I'll start posting a few pictures of some things I have built down through the years. I'll start off today with some of the furniture I have built for my home.

Our sideboard. I saw a photograph of a jacobean sideboard in a woodworking magazine, and my then fiance now wife and I thought it was a beautiful piece of furniture. I began making it, despite having no plans, nor ever having undertaken a project like this before. I drew up a few basic plans and started work, and kept at it, off and on, for the next few years. It became the gift I gave my wife for whatever occassion came along while I was still working on it. It was thus her engagement-birthday-christmas-valentine's day-birthday-christmas-wedding present. And for all that, she still married me. She must have really liked the sideboard.

It is looking a little worse for wear, but since I built it in the first place, I can fix it.

Building the sideboard was one of my most rewarding woodworking experiences. There's nothing like diving in completely over your head without a clue of what you are doing and forcing yourself to work your way through whatever problems occur to teach you about woodworking. As a clue of just how blithely ignorant I was at the time I built this piece, I decided to finish it with a French polish. That only added about a hundred extra hours to the working time.

With kids comes the need for furniture for the kids. Below is an oak chest of drawers I built for my elder daughter some years ago.

I actually got the plans for this one out of a book on Queen Anne Furniture designs. It is a very nice little piece, if I do say so. It doesn't get much use, however, as my daughter prefers to pile her clothes on a chair.

I got the plans for this small table from a woodworking magazine.

I actually made two of these. The first- in my opinioin, the better of the two, was a gift to my sister. Unfortunatlely, her ex husband stole the piece when they broke up and sold it. I made the second for her, but she ended up giving it back to us becuase she didn't have room, or didn't like it. Perhaps I killed it for her when I told her it was made from recycled materials- some skids I pulled out of the garbage from my workplace. It now sits up in my elder daughter's room.

I really need to tell that kid to clean up her room.

Here is a photo of the desk I made for my elder daughter. Like the sideboard, it began as a photograph I saw in a book on antique furniture. I liked it and did a quick design and layout and dove in.

The woods on this are oak, walnut and birdseye maple. The secondary wood is pine. The finish is shellac, with a french polish on the top. There are drawers inside the top, and down the side facing away. The steamertrunk beside it is a piece I picked up at a junk shop and refinished. The trunk was originally covered in some kind of embossed paper that was rotting off, and completely unsalvageable. I stripped it off, sanded and warnished the piece. It looks better than it did in the junk shop, but it would have been more valuable if I could have kept the rotten paper on.

More to come later.