Wednesday, November 9, 2011

DIY furniture take 3: A George Nelson bench

Recently, I've been using the tried and tested excuse of DIYers everywhere ("I've got the time and we could save a lot doing it ourselves..."), I've tackled building another piece of furniture for our wonderful but oh-so-sparsely-furnished house. This was a bit of a jump from my last projects which consisted of:

1. a cat-scratch pole

Silka was a very obliging cat-scratch pole model.

 2. a very rustic (read rough/clunky) dining table,


... I chose the ambitious goal of building a 4' George Nelson bench, an iconic design which is on sale for US$300-$800 new, depending on which source you buy from.

Altogether I spent about $70 on materials and some $60 on new tools, sandpaper and polyurethane to finish it.

It was a serious learning process and I had a couple of false starts, made some adjustments and took my time. It's far from perfect but I'm very pleased with the results.

 If you are interested, check out my mid century modern furniture business Trystcraft . I find, restore, refinish (no chalk paint!) and repair mid century modern furniture and ship it worldwide.







The legs just after the stain/seal had dried.




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6 comments:

  1. I need more time!November 25, 2011 at 11:18 AM

    Love your posts and the pics Tim. Any pics of the countryside around your house would be greatly appreciated. I'm a displaced northerner stuck in South Carolina and my heart eats up pictures of countryside. Keep up the beautiful work!

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  2. AnonymousJune 4, 2013 at 10:03 AM

    Dying to know where you got the metal legs?!?!

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    Replies
    1. AnonymousSeptember 8, 2013 at 3:48 PM

      The pocket screw holes in the bottoms of the legs lead me to believe that he made his own out of wood and stained/painted them to look dark.

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  3. TimSeptember 8, 2013 at 4:14 PM

    Yes, I made my own legs, just estimated the angles from photos. They are glued and there are screws for strength.

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    Replies
    1. TosinJanuary 4, 2015 at 8:30 PM

      Hello Tim I am about to purchase this same pre fab kit from kokoon homes and I was wondering if you could share with me how long it took you from start to finish to build the home. As well if there is any info you could share that would save me time during the process. several more questions I have and would deeply appreciate if you could shoot me an email. Its tosin314@gmail.com

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    2. TimJanuary 11, 2015 at 5:24 AM

      Hi Tosin, the process of erecting the shell and installing roof panels was supposed to take a week but dragged out over 3 months due to Kokoon's terrible time management, communication and logistic skills. The owner over-promises and under-delivers. As GC on our house I had everything coordinated and Kokoon just messed things up, refused to pick up the phone when I chased them up and didn't hire enough manpower to do the job. If you definitely go ahead with working with them, I would insist on a strict time constraint with penalties for not meeting conditions. There are other companies out there with similar products and I would recommend you seek them out instead.

      Delete

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