I've been keeping myself busy with a few little projects lately - having enjoyed the more tactile experience of using my hands on something other than a keyboard. I've been working on this kitchen bench for 18 months or so, finding scraps of wood within walking distance of mum's place. Waiting for serendipity to work it's magic can take a significant amount of time, but it gives me the warm and fuzzy feeling that all of this wood has been saved from the scrap heap. It also means that Ikea doesn't get 79 of my dollars, even if I did rip off their Bekvam trolley design almost wholesale (there should be an umlaut on the 'a', but I'm not going to spend ten minutes figuring that out).
It felt nice to be working with solid pieces of wood, as opposed to previous attempts at crafting something out of cheap mdf. I only used a power tool twice to cut the wood used for the tabletop. Sometimes my stubbornness can get in the way of getting the job done, but I'll be damned if I wasn't going to spend a year screaming and swearing at wood that refused to be sanded with ease, and by screws who refused to turn. What makes me most proud about this bench is tat it's sturdy. Solid as rock. And castor wheels for when I decided to roll it around (which I never will). It's been finished for a few months, but showing it off now is fairly timely: it was constructed mostly in anticipation of the iPad. As soon as that bad boy is in my hands I'll be enjoying my cup of java with the interwebs and the breakfast island.
Meanwhile a stack of timber flooring samples that was gaining dust was turned into this rather nifty table that I made at a music festival. I'd forgotten how enjoyable the odd spot of carpentry can be, even if it involved large amounts of wood glue. Fairly early on I made the decision to use the modular aspects of the timber to create something a tad different. After spending a few hours mocking it up in photoshop I realised that there was an opportunity to make the table a little bit more social than usual. The irregular shape provided for novel uses and social interactions by nudging people to allow the table to create semi-random social interactions. I'm quite fond of this aesthetic, and I'm planning to take it further somehow incorporating the modular properties of timber flooring.
I'm not going to into too much detail into this work in progress, other than to say that it's final use will be typeface related and there are dinosaurs involved. Yes, dinosaurs.
