volume 2.5 ...

i will be getting to more on the new shop shortly, but in the meantime,

 we made lots of furniture in the 20 plus years we worked in arlington ...

here are some of the images from 1979 to november 2000 ...

all professional looking photos by our long time photographer 

friend cook neilson ... snapshot photos by others ...

slide show here

 i have lots more images to add ...

 

'old man project' ... volume 3

 ok ... it's 1996 ... 

the boys are in middle school, but sam is at long trail school

in dorset, and will is showing serious interest in music ... since we got zero

financial support to send sam to a 'private' school, most of our best friends lived in dorset, and 

dorset treated long trail as a public school and paid most of the tuition there, and though

 we had talked about it before, it seemed like it was time to make the move ...

coincidentally, we had the lucky opportunity to 'house sit' our good friends'

house in dorset while they went sailing for a year. i continued to work at

the shop in arlington, becoming a commuter again for the first time in 16 years.

 

as the year hurried by, we realized that we wanted to make the move permanent.

 so, the question was 'how to do that'?  fortunately, the folks we were house 

sitting for were part of our 1974 personal "habitat for us" project that 

i mentioned in my first post in this series.

the earth moving business guy i mentioned there had built a road for 

a client who was planning to sell lots in a development he called, 

(fortunately for a furniture maker), 'goodwood lane'. !!!  

our friend agreed to 'sell' us one of the lots he took in trade and

 let us pay for it when we sold our arlington house sometime 

in the nebulous future.  so, the first part of the 'how to do that' 

question was answered .. we had a place ... 

but now, we needed a plan, and, (as always), some money.  while our house 

was not paid for, the inflation in vermont real estate from 1974 to 1996 provided

us the room to take a home equity loan to build something that we planned 

would be an immediate place to live while our arlington house was on

the market, and that would eventually become the shop ... again, it all seems

a little crazy in retrospect, but .... here we are ... as it ended up, we sold our

original house in 2000, 2 months before the capital gains tax would have 

kicked in on the sale of the arlington house, 

which would have destroyed our equity, and wrecked the whole plan.

 the shop as a 3 bedroom 2 bath house

the shop as a shop .. same place

so, here we go ... we needed a flexible building plan ...

click the pictures to enlarge them ...

my thought at the time, (i turned 50 in 1997), was to make it a nice enough 

house that when i was done working, i could turn it back into a house and the 

rent would help me retire.  little did i know what was coming down the

 pike for me as time went on ...  i'll get to that later .. 

loyal readers will already know about 'the boys' ...

plenty of local barns around for inspiration  ... 

we decided 30 x 40 would be a good size .. this one is longer ..

elevations and sections ... as the building went on,

the plans evolved and improved ...

this was probably late september or early october, and we were moved in by then ..

this was just the first step, and the big one, in 2000 was building a new

house on the other corner of our 10 acres of paradise .

the backyard at the house this morning ... 

more photos of the shop and house construction soon

SHOP CONSTRUCTION PHOTOS AT THIS LINK ...

old man project, volume 4 ... a new house ... 2000 ...

 

here we go ...  we closed on the sale of the arlington house in april,

and we had exactly 6 months to get out of  the arlington shop where

the new owners graciously allowed us to work til the house was liveable.

fortunately we were able to get the same builder who built the shop,

in 1997, rob goepel,who had worked as my assistant for a couple months 

in the early 80s ... they did a great job on the shop, and let us work along with them

when they were building the house .. back view ...

dan's hand drawn plans ... i have the rest of the elevations

and floor plans in the slide show.

partial front view ..

 

cornices and cornice returns constructed on the ground before

tipping up the walls ... some skateboarding on the first floor deck ..

about the time of the previous framing photo, we realized 

we were not going to have any money left to have a party when we 

were done, so we had one then to thank everyone involved ...

had some live music and a great potluck.

wish i had better photos of the fun ...

 'came out good' as they say

i hope get some more construction photos together 

for a slideshow before too long

november 1st 2000 ...

rent a uhual, pick up the tools in arlington, move the furniture 

to the lawn in dorset, unload to tools into what used to be the house, 

              load up the furniture and take it to the new house .. piece of cake!        

 

i am starting to get a a house building slide show together ,,,         

this link may take you there ...   

old man project volume 5

ok!  as i write this, it is april fool's day 2023 !

but as i post it, it is the 23rd of april 2023 ... 

took me a minute to get back to this ...  a little rainy and dreary today,

 but as they say, april showers bring may flowers ... 

h

here's Bowie checking out some snow drops by the shop on thursday.

you can still see some of the snow left over from the big dump

of about about 20"we got 2 weeks ago ...

it's mostly gone now, and it's raining today, with 

highs predicted in the 50s and 60s for the upcoming 

week ...where was i in my last chapter?

i think i was in the year 2000, moving into our new house ..

23 years ago ... a lot of furniture out the door since then.

 

a new shop begged for a tool upgrade: bigger jointer, bigger planer,

bigger bandsaw, and eventually a few years later a wide belt

sander, an upgraded edge sander, and a full size cnc. 

the cnc turned out to be a game changer that allowed 

us to do things that no one would pay us to do by hand. 

the 2005, 2nd floor cnc install needs a slide show of it's own,

and i will get to that eventually.

in 2001, a long time employee (12 years) left the shop one day

and was killed in a car accident that evening ... 

tribal knowledge ... lots of it ... gone in a flash!

it was a good time for building in our area, and i was able 

to hire and train 3 new employees in the next two years

the four or five years after 2002 saw several major 

new customers, and many exciting new pieces ... 

 

here are a few updated spring shots now that the snow is completely gone!

trilliums in the ravine 

the shadbush is blooming by the metal shop

and the golf course is open .. a little windy yesterday,

but beautiful and nice to be out!

slide show coming here ...

many more photos to add soon!

old man project ... volume 6

 ok, now it is May 2025 and time is moving on ... 

so, i will quote james mcmurtry here:

 

at this point i have finished my 'retirement project',

 a new building for Will's machine tools ...

  Kristian is now taking over all the new requests for

 furniture that come in from both old and new clients,

and i am in the slow process of  'cleaning up my mess' ...

i spent several days in the basement of the shop organizing

patterns and drawings, jigs and fixtures. models and mockups,

 and a bunch of random slabs and other pieces of wood. 

i did the same in the attic of the garage at the house and there i

discovered a huge box of sketchbooks that have been accumulating

for over 45 years ... 

they have now been browsed ( quite a trip that was )

and arranged in chronological order with 

clients names noted on the spines ...

there are also slide shows at that link with 

concept sketches and the relevant completed

projects over the years ...

more on all this later from the 'west dorset indsutrial park'

 

a walnut dining table with a leaf

we shipped this one off to Florida last week ... natural walnut,

54 x 88 closed, one 20"" leaf .... 

                        This was the inspiration photo sent by the client early in the negotiations…

                                       So we started with some nice walnut from irion lumber

                                                and some poplar for test pieces

and a new cad drawing

we had a little back and forth on the apron details, but we got it

and we ordered a new custom shaper knife to cut the profile in one pass

ta dah!

it took a few shots to figure out the cnc work on the leg, and 

get the profile exactly the way the client wanted it,

but we finally got to a place where we were all happy

the top was pretty straightforward with the fine wood from irion lumber

time to get it all together

we finished it up, and off it went to florida ...

and we didn't hear a peep for a month or two. one day Kristian

asked if i had heard anything, and i hadn't.  then, i kid you not, later that day

i got some photos, and one of the nicest emails about a piece of furniture

a person could hope for ...

all for now

some bubinga chairs

 

good to go!  off to the west coast later this week!

 

we recently completed 10 bubinga chairs for a client in california

who made his own bubinga table during the covid lockdown

 and i must admit, he did a most impressive job!

 

back in 2003, we made this dining table with a slab of bubinga

from goodhope hardwoods and the sideboard and chairs from another.

the chairs are a contemporary adaption of our classic transitional chairs

which are an adaptation we made from an original fully upholstered 

beidermeier style chair that we copied for some clients in the early/mid 90s.

 

we also made these 8 mahogany and maple burl chairs and sent them 

to hawaii with this claro walnut slab table

however, since at that time i had 4 guys in the shop, i did not

have much to do with their construction 

so, fortunately, Kristian is up to speed on the cnc so he took over figuring out the 

joinery and programming to cut the parts ...

and there were a lot of parts ...

also fortunately, we had a mockup side chair and a mockup arm chair we

made when we did previous runs of these chairs.

since we have a new cad/cam program for the cnc, we weren't

able to use the existing files, but Kristian was able to use our 

existing cad drawings to cut the new parts.

all glued up and at the upholsterers now, awaiting their seats and

their upcoming cross country trip!

my original portfolio page from 2003 showing the table, 

the chairs and the sideboard we made way back then ...