Twin Bed with Storage

I love this bed. It's solid walnut and turned out incredible. The basic design is not my own, but I added the turned legs and the drawer pulls. My favorite detail is the expressive, continuous wood on the drawer fronts. Hopefully this detail will be observable in these pictures.

Faye's crib

I built this crib for our new daughter Faye. It's walnut with zebra wood on the head and toe boards. It feels very much mid century modern- did anyone think to build cribs in modernism's heyday? Or would it have been unusual to fuss so much over something for a child, and something only to be used for a short period of time back then? I don't know the answers to these questions, but this crib feels to me like it would have fit right in 60 years ago.

More Stools

I had some downtime and built some more child step stools. I used two different approaches- the first one here is like the last, with hidden mortise and tenon joints. The second employed dovetail joints. The first one has some particularly incredible wood.

Snack Tables

These are some snack/painting tables that I built for my son Luke's school. The top is plywood with birch veneer with solid birch around the edges, everything else is solid birch. They are oiled and coated with polyurathane. I lucked out on the tops- there is some really interesting grain. Luke was really disappointed that I didn't paint these bright colors, like the old tables that they replaced (as a side note, I'm pretty sure that the old tables were there when I went to this preschool). His teacher was thrilled though, and she bought clear table cloths so that the grain could be seen while the kids eat their snacks.

Bunk Beds

After months of talking about it, I finally built bunk beds for Luke and Graham. The lighter wood is maple, the dark wood is walnut. I'm really pleased with the way they turned out, except that the mattresses are higher than I thought, and essentially hide the headboard on the top bunk. Also, Jana hates the sheets that Luke picked out because she says they're too bright and loud (she liked them OK until she unwrapped them and, as she claims, they took on at least 2 new degrees of neon). She's probably right, but Luke's enthusiasm about the whole set up is pretty intense and nothing that I'd want to tamper with. I'm also a bit concerned with the fan being so close to Luke's head- maybe we'll take it out and put it in another room.

Step Stool

I built this step stool for my friend Oscar. It turned out really great! It's built from solid walnut, with a polyurethane finish.

booster seat

This is another booster seat that I built for Oscar. Oscar is the son of Vanessa and James, a really cool couple in Silver Lake that bought a storage bed from me. It's the same design as the teak booster seat elsewhere on this blog, except way better. This is solid walnut, with mortise and tenon joinery, and a clear coat that really makes the wood pop. This one was difficult to hand over because it just kicks so much ass. One of these days, I'm going to build 10 of these at once and drive them around to different boutiques because like I said before, they could be the next big thing I think.

Booster Seat

This might not look like much, but I think it could actually be the next big thing. Anyone who has kids and a bit of modern pretension has encountered the problem that there is only one type of booster seat on the market- plastic, primary colored crap. I'm sure that 99 out of 100 parents couldn't care less, but for that other 1% there's a real dilemma. That's where this teak booster seat could fill a real void I think. I tried to tell IKEA about it but apparently they don't accept product submissions. Too bad- they don't carry any booster seat at all, and they could probably produce something that looks just like this with their cheap, wall-paper wrapped fiber board for about $5.00 a chair and sell them for $30- a real win win for everyone. So I'm debating whether I should start pumping these out and craigslisting them, or ebay, or what. I'm also concerned about all of the child product regulations I could probably get sued for, so I'm just not sure what to do with my brilliant idea.

Sunday School Shelves

I built these for one of the Sunday school rooms at my church. The idea is for the shelves to house learning manipulatives, and for doors to slide into place to hide the items when not in use.

I used birch-veneered plywood for the bulk of the structure and solid birch for the face. The joints are dado and glue- no nails were used, except to secure the melamine to the back. They're finished with a sealer and polyurethane.