Woodwork for Patrick

 Patrick has just moved into a nice but bland and featureless apartment in Balmain. But the lights good and its in a great location near Balmain Wharf(so I'll probably try to do a landscape or 2 in the area while I'm around there).

He's a fan of natural materials and not so keen on polluting crap like MDF(the synthetic 'Medium Density Fibreboard shit that degenerates but refuses to rot. it remains a mat of synthetic fibres forever in a compost heap, manufacturing or buying the shit should be made legally and financially untenable) which most cheapo modern desks and tables are made from.

He's a friend of James and Sabrina so after seeing my shelves and tables at Sabrina's I got the task of  replacing  bland featureless furniture made from pollution, and adding storage space using salvaged timbers, from the huge pile Shamus accumulated at my studio, so its not metabolised into CO2 and CH4, or burnt. Who knows how many Australian cedar staircases and doors and doorframes have gone to landfill, hardwood floors and roof frames when it could have made our furniture, instead we import cheap shit made from fossil fuels and industrial waste

 

 

 

The top filled with fake wood - sawdust and glue, but noy sanded yet

 

 

 

The assembled table, mostly, but without a bottom shelf or varnish

 

The same but with a cedar step balanced where it will be attached later as a shelf

 

 

 

This is the top of a table I'm putting together to sit a largish TV on - a couple of pieces of an oregon plank with a strip of  rainforest(?) hardwood slats between them as a bit of a contast.

 

(I'd thought of it as meranti but it doesn't split like meranti I've used before so maybe its from some other tree family. Meranti is about as specific as eucalypt though so who knows)

It's about 1.4 metres long and just under 50cm wide. The legs I've cut from some Australian hardwood about 40cm long so the top will be at about 43-44cm

 

 

Here it is upside down with some legs balanced on top of it. I'll make a frame holding the legs together out f more oregon pieces later - I'm not sure yet whether to attach them directly to the tabletop or just  balance it on top

 

 

Some sort of stringer out of what looks like a good quality pine(ie very different to the plantation radiata shit). I'll sand it a bit more than start collecting some more offcut pieces to inlay and fill the slots as part of a table(?)

 

I'm starting with some basic stuff, a shelf to store laundry stuff in the bathroom, and replacing a dowel and retouching the French Polish on some cabinets that will be bedside dressers. From there I'll move on to a coffee/TV table.

 

 

The Laundry Shelf finished, varnished witha couple of thin coats of polyurethane

 

 

This Cabinet I replaced one of the dowels in the front door(the lightest one)

 

 

Its matching pair with the shellac retouched(on the top and doors

 

 

The shelf with one coat of (polyurethane) varnish

 

 

It's underside, also half done