SYD – Fine Furniture/Design

Tag: Pine

  • Ship Lap Island

    Ship Lap Island

    reclaimed-island5

    A real estate developer approached me with a challenge. He had an old 1930’s dilapidated home that was scheduled for demolishing, but he knew there was some nice old lumber used in the house so asked me to come up with some modern designs using the wood from this home. My first thought was “this is going to be a lot of work”, but when I saw the wood and started toying around with the idea, I couldn’t get it out of my head.

    [singlepic id=218 w= h= float=center]

    I knew many houses built back then used just nailed pine boards on the house framing as the wall and then plastered over it. As soon as I got permission, I started tearing the plaster off and what I found were beautiful, wide, ship lap pine with very little defects. I took off as much as I could grab in a day, and took it back to the shop to start pulling all the nails out.

    [singlepic id=219 w= h= float=center]
    We decided to use the recovered pine as the kitchen island. Using the pine for the kitchen island is a great use for it since the old growth pine would withstand all the beating of every day living over the years- especially with three kids running around. Usually, reclaimed pine is left with the patina and grime to keep that ‘reclaimed’ look, but I wanted something cleaner. The pine itself is old-growth pine so the tone is beautiful even when new wood is exposed. Rather than making the boards sit tight against each other like it was originally, we went for a little bit of a gap in between so we could accentuate the ship lap aspect part of the original wall and tie the history of the boards into the design. The difference in each board is a big part of the beauty of these boards, so we laid the boards out in a random pattern to bring out the individuality in each boards.

    [singlepic id=217 w= h= float=center]

    The kitchen island wraps from the back all the way to the side and then back around to the front. In the front, the pine wraps into the kitchen cabinets, tieing the whole kitchen together. In a modern room, this little island adds character, history, and warmth to this family in this new home.

    [singlepic id=220 w= h= float=center]

  • Yuta Standing Desk

    Yuta Standing Desk

    a3d88286a8c411e38fd8126050b2ecd3_8

    My brother, Yuta, commissioned a standing desk from me for his office. He’s been wanting one for awhile and had an Ikea one for his home office. He complained that it wasn’t sturdy and would wobble every time he touched it. I had also created a standing desk speculatively earlier, so I had him check it out so we can nail the dimensions down. The thing with standing desks is that there is not a standard size like most other furniture because we’re all different heights with different arm lengths and etc, etc.

    [singlepic id=164 w=320 h=240 float=center]

    Since he works for a media production company, he had to have plenty of space to sprawl out papers or editing equipment as well as his big computer monitor. I set about creating different levels of surfaces- one for his monitor, shallow and higher up so the eyes are level with the monitor. I created another level under the main surface so he can quickly clean the worktop and added drawers for extra storage. There is also a shelf towards the bottom where he can rest his feet on, store more things, and also to act as a stabilizing rail.

    [singlepic id=166 w=320 h=240 float=center]

    The difficult part of designing this piece was balancing out the size and bulk of the piece. The top came out to be 30″ wide x 58″ long. I started by cutting away angles- a large one in the front and a subtle one in the back. The desk had to match the rest of the room’s existing furniture (another desk I made for his birthday earlier) so we decided on pine plywood with the edges exposed. I kept going back and forth on this with myself, but I’m glad I stuck with it because the tone, color, and the grain is elegant. I’m especially happy with it because it uses an affordable material and shines it up with the use of thoughtful design and good craftsmanship.

    [singlepic id=167 w=320 h=240 float=center]

    To keep the light color, I used water-based polycrylic. The drawers are made from ash with the drawer front made from sinker cypress. I used UHMW plastic to act as drawer runners so the drawers won’t run a groove into the desk from use over time.

    [singlepic id=168 w=320 h=240 float=center]