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Showing posts with label custom dining room furniture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label custom dining room furniture. Show all posts

Sunday, December 30, 2012

a custom walnut sideboard

a custom walnut sideboard

well, we're coming down the home stretch on this one ... it's walnut, and sam is nearly finished welding and polishing the steel base ...click the photos to enlarge them ..
 all done   1/15 ... off to long island
 here's the story ..
we started with the client's very detailed drawing with measurements that she kindly sent to start the dialog ... most folks are not this organized.
after putting it into my cad program, we made a few changes to get things under budgetary control and ended up with the elevation below.  the piece will have a stone top and a steel base,
here it is, early on,with the box defined, the runners in and the face frame on.
here, the drawers and doors are fitted up ... the client did not like our choice of crotch walnut veneer and so, will made a new pair of doors with calmer grain ... no problem.  that's why we send photos ...

it's in the finish process now.  the base is complete, and we'll put it all together next week.


there will be a wine rack in the center drawer, and room for other bar bottles stored vertically in a pull out drawer behind the center doors.

Monday, November 26, 2012

custom sideboards and buffets

custom sideboards and buffets

we have made quite a few different sideboard and buffets in the last 25 years and since we are working with some clients on new sideboard designs, i felt compelled to organize some photos of them here.  the curly maple one above is one of my favorites.  actually, i like the challenge of the sideboard/buffet form, and there's not one shown here that we didn't enjoy designing and building.  the sideboard directly below is from my own home and we have made several variations on that one using our 'studio style' cherry and black design theme.  click the photos to enlarge them.
 
 60" wide x 20 " deep by 34" high.  natural cherry and black milk paint.  1987
 a variation on our sideboard circa 1988.  72" long x 20" deep by 34" high
                                  
this one and the one below are similar in design with figured cherry panels and quartersawn cherry edge details.  one with an edge inlay, one without.  one with black details; one all cherry and one with curly maple details and crotch mahogany veneers.  same drawing, different results .. 'take and object; do something to it; do something else to it'.
 ditto here with black painted legs and 'burl and bar' edge inlay.
mahogany and curly maple; crotch mahogany veneer panels ...
a fancy and complex variation on the theme above in cherry and maple burl with subtly curved doors and drawer faces ...

the black walnut bar/sideboard above was a fun project.  mirrors, lights, glass, repeating details ... all fun. there is a pretty long blog post on that one here.
 

and here's a stylish one that accompanied a table with similar design ... we worked the details over carefully with the client and while we we stuck for a label, included it in the realm of 'art deco' though it is strictly 'diane and dan deco'.  an extremely fun project from the early 90's.
here's the table that it went with.  lots and lots of details on that one.  often, the table and sideboard are designed to complement one another and make the room seem to be totally custom.
this custom bubinga sideboard was made from the 6 feet we cut off the end of a 20' bubinga plank that we used to make a 14' x 48" wide table that went to princeton, new jersey, next door to the governor's mansion
  i've got a better photo somewhere .. +/- 2002.  dawn of the digital photo age
 
this figured cherry sideboard had a table with it
as did this cherry and maple burl sideboard from +/- 2003.  this sideboard was made from virtually the same drawing as the first, curly maple sideboard in this post.  'take a design, do something to it'
this country style sideboard was one of the first sideboards i made back in the very early 80's...
 and this one, from the early 90's, was an engineering challenge with it's suspended box and turned supporting columns with brass feet, and curly maple veneered doors.  the inside was almost completely drawers on runners that pulled out to store not only silverware and dining room stuff, but also music cds, at the time a semi precious commodity.  times change ... another 'diane and dan deco' project ...
this is not really a sideboard, but it's a cool piece.  it was designed to go against a curved wall, (the 'front' in this photos), but we made the drawers go both ways and they had pulls on the other side too, so it can also be placed at some time in the future, against a straight wall.  multitaking ... and on and on ...
this one is from last spring.  it's 9' long and had to go through the window when it got to new jersey .. oops!  but it made it ... it now has a stone top and you can see the details of its construction in this blog post.

i'll add a few more as time permits and update our progress on the upcoming sideboard below once we get it under way in early december ... all for now ..
    12/2 ... a few more sideboards
 studio style again with cherry and black and ebony and burl details.  the pulls are blackened brass, custom cast for us by horton brasses in pensylvania.
and this piece, while technically not a sideboard per se, has certain sideboard buffet qualities to it.  storage, interest, detail.  'fun with walnut'  ...  blog post here
 a little mahogany 'arts and crafts' thing here ... hardware from stickley.  design by dan and mary
 something tall with a little paint ... this one we designed with the client who wanted a top set of shelves, but also wanted it to be 'light' and wanted it to store a lot of stuff too.  in the foreground are some of our windsor chairs from the mid 80's when we used to make a lot of them ...

 my first sideboard.  1973.   before i even had a house to put it in.  i made it from a book entitled 'fine furniture you can make yourself' and i believe it was by someone named christoforo, but i can't seem to find it at the moment.  it's around here somewhere ... anyway, you can see what happens to a linseed oil finish on pine over the course of almost 40 years.  it gets pretty dark.
 close up

Saturday, November 26, 2011

odds and ends

odds and ends


ok ... thanksgiving weekend's almost over ... back to work tomorrow. and i'm sorting it all out (hopefully) today. from the looks of it, i've got a lot of balls in the air, but some of them are either out the door or are in their final throes of being figured out. in the background, not pictured in this post is another custom dining room that will later get its own post. in the meantime, here's what we'll be working on monday ... click the photos to enlarge them.

above, a 'practice' carving that will did recently for the corner of an upcoming dining table project. he'll be doing more of those samples this week as he finishes up the corner cupboard you can see below.
lorne and i have been wrestling with this, what we are calling the 'x table'. the concept came from one of our designer clients, and seemed pretty easy until i tried it .. i kind of had it, but lorne took the ball and ran with it and got it all figured out in the end. he got the angles figured out so they came off the saw perfect and precise and came up with the idea of assembling the two halves, one solid piece and one leg, and then gluing the half laps together last.


here you see the 1/4 scale, half scale and full size mdf mockup .. it was alm ost impossible to find the 12/4 white oak for the real thing, and we didn't have much extra so we were extra careful.
this is one of the halves. with the final concept we were able to reinforce the third leg tenonss with 4" timberlocks and glue, making the entire structure very rigid when it was glued up.
with the 3/4" glass with the 1" bevel. there will be a white pickled finish on the white oak.

and i stopped to see steve holman and he's coming along on the fancy reception desk that trevor helped him with ... that's going to be something ...


a walnut and steel coffee table is headed for the big city this week.
and will is finishing up another banjo project. this is an antique, complete pot and dowel stick, but the original mandolin style neck (banjolin) was missing. there were pictures available online so he could copy the original inlay style and once he adds the tuners, it will be headed for england i think.
the inlays with the original mandolin style, 8 string tailpiece in the jar.
and next up, a 'vermont' banjo. all vermont wood including a dramatic hornbeam fretboard that is covered by the rubber bands here ...
this table will be leaving next week with the x table ... distressed walnut with flip up leaves on the ends and twisted steel supports by sam ... the schedule's tight, but doable with a little luck and extra effort.

and in the background, we've got another custom dining room happening. a table, 8 chairs and a corner cupboard ... more on that project later in a separate post.

and we got the crazy little bobbin leg tables out the door last week. i missed that estimate by about 120% ... win some, lose some. can't say i wasn't warned ..
and lastly, below, i'm working with my chestnut cabinet client on a console table concept.
they like the 'bridges' bench and we're trying to see if it will adapt to console table shape.
looks promising to me. we'll see ... it looks like the last sunny and 50 degree day of this beautiful unusually warm vermont fall. wash the convertible and put it at the neighbor's for the winter .. take the pump out of the pond ... winter's coming ...