some claro walnut slabs that I had on hand. So far we've completed projects with two of the slabs ... I still have one available ... The latest project is a desk/table for a niche in the walnut paneled room we completed recently. It involved some fine metal fabrication and welding by Sam, as well as a good effort from the woodshop team to polish up the slab and get it to Holman Studios for one of Steve's fine finish jobs ... Anyway ... Here it is ... Click to enlarge the pictures for better viewing .....

Close up of the model and the figure in the Claro walnut top (from Good Hope Hardwoods)


The whole deal

Fine welding by Sam ... that's 3/4 x 6" solid bar welded to 1/2" and 1")

The naked base ...
The base building process below

The flat trestle bases and a 1.5" solid round bar connector ... drilled up through the bases and bolted to the tapped solid round stock ... Bolts and unbolts for shipping ...

The jig for welding the steel parts together

First end welded

Finished the Walnut Paneled Room (for now)

OK ... We're done here for a while ... The carpenters now have to install the columns, ceiling and ceiling beams and the door and window trim before we can finish the baseboard, the moldings, and the other miscellaneous parts that return into the trim ... Lookin' good ... Click the pictures to enlarge them ... Don't be alarmed by the pink/purple paint .... it's just a primer for a dark rich red trim color ... We still have a desk to finish and a bar cabinet to build, so, ... more later ...

showing the wall opposite the fireplace and the niche where the desk will go

The sliding doors go in the opening to the right which is the entry back to the main house

showing the doors open and ready for the tv

Here I photoshopped tv in place

A Walnut Paneled Room (Update)

Update for 6 /23 ... back tomorrow for more

We put the fireplace/tv surround in place today

Baseboards and moldings tomorrow ...

This is an update from the post of June 14th, entitled the 'Current Big Thing'
6/22/09
Today we delivered and began the installation of a roomful of walnut paneling that we have been working on, off and on, for the last month. We had to wait for the floor to be finished, and it was, last Friday. Picked up a U-Haul today, loaded up and delivered the panels. They fit fine and we were actually able to install all but one of them, for which we needed a router we had left behind in the shop. Back tomorrow, (and probably Wednesday) to finish the fireplace and tv surround, the shelves on the tops of the panels, and the baseboards and moldings. When you're working on a project like this, you always wonder if everything's going to fit the way you planned and today it was nice to find out that it does. It has been an interesting project, both from a design and construction viewpoint. There was an effort to do a really nice job without totally breaking the bank, so we chose walnut veneered mdf for the panel elements and added solid wood edges and moldings to create a look very similar to all solid wood. One benefit of the veneered panels is the match that we were able to create by selecting groups of panels with attractive patterns. We purposely did not order the whole job to be 'sequenced matched' which would have resulted in a similar veneer pattern running completely around the room. We actually used panels from two suppliers to get a variety of veneers though we were able to match the panels on the two long walls, on either side of the fireplace, and on either side of the pocket doors. Click the photos to enlarge them,,,,

Taking the measurements for the shop drawings back in May

Working on the layout and planning the cuts for the panels themselves. The narrow tan strips represent the 4" pieces that create the stiles and rail of the panels when they're assembled. It's sort of a 'preview' feature ....

Gluing up ... It's all preveneered mdf excepot the solid wood moldings. All nicely finished by my neighbor, Steve Holman of Holman Studios ...

On arrival today, we distributed the panels around the room

Cut in for the various boxes and wires

and fastened them in position

Tommorow we'll add the rest of the fireplace surround and mantle shown above, earlier, in my shop ...

The Current Big Thing

When I look at the list of posts for the last two or three weeks, it looks like not much is going on, new projects wise.... A couple repairs, some metalwork, a woodshed and railing for my own home, a new camera .... like I said, not much going on ... That's because, for the last three or four weeks we have been working on a large project and I, as yet, have not gotten it together to post the details. The design work started around the first of the year as construction was getting underway, and the project involves a roomful of paneling, a desk, a vanity and dressing table, two mirrors, the restoration of a pair of antique doors, a bar cabinet .... I think that's it for now. The construction on the addition is coming along and we've been working on the project since the middle of May, hoping to install everything in the next couple of weeks. The paneling post will be a long one and I'll post the other entries as I can make the time to do it.
Click the pictures to enlarge them....

The project as it appeared in early January

A close up of the desk model ... a claro walnut slab with a blackened steel base

The fireplace surround and tv cabinet section of the 'roomful of walnut paneling'.

The recycled chestnut vanity