Tag Archives for furniture
Radiator enclosures – dental office
Enclosures out of 3/4 ply with internal structure of metal studs and track, removable covers attached with magnets to studs, access panels for valves.
Start:
Design was by the architecture firm but there’s always a few things I have to figure out.
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Radiator cover with built-in shelving
The radiator was off-center in what looked like a temporary housing, and the ask was storage that looked symmetrical.
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Bathroom refresh
After:
Before:
The most interesting part of this one was the vanity. Based on the square pegs and nails, the thing was easily 100 years old. Stripping off 4 layers of paint revealed a reddish wood that I’m guessing is fir. I built in the shelf and the lip around the top out of poplar, which necessitated a bit of work with stain and polyurethane to get the colors to match.
Read More →Bathroom sink and vanity with laundry
How do you fit a washer-dryer into a tiny Manhattan bathroom? Once piece at a time.
I poured a custom concrete trough sink with the drain in the back corner so as to open up the room for the washer-dryer to fit underneath. Which then necessitated a custom cabinet to match underneath.
Removing the plywood mold. Concrete mix was white Portland cement with white sand. The trickiest part was cutting things on the angle so the sink would drain properly, and then getting all those subtle angles to line up smoothly.
Patching, sanding, sealing.
Now for the cabinet…
Radiator cover support system
This was more of a repair, but the twist took quite a lot of thought. I didn’t want to rip the whole thing apart and rebuild, but the challenge was to not only fix the alignment and attachment of this incredibly heavy cover (3/4″ ply + 3/4″ cabinet doors + baseboard molding!), but ensure that access for anyone who needed to perform future maintenance on the radiator would be easy and safe.
The tricky part was anticipating the correct tilt that would keep the panel balanced on swivel casters, within the limits of the space behind it (which had pipes and electrical related to the radiator), while being easy to snap into place again.
garden bench restoration
Replaced rotten boards with weather-treated 2×4’s dadoed with a circular saw to fit and lightly stained. I expect this to last decades longer than the thin polyurethaned slats that typically come with these models. Couldn’t find brass bolts in the right size, so I ended up spray painting some carriage bolts gold.
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After:
Corner Cabinet
2014
Body & shelves made from 1/2 plywood to save on cost and weight. Edges concealed with iron-on veneer. Doors and facing made of solid pine. Chinese cabinet hardware purchased ebay.
Initial sketches, which my toddler decided to comment on
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Vestibule Cubbies
2011
I used slot joints to create this one, but in retrospect, I think dado joints would have been a better choice. Slot joints are great for flexible materials, or in a perfect world where all the pine you get from the lumberyard is flawlessly straight and uniform, but well, yeah.
Floating Bathroom Bench
2015
Angled pieces cut from 2×12’s, which required the creation of paper templates pieced together in the space to get the shapes right. Hidden reinforcement with reclaimed “fasttrack” shelving hardware.
