Yesterday I shared some pics of a bed I made for my friend. Today I have some pics of some of his kitchen cabinetry I have been working on. It’s not done by any means, but it gives you a bit of an idea what it will look like when it is all done. The cabinets are birch, with a water based poly urethane finish. Drawers are mounted on heavy duty, full extension, ball bearing slides, so they will last forever. Doors are attached with Salice Euro hinges. We are still looking for some good hardware. The cost in materials for these two 38″ lower cabs came in around $250. Do the math and that is about $50 a linear foot. They are very over built too. I even used 3/4″ ply for the backs instead of the normal 1/4″. I think they turned out pretty decent for my first real kitchen cabinets.
More pics after the jump.

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My architect friend is re-doing a small pad about a mile from my house. About a month ago, he was getting ready to move in, and was looking for a bed. Unsatisfied with what he was finding in the stores, he drew me a quick sketch and asked if I could build it. Since I never turn down an opportunity to try something new (especially when someone else is buying the materials) I was all over it. The design was really quite simple. Two plain boxes wrapped in birch with a cantilevered top. The edges on the top were left exposed to match the desk I did for him a while ago. All in all I think it turned out pretty good. The price for materials was right around $250 when it was all said and done. The mattress is a 9″ memory foam. The duvet is by Dwell.
Lots more pics after the jump.

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I think I previously talked about our plans on putting an ofuro, or Japanese soaking tub in our bathroom. For those of you who don’t know about ofuro’s, let me break it down for you real quick. The traditional Japanese bathing experience differs from the American bathing experience in two basic ways. First, an american bath tub is long and shallow, whereas a Japanese tub, in order to economize square footage is short and deep. The other big difference is that traditionally in Japan, you would sit on a stool outside the tub and use a low spigot to fill a bucket and use it to scrub off before getting into the bath. That way the water stays clean and the whole family can share it throughout the day.

Long story short. We wanted one. A real ofuro is usually made of hinoki, which is a high grade cedar. Unfortunately this is not only high maintenance but also high dollar. We considered just tiling it in, more like a roman bath, but I was worried about leaking. Ultimately we decided to do it out of stainless. My father in-law knows how to weld, and was kind enough to take on the project. The picture above is the design I sent him. It was lots of fun getting to do some industrial design since I wanted to go into that field in the past. I’ll go into some of the design features when I show the finished tub later.
If you are looking to do some reading, “The Japanese Bath“, is a great book, as well as the more light hearted “How to take a Japanese bath“.

Last week I promised some pictures of the bathroom vanity that I started making, and of the concrete countertop installed. Well, here they are. The countertop turned out pretty good. There were some small bubble pockets on the top from not vibrating it enough, and there was a small 1″ section on the front corner that chipped off. I think the chip was due to messy caulking of the edge causing the concrete to weaken (all the corners of the form get a small smear of caulk to give it a slightly beveled edge). I ended up finishing it with a water based penetrating sealer from The Concrete Exchange and a natural wax on top of that. I highly recommend the sealer, it was great to work with, and looks sweet. For the vanity, I still have to make some drawers for it before it is done, but so far I think it has turned out nicely. You can see in the pictures below some before and after pics. This whole vanity and sink actually sit where the door to the bathroom used to be, which means I had to move all the water and sewer to a new location. As far as prices go, the vanity so far is under $100. It will be closer to $150 after drawer slides and hardware. The concrete countertop comes in around $50, the sink $120, and the faucet $80. Not too shabby.

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For our new bathroom remodel we decided to go with a concrete countertop. Partly because the price is totally right, and partly because we really like the look. We have done a concrete table top in the past, so we figured it wouldn’t be too hard. The slab is an 1 1/2″ thick with a 4″ lip on the front, and is reinforced with wire and rebar. It took three bags of quickcrete 5000 and one sheet of melamine. Well actually two sheet of melamine, because I cut the first one an inch too short, and had to go get a new sheet. Oops. Minus the extra sheet the whole cost came in at about $50. Not bad at all. The fact that we had an above mount sink made the form super easy. Above are the pics of the form before the pour, and after. Next week I’ll put up pics of it installed, plus the walnut vanity that it sits on.

Yesterday I mentioned that I was starting to do some cabinetry. It’s funny how it started. At the time I had just spent some time with Chris Gleason of Gleason Woodworking, and was wanting to start doing cabinetry and custom woodworking. My friend and architect Seth had just bought a new house that he gutted and was remodeling. I mentioned to him I would love to do his cabinetry. We agreed to trade his cabinetry for my house plans. I scrambled to buy all the tools I needed and rent a small space I could put them all. Yesterday I installed the first of his cabinets, pictured to the left. It is a drafting height counter and set of drawers in his master bedroom. It almost doesn’t look it in the picture, but it stands almost 40″ tall. All the drawer fronts are European baltic birch, and the top is a natural birch with an exposed 1 1/2″ font edge. It was finished with a water based polyurethane. All the credit of design goes to Seth. As far as build time goes, I did it between working lots of overtime, but it probably took me around 8-10 actual hours of working on it. The crazy thing is how inexpensive it was to build. It was probably about $170 in materials. Not too shabby.

I have been into the design scene for just a little over two years now, and blogging for just under a year, but I must admit it has had a change on me. Seeing all those people like Furni, MAKR, Gleason Woodworking, etc start out with just a dream and be able to make something of their passions has lead me to believe I could actually have a job I enjoy. Unfortunately blogging doesn’t pay the bills, so I had to look for an alternative creative outlet. My real passion lies in furniture design. I considered seriously for a while going to ID school, but the reality is I want to work for myself, so a degree is probably not too important. Inspired by my friend and artist Chris Gleason, I decided woodworking would be satisfying and potentially profitable. So I threw caution to the wind a couple months ago, and rented a room a few blocks from my house, and bought a couple thousand dollars of tools and went to work. This morning I am going to install my first job. Its a countertop height desk in my architects house (another great example of affordable modern housing, more on that later). I’ll be back with pictures later today or possibly tomorrow.