Category: Furniture

Handmade furniture posts

Making a Farm House Table

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture4 Comments

My wife Anita was getting ready for a design show she was doing called Over the Moon in Lawrenceburg, IN. She asked me to make a farm house table from basic 2 x 8’s I bought from Lowe’s. So I bought the wood and laid out the boards on the floor to see how big of a table she wanted. We ended up deciding on a table that was around 3′ x 5′.

When I bought the lumber, I chose boards with the straightest grain possible with very little or no knots. However, most of the boards I chose were still high in moisture content so I had to let them acclimate in my shop so they could dry out a little bit.

After milling the boards to one inch thick, I stickered them on the floor and placed a fan near them to help the boards dry out a bit. I placed weights on the top board just to prevent it from cupping. The paper towel underneath the weight is to prevent the iron of the weight staining the wood.

After about a week, the boards were down to a workable moisture content. You wouldn’t think that simply laying boards down for a week would change the moisture content that much, but it did.

Anita already bought legs at an antique show back in the fall for about $10.00. All I had to do was make the frame and top and assemble it all together. I used a 3/8″ beading molding plane to put a bead on the sides of the table to give it a bit of detail.

It doesn’t get much simpler than this. I used pocket screws to attach everything together. The idea of a farm table is keep the joinery simple.

Anita stained the top with gel stain and painted the base with chalk paint. The table was too wide to get through my basement door so I had to finish it in the living room.

I asked Anita if she wanted me to attach the boards from the bottom so the fasteners wouldn’t show. She told me no. She said “just screw down the boards and fill in the holes with plugs”. So I did just that leaving about a 1/8″ gap between the boards for expansion and contraction of the wood. After I was done, Anita sanded the top again with 220 grit sand paper and reapplied some more stain.

This is how the table looked when it was done and ready for the show. Anita applied a dark wax to the paint to highlight the details of the legs. She also waxed the top to give it some luster.

You can see some of the dark wax detail here.

Anita posted this picture of the table on her Facebook account right before the show started. One of her followers saw the picture and private messaged her asking Anita to hold the table, however Anita never saw her message. When the show opened, the young woman ran to her booth and asked if the table was still available. Anita said it was and the woman bought it right on the spot. It’s nice to know someone likes my work. haha.

CET Action Auction

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture2 Comments

It’s that time of year again. Time for my local PBS station to hold their Action Auction where they auction off a bunch of items from donors around the Cincinnati area. Nearly every year I donate a shaker style table to them. The first few years, I made these tables out of nice cherry, however, the past couple of years I decided to build them with southern yellow pine to save on the costs. I make these tables out of a single 2 x 8 x 8 I buy from Lowes for around $6.00. I wrote a blog about it a few months ago. http://wp.me/p1gfza-d2

I painted the table using chalk paint which is a limestone based paint that is popular among people who repurpose and paint antique furniture. The paint leaves a chalky feel on the surface and with a bit of sanding, gives the piece an aged look. My wife, Anita, stenciled the lettering on for me to give the table a little bit something extra.

As you can see, the joinery is extremely simple. The stretchers on the top and bottom of the drawers have mortise and tenon as well as dovetail joinery, but the sides are simply pocket screwed together. The table is not going to be under a tremendous amount of stress so I opted not to mortise and tenon the sides to the legs in order to save time.

The custom work is left for the drawers. They are put together with hand cut half blind dovetails, but you can’t really tell since the sides are painted. I probably spend more time cutting those dovetails than I do on the rest of the piece.

It’s a simple piece that will be a nice little accent table in someone’s living room or foyer. The Action Auction takes place in a couple of weeks and my table will be auctioned off sometime during the weekend. The table should do well since painted black furniture is really popular right now. Anytime I make a bookcase for my wife so that she can sell it in her booth, it sells within a week. All I know is that it’s fun to see my furniture on TV.  I really don’t get anything out of it other than a good feeling from helping out my local PBS station that continues to keep The Woodwright’s Shop on the air.

Hiding a Blemish on the Top of a Desk

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn FurnitureLeave a comment

My wife Anita bought this desk at a local auction house a few weeks ago. The overall condition of the desk was really good, it just had a tear on the veneered top. She sanded and filled the missing area with wood putty hoping that when she applied a dark stain, it would blend in with the rest of the top. My dog Bentley photo bombed the shot.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the repaired area stuck out like a sore thumb. Determined not wanting to paint the entire top and lose the look she was going after, she opted to add a stencil in the area where the blemish was.

She chose a large French postage stamp stencil and angled it across the top. Since the patched area was a little bit on the right side of the desk top, she couldn’t simply center the stencil on the top and completely hide the blemish.

She used a few colors of paint and painted the stencil completely hiding the patch. The stencil now adds quite a bit of character to the desk.

This is how the desk turned out after it was painted and she added a few coats of hemp oil to the top. She has received a lot of postive feedback on her facebook account. You can check out her page here; https://www.facebook.com/bellachicdecor

Can you find the blemish? I sure can’t.

Over The Moon

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn FurnitureLeave a comment

Last weekend was the Over The Moon show in Lawrenceburg, IN. My wife Anita did really well selling her painted furniture and home décor items. People were even telling her that she had the best booth at the show. She did so well that the organizers invited her back for the spring show in April.

Helping my wife out, I made a few things for her to sell at the show. All of my EATs and NOELs that she brought sold which made me happy. I need to make some more and let her sell them in her booth in That Shop in Milford.

Here’s the china cabinet hutch at the show. A lot of people were looking at it, but most were looking at the things inside the cabinet instead of the cabinet itself.  Beside it were chalk boards that she painted. Those are a very popular item for her. I simply cut out the plywood for the frames, she does everything else.

I made a bookcase for her a few months ago, but unfortunately no one bought it.  I’ve made two other ones before and both of them sold within a couple of weeks. We’re thinking it might be the paint job that’s hurting the piece. I’ll make another soon and Anita will just paint it black and see if it sells quicker.

The one piece that didn’t sell was the china cabinet hutch we worked on a few weeks ago. However, Anita is happy about that because she wanted to keep it anyway. It looks nice in our dining room. Now she needs to work for the next Over The Moon show in the spring.

Updating a China Cabinet

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture6 Comments

My wife bought this china cabinet at the Springfield Antique Show in Springfield, OH in September. It originally came with two glass paneled doors but she wanted to take them off and open up the top part of the cabinet for easy storage. We have a similar china cabinet in our dining room now and opening and closing the doors every time I want to unload my wallet and keys is kind of a pain in the ass, so taking the doors off permanently make sense to me.

You’ll see a lot of china cabinets with their doors removed in antique stores but most of them simply take the doors off and paint the piece leaving the sides of the case 3/4″ thin with the hinge mortises exposed and all. I knew I didn’t want to have that look, so I decided to add stiles to front to complete the case.

I started by milling two pieces of poplar 1″ x 1 3/4″ x 36″ and laid out where I wanted to rout fluting down each piece.

I then clamped the pieces in my modern Moxon vise and used a 1/4″ fluting bit to rout a flute about 1/4″ deep down the front of the stile. I opted to have three flutes 1/4″ apart down each stile.

The scrap portion of the stiles is key. Here I gauged where the fluting should go and then tested the layout. As you can tell, I had to move over the middle flute just a tad in order for it to line up evenly with the other two flutes on the side.

After the fluting was routed, I sanded the stiles and glued them onto the cabinet.

The reason I decided to use 1″ thick poplar 1 3/4″ wide is because I wanted to match the stiles to the top rail as it was 1″ x 1 3/4″. Had I used wood that was only 3/4″ thick it wouldn’t have looked as nice appearing like the stiles were an add on which I did not want.

The fluting on the china cabinet’s leg started up 2″ from the bottom so I mirrored the detail starting and stopping the fluting on the stiles 2″ from the top and bottom.

This is how the cabinet turned out. The fluted stiles gives the piece a nice added touch and finishes it off. It will be sold in my wife’s booth at a vintage designer’s market called “Over the Moon” in Lawrenceburg, IN near the end of the month. I think my wife secretly doesn’t want it to sell because she wants to keep it. I can’t blame her.

Fixing a Childs Rocking Chair

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture4 Comments

My wife’s cousin’s husband (does that make him my cousin in-law?) has a childhood rocking chair he wanted me to fix. My wife Anita brought to me and asked me what I could do with it. I looked it over for a few minutes and noticed that it had old glue repairs and screws all over the place trying to hold everything together. It must mean a lot to him if he tried so hard to keep intact, so I decided that it I’ll give it my best to return this chair to its former glory.

The first thing I had to do is carefully disassemble the top of the rocker and save as many pieces as possible. The seat was a piece of MDF that I was going to use as a template for the new seat.

The crest rail was all beaten up so I had to cut a new piece out of poplar using the original as a template.

I then used the holes off the old crest rail as a pattern for the new crest rail and drilled the appropriate size holes.

Since I was using the seat as a template, transferring the holes to the new seat was easy. I simply stuck the auger bit in the hole at the appropriate angle and drilled through. I realize that in theory that this doesn’t exactly work because the angle in which I drilled the holes through the new seat won’t perfectly line up with the where the holes are in the original seat, but the difference was miniscule and not enough for me to be concerned with.

After the holes were drilled, I shaped the seat on the band saw and cleaned up the edges with rasps and files.

I needed to make new spindles underneath the arm stretchers as one of them looked like a dog chewed on it. Luckily I had a couple of short 5/8″ dowels that would work.

I needed to put a 1/2″ tenon on them to fit in the 1/2″ holes I drilled through the seat. I used my tenon cutter and brace to do the job cutting a tenon on both ends of both pieces.

The test fit looks pretty good. Now I needed to make 3/8″ dowels for the back spindles.

I didn’t have a 3/8″ dowels on hand but I do have my Stanley No 77 dowel machine with a 3/8″ cutter in it. I actually sold this tool on eBay earlier this year, but the guy I sold it to claimed it was damaged in shipping so he returned it. I took it as a sign that I should keep it.

I grabbed some maple and cut 7/16″ square stock on the table saw. I then took the stock and shoved it into the cutter while turning the handle which makes the cutter head spin cutting the square stock round.

In no time flat I get perfect 3/8″ dowels. I cut them to size and stuck them in the holes to act as the back spindles.

After some sanding and glue, the rocking chair is back in business. Now Anita will paint it and give it back to her cousin’s husband.

UPDATE 12/24/13

The rocking chair has been repainted just in time for Christmas. My wife Anita did a nice job painting it with chalk paint and distressing it a little bit. We’re on our way to my Anita’s cousin’s house to deliver it to her husband. I’m sure it will be well received.

Empire Dresser

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture6 Comments

The Empire dresser is officially done. My wife Anita found some nice oil rubbed bronze drawer pulls on the internet after looking locally for some with no luck. It originally had glass knobs on it, but a few of them were in rough shape and not all of them matched. I think the drawer pulls she picked out look really nice and add to the character of the piece. She applied four to five coats of hemp oil to the dresser. It gives it a warm aged look without making it look too glossy.

I put a few hours in this as well. I had to strip all the old stain off, patch a veneer job, re-band all the drawer fronts with sapele, replace a brass key escutcheon, and reinforce some of the drawer bottoms with pieces of poplar.

She plans on selling this in her booth with her painted furniture and antiques this Saturday at a local street fair in Milford, OH called the Longstone Festival. She was lucky enough to get a booth as there is usually a waiting list every year. Hopefully it will sell there. I will let you know if it does. http://www.longstonestreetfestival.com/

Frames, Frames and more Frames

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture2 Comments

Last night, my wife Anita took me to an old frame factory in downtown Cincinnati. The factory stopped operating over a hundred years ago, but it looked like the frames hadn’t been touched since the workers packed up and went home.

Anita met a lady about a month ago who was selling some frames from the building and told us that she was going to have an open house on Aug 23rd to try to get rid of some more and invited us to come. Because Anita makes chalk boards out of old frames, she made an appointment with her to view the building before the open house to buy some of her frames, but going back to the open house was still a no-brainer as she wanted me to see the place.

When we arrived, there were people greeting us offering wine and cheese. I didn’t know if I was coming to a rummage sale or a gallery viewing, so I grabbed a glass of wine and headed upstairs. When I got up there, all I saw were tens of thousands of frames stacked everywhere. The floor was probably 5000 square feet and every inch was packed with old frames. It took five minutes just to absorb all of it as I wandered around checking everything out.

The factory stopped operating in 1910 and must have specialized in round and oval frames as there were thousands of them spewed out all over the floor. Every shape and size from tiny to gigantic were available as an oval. They did have some square frames available, but 95% were round of some shape. The owner said the building sat like this undisturbed since 1910.

Not all the frames were primed. They had some really nice ones made from mahogany in all sort of sizes. My wife bought a few of these before and cleaned them up with hemp oil. They look fantastic cleaned so she bought a few more last night . You can see the hundred years of dust that laid on these frames undisturbed.

Sadly, all the old machinery were long gone. I looked around the building for remnants of the machinery, but only came across this glue applicator directions inside one of the posts of the building. It’s from the Casein Manufacturing Company explaining how to properly use one of their mechanical glue pots.

The only big machine left was this nice old blower. There were a few pieces of duct work that went throughout the building, but I’m not sure what it was used for.

Anita ended buying 50 frames for $250. Dirt, dirt cheap as some of the old frames she picked out can go for as high as $35.00 a piece in antique stores. Now she needs to clean all of them up and turn them into chalk boards.