Drummond-Revere Home "RESTOVATION"

Long Overdue

2010-08-01T18:25:00.003-06:00

This post is long overdue. I've been working a ton lately and feel pretty fortunate that we are as busy as we are in the current economy. Thought I would do a quick post on my latest project and direct you all to a new home remodel blog. All of us at studiobuild are currently working on a large remodel in Hyde Park in Kansas City. The owner has started a blog documenting the progress Dwelling 3918 . Wish us luck and I'll do my best to keep updating.

Awesome Video on Chair Construction

2010-04-29T11:54:00.004-06:00

I spotted this over at Plastolux, but I had to share with you. Studiobuild is getting ready to prototype some dining chairs so this video really hit home.

Corvo Chair by Bernhardt Design from Sight Unseen on Vimeo.

Check out the story here.

Studiobuild Has Moved

2010-02-18T17:23:00.007-07:00

Some of you already know but Studiobuild has officially moved from my garage to shop / office space. I partnered up with an old college buddy who goes by "Montana" , we quickly proceeded to get more and more work and my garage just wasn't large enough to contain us. We've partnered up with Acronym Designs to share our space. Its been two weeks in the new shop and we have yet to move to many tools in but it already is nice to have an office and a larger shop. Here are a few pics of the new space it should look a little better once we get the tools moved and set up.

We are looking for a roommate, our first floor office you see here is sitting vacant. So if any of you creative types knows of someone who would like a small office space we are pretty flexible on rent. We have communal space to share with a private lockable office. Email for details.

Cool House

2010-01-19T16:15:00.004-07:00

After my last post it sounds as if a few of you still look at this blog. The general consensus is for me to post about whatever I'm up to and whatever I want to share.

Today the task is simple. You should check out the photos of this nice house. It is a good example of how such a simple house can fuction and look really nice.

The Bluff House by Bruns Architecture

Two Month Hiatus.

2010-01-12T20:57:00.002-07:00

The past few months I've completely let this blog go. I am writing this post asking you my readers how I should proceed. The best I can tell my daily readers still check here daily. I find myself in a predicament on how to move forward. This blog started right around four years ago when I bought my first house, it started because I thought it would be fun to document my remodel. I had a blast and the best advice I can give to anyone who buys and remodels their first house is to blog about the adventure, looking back at your post is great. I have been at a crossroads on which way to take this blog for a while now (well probably for most of 2009 ). Our house has reached the dreaded point of 95% completion, some may say why only 95%. All homeowners can attest that there is always something to do and my architecture comrades can attest that we are somewhat of a perfectionist group. While I have several things on my list to redo / repair / add to our home project the projects are happening at a slower pace. So I am asking for your help could those of you who follow this blog please comment or email me with any tips / advice you have on how to move forward.

Here are a few ideas I have been tossing around in my head for the last month on how to keep posting regularly.

1. Stop posting on this blog, let it serve as a slice in time as my first home remodel start a new blog about my current work / life.

2. Say to hell with trying to keep the Drummond home blog about my house and just blog about what I'm working on / doing regardless of the topic.

3. Begin posting about other projects I find interesting across the country.

4. Buy another home to remodel and blog about it ( if you suggest this one please email for my address as I'll need some investors )

I'll update the list with any good suggestions. If I don't get any I guess nobody reads this anymore anyway and I'll quite worrying about going months between post.

Its been way to long.

2009-11-22T10:38:00.003-07:00

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I have been super busy working on projects at Studiobuild. We have been leading a pretty boring life of work, work, party, work. Here is a pic of the custom desk I just finished building.

LA Trip Post #2 ; Funky Junk Farms

2009-10-12T21:13:00.003-06:00

I mentioned in my previous post about the amazing party I attended while in LA. I have to say this was probably the most interesting party I've ever attended. I don't quite know why the party was so amazing to me, maybe I secretly want a vintage camper more than I thought. I heard that we would be attending a party at an old Trout farm that was owned by an artist couple who just happened to have a serious addiction to vintage campers. I was a little apprehensive at first, all doubt were erased as soon as we entered through a gate and onto what could only be described as a folk art paradise. Rounding the corner into the trailer park was quite the experience. Just a list of objects in attendance sets the tone. Around 100 people, chef preparing soft tacos for guest, yard beer, many many fire pits, a barrista and large espresso maker, several vintage campers, a dance shack. I was amazed at the collection of folk art and sculpture scattered throughout the park, it was an eclectic mix and one I wish I was talented enough to gather.A few shots from the lens of Bob Greenspan.

Trip to LA

2009-10-07T18:39:00.005-06:00

I just got back from an exciting trip to LA. I went with a friend and checked out the annual MAK Center's annual homes tour. A few stops at roadside diners and a party among vintage trailers rounded out the trip. I would call it a modern architecture crash course sprinkled with some gravy. I'll be posting several exciting things about the trip in the following days. But first up is a few pics.

Eames Lounge Chair _ Complete.

2009-09-25T13:41:00.005-06:00

I got the Eames chair put together for the tour. The cushions from Hume Modern are excellent and it feels just like a new chair. I spent many hours with 0000 steel wool and teak oil refinishing the old rosewood. Its amazing how many stains, paint splatters, and scratches that process removes. Here is a pic of the condition before the refinish, the wood was really dry and light along with several blemishes.
In typical fashion once it got crunch time to finish things up for the homes tour I forgot to take pictures. So no process pics on this post. Here are some shots of the chair assembled, and yes it is as comfortable as it looks.

Homes Tour Wrap Up.

2009-09-21T12:40:00.003-06:00

The KCModern Runnells homes tour was a big success this past weekend. We had right around 100 people come through the house on Sunday. We worked right up to the wire but we finished everything on the list. I got a set of chairs built for John and Sam, the Eames Lounge Chair was refinished and assembled, and to top it all of we filled the smoker and cooked a ton of food for KC Modern crew to wind down with after the tour. We met a ton of great people and had a good time. The only room we did any work to prepare was the office, I'll get a pick up of our newest furniture additions once I find the tripod.

Jens Risom Lounge Chair Redo

2009-09-15T20:53:00.005-06:00

Some time ago I picked up a Jens Risom Lounge Chair from a buddy in trade for some tools and some lumber. Not to long after I picked up the chair, Design Within Reach decided to partner with Jens Risom and reissue this classic chair originally designed in 1949 for the Caribe Hilton Hotel in Puerto Rico. The chair needed reupholstered and a good amount of teak oil to bring it back to life. Its amazing what several coats of teak oil and some 0000 steel wool will do to some Walnut. We had the cushions redone by Rowzee Upholstery in Maharam's Eames Small Dot fabric. I'm thrilled with the way the chair turned out. Stay tuned for more progress as we get prepared for the homes tour this weekend.

Gluttony

2009-09-10T14:20:00.002-06:00

For those of you who know me you know that I share a great fondness for a good beer, probably too fond. Following close behind is my love for great BBQ. I've been watching craigslist for a while now looking for a smoker upgrade for the patio. My other smoker was not scaled to provide adequate poundage for most of our parties. My most recent craigslist score was an Oklahoma Joe's offset smoker, lets just say its big enough that it took three of us to roll it out of the truck. It needs some work and this winter I plan on giving it some upgrades, its just not custom enough for our taste. So for the next few weeks if you see me and think somethings a little off don't worry its just the meat coma.

Runnells Homes Tour

2009-09-04T16:13:00.003-06:00

Our house will be on tour September 20th for those who would like to come see it.

KCMODERN presents:

When Mid-Century Modern was GREEN

David B. Runnells Climate-Wise Home Tour & Patio Party
Saturday, September 19, 2009, 7:00-9:00 PM
200 W. 94th Street & Wornall Rd., Kansas City, Missouri

Park at the Temple at 9400 Wornall and cross street to 94th.

Meet other Modern enthusiasts and experience a unique

Mid-Century Modern “Country Home” designed by David B.

Runnells to be sustainable in 1950. Enjoy campfire food and

yard beer at this special “recession proof” KCMODERN

event. Limited advance reservations are available for $10

per person until Thursday, September 17^th. A separate ticket

is required for the Sunday tour.

Cranbrook To Kansas City

David B. Runnells Mid-Century Modern Homes Tour

Sunday, September 20, 2009, 2:00-5:00 PM

This tour will require driving to multiple homes so start early.

Start at 7300 Roe Circle, Prairie Village, Kansas.

Park at Baptist Church at 75^th & Roe, walk north to Roe Circle.

Or start at 2400 W. 86th Terr. & Lee Blvd. Leawood, Kansas.

There will be limited parking on 86^th Terr. Cul-de-sac.

See at least 8 cool examples of Mid-Century Modern

homes designed by Architect, David Benton Runnells.

Tickets are $15 in advance or $20 the day of the tour.
Limited tickets will be sold at the event registration tables

on a first come first served basis, so buy your tickets now!

Order Your Tickets Today

Make your checks payable to KCMODERN and send payment

to KCMODERN, 5301 W. 66th Terrace, Prairie Village, KS 66208.

All advanced tickets to be picked up the day of the events at the

registration table. We will tour the homes regardless of weather.

More info at 913.262.5056 or www.KCMODERN.blogspot.com

We are posting information about the Tour and Architect, David B.

Runnells almost every day over at our blog so be sure to visit

www.kcmodern.blogspot.com.

KCMODERN raises awareness and promotes preservation of

Modern Architecture and Design. Proceeds from this event will

fund future KCMODERN events and modern activities.

Blomus Mini Torch Set.

2009-08-31T09:03:00.004-06:00

I received the Blomus Mini Torch Set last week in the mail. I have to applaud the folks at All Modern, their customer service department found an error in my shipping address and followed up with a phone call and an email. I can't say I've ever had that good of service, amazon certainly doesn't go that far. The torches are extremely little, I'll try and get a pic for scale, they are amazingly detailed as far as how they screw together etc. I had to go buy a miniature funnel in order to fill them with oil, the opening is very small. I was not happy at all with the way the stakes screwed into the torch head. Of the four torches I received three of them did not screw in straight. If it was not a giveaway to review I would have tried sending them back, I would not have been happy paying 90 bucks for them.

A little Time in the Shop

2009-08-24T09:55:00.005-06:00

Last week was spent in the shop working on a couple of Mahogany End Tables and six wood cutting boards. I made the projects to be auctioned at a fund raising auction for a friend who has had some pretty bad health care issues lately. Everything turned out great, well all but the buying of my items. The auctioneer started the event by auctioning off my items, actually before many of us knew he was starting. By the time I made it over to that area the items had already sold, and for a little under what I thought they should bring but I guess you can't control that. My mom was actually the highest bidder on the end tables so they stayed in the family. I don't know if she actually wants them so they may be for sale soon. The auction was an amazing site, it was in my hometown of Smithville and I would guess the attendance at well over 2000 people. It was really neat to see how the small town stepped up to support one of their own.

Eames Lounge Chair _ Cushions Finally in the Works.

2009-08-17T18:15:00.002-06:00

As long time readers know I've been on the hunt for cushions for my Eames Lounge Chair for some time now. I picked up the chair back in March off of Craigslist, it is missing the seat and ottoman cushion. Jessica and I have been waiting till we saved up the funds to do the chair right. Well I've gone through all of the options available and we are finally going to be having the cushions remade by Hume Modern, they weren't the cheapest option but pretty close and they have all the other various pieces the chair is missing. They are going to replace the side shockmounts which are in need of repair and are the one part of the chair that eventually fails overtime. In hindsight we could have bought a new Eames Lounge Chair with my designer discount for about the same price. I feel better that we are bringing one back from the dead and the chair will look like new once I put it back together, one bonus is the vintage chairs hold their value much better on the off chance we would ever sell it. I'll be blogging about the process of restoration. We are hoping everything gets done before the homes tour in September. Wish us Luck.

All Modern Product Review

2009-08-07T09:56:00.004-06:00

I wrote a few weeks ago about doing a product review for All Modern . All Modern has a fantastic selection of modern furniture and home accessories from many leading designers. They have great prices on many classic pieces of furniture. They have a great clearance section with some great deals. I had a tough time finding which product to review. But after losing pints of blood to the mosquitoes by the pool I decided to check out the Blomus Mini Torch set. I'll let you know how they work.

Eames Lounge Chair Cushions

2009-08-03T14:13:00.003-06:00

Not a lot going on around here. This past week we refinanced the house and in the process are going to save ourself about 300 bucks a month. The article in the KC Star led to some interesting job interviews last week, if any of them pan out and turn into jobs you will be the first to know. Jessica and I are finally looking to locate the cushions for our Eames Lounge Chair. Not satisfied with the choices available we are currently watching Ebay for a set of used cushions to come up. I think we have decided to have the chair reappoulstered locally in possibly a fabric. Something a little different then the typical black leather. I'm also currently checking craigslist to upgrade my bbq smoker, I'm probably going to have to wait to find a deal or sell some furniture. Jessica isn't to keen on me spending a bunch of money on a smoker.

Busy Weekend

2009-07-27T09:59:00.004-06:00

It was a hectic weekend around the house. I worked a long day on saturday milling siding for my neighbors house. I wrapped up the work on a new website for Studiobuild. I had an Q & A in the House and Home Section of the KCStar. We got in some time around the pool and we went to dinner and came home to find this. I guess the pets had a good time as well.

Rinnai Tankless Water Heater

2009-07-20T15:29:00.006-06:00

Last week was a busy one. I've been working a bunch on a new website for Studio Build ( more on that soon ) and we decided to capitalize on the low interest rates and refinance our house. Having an appraiser stop by is a great excuse for a thorough cleaning so the place was all shined up. Our scheduled appraisal was at 2 pm on Friday with everything all ready to go our water heater decided to throw a wrench in our plans. About 4.30 on Thursday just as I was getting ready to walk out the door for a meeting Jessica asked me what that noise of running water was. I had no idea and as she walked through the kitchen she started yelling for me to come quick. I instantly knew what the culprit was. When we remodeled in full over budget mode we decided to reuse the old water heater, thinking we would eventually replace it when the time came. Well as I rushed to turn the water off and the gas as water was pouring out of our now exploded hot water heater I realized that time had come. Unfortunately we had to wait to tear into the project I didn't want the mess for the appraiser.
I had always planned on getting a tankless hot water heater and after a little research I realized that we had no choice. It seems they have increased the diameter of normal tanked water heaters in the last ten years so we did not have room to install one. So tankless it was. Being the diy / tightwad I am, I had planned on installing the unit myself. After some in depth research and price checking I realized this was probably a job left to a professional. I called Rieck Mechanical to do the install. They are great guys to deal with and even offered to come work late Friday night to get us hot water. I convinced them that it could wait until saturday, they are famous for late night installs. They have now installed these units on three of the nine Revere homes on the circle.
We went with an outdoor unit to free up even more space.

Reviewing a product from AllModern

2009-07-09T16:54:00.002-06:00

We have been asked by AllModern to do a product review for them. Its very simple all we have to do is pick out an item under $100 and they mail it to us to check it out. Ironically enough AllModern is the place where our Magis Puppy came from so I was very familier with their site. I have to say they have an amazing selection of products, I have no idea what to review for them. Help Me Out!

We Won a few Awards

2009-06-30T09:41:00.004-06:00

Its been a long couple of weeks since I last blogged. Somewhere in there I took a long three day trip to Wichita to install some work. While there I worked a 12 hour day on my 28th Birthday, worked with an old college friend, and drove through a wicked thunderstorm pulling a trailor on the way home. The past month I've also been working a lot on building the Awards for KC Home Design's design excellence awards. After building 52 awards I was certainly burned out from peeling vinyl stickers. The exciting news is that we won two awards for our house! We won the Gold Award in the Outdoor Category and a Silver in Historic Preservation ( second to the great work done on the downtown AMC theatre) so while there was pressure to build a cool award it was cranked up a notch knowing I was building two for myself. John and his team at UMKC formulated and poured the concrete for the awards. I can't even begin to explain the special concrete used so check out John's concrete blog.

Channel Your Inner Lumberjack

2009-06-14T10:32:00.003-06:00

Been a slow couple of weeks around here. Just working a bunch. I did take a little break to help my neighbor cut down a 75' pine tree last weekend. Our neighborhood really enjoys communal lawn days so we relished the fact that we could be lumberjacks for the day and cut up a huge tree. Here is an action shot just before we yelled timber. I know its probably not an osha approved situation but we had to push the tree a little to insure it didn' t fall on the house.

Pink Flamingo's

2009-06-05T10:00:00.003-06:00

Been a very busy few weeks. Working on projects for Studiobuild has left little time for any home projects to get tackled. The garden is growing like crazy we almost have a cucumber ready to pick. On Memorial Day we were attacked by a flock of Pink Flamingo's, seven total managed to stage an assault on our garden. We know which neighbor was the ring leader so when we retaliate pictures will follow.

The Great American BBQ 2009

2009-05-26T08:30:00.007-06:00

Last Saturday I somehow managed to find myself the job of helping out the competition for the World Brisket Open at The Great American BBQ 2009. I wish I could somehow figure out how to make that my full time job, walking around tasting BBQ and drinking a few beers with some really nice people. I recommend all of you trying to attend next years event it was a lot of fun. Here are a few shots from the day.
The Slaughter House Five team (otherwise known as the crew who started Oklahoma Joe's) were my host family for the day. My buddy Bryan is friends with them so we hung out all day and watched how the pros bbq.
The have rolling tool carts full of seasoning, brushes, thermometers etc.
One of the teams I checked on for the competition the guys who invented the Bacon Explosion (and yes I did try a bite it is good in a Heart stopping sort of way)
Their brisket out of the smoker.
slicing it up to enter the competition. They did not win or place in the top 10, I actually got to sample the brisket of the guys who won (Brew n Crew) and it was amazing.

Solar Pool Heater

2009-05-15T08:11:00.005-06:00

Been a busy week on Roe Circle, Mark got started renovating the house next door, the Red house has the foundation back filled. This week I got the solar pool heater constructed. I've toyed with the idea in the past and we tried a variation when we first filled the pool in 2006. So after researching a bit on the net, and needing to buy a sump pump to help do some work on a friends pool the pieces fell into place. I'm using cheap irrigation pipe from Home Depot, $13 per 100 feet. Throw in some inexpensive fittings and a little tape and here you go.
Each circle is 100' of hose, they are all hooked together so that the water has to travel through all 500' before it reaches the pool. Thursday was our first non overcast day, we hooked up the sump pump to circulate the water. I put the pump in the deep end to help slow the water flow (takes alot of pressure away as your make the pump lift the water higher). Our test readings confirm that the heater works well. The surface temp of the water in the pool is 65 degrees (I bet the water at the bottom of the deep end is a degree or two cooler. At constant flow of roughly 2000 gallons per hour the water coming out of the solar heater was at 77 degrees. I'm not smart enough to calculate how long it is going to take us to raise the entire 18,000 gallons up in the 70's, I think we still lose alot of heat at night since temps still dip into the 50's.

I also have been working on the trellis for our pole beans to climb. I had a ton of Ipe scraps that are 1/4" x 1" that was used in stacking the Ipe I bought for the planters. So I painted some of it up to build the trellis. I was still deciding if orange or blue was the way to go. We ended up going with orange since the rim of the garden will eventually be painted blue.

Raised Garden Update

2009-05-12T12:33:00.005-06:00

We got all the vegtables planted last week, along with mulching the new bed by the garage. The 2x6 will get painted soon enough, we are leaning towards a light blue. I'm also constructing a custom Ipe trellis for the pole beans to climb.

Weekend Follow Up and the Brookside Art Fair

2009-05-04T09:01:00.006-06:00

The event Friday at Urbana went well, I don't know if we sold anything or not but we had a ton of people come through and it was a really fun evening. Check in to Studio Build for pics of the display in a few days. Jessica has been working her tail off in the yard the last couple of weeks on her days off. I've been too busy building furniture to offer a ton of help. The raised garden is finally taking shape. I was able to help Jessica add the compost, manure and dirt and till it in on Saturday. We are going to go shopping for vegtables today so we will follow up on that topic at a later date. Troy asked a few questions about the process on building the Ipe garden bed. When I mentioned wax and oil the Ipe I was referring to oiling the Ipe with a product called Penofin, it offers some protection to the wood to let it color and look hold up a little longer. The ends where waxed with a product called Anchorseal its a paint on wax that stops the ends of the Ipe from checking. The post are a different wood, the name excapes me I'll check on that.
In between furniture projects I was able to get in some edging next to the garage. The raised garden forced us to move some Peony's so we made a new garden bed next to the garage. It looks really nice and Jessica got all of the grass removed so we are ready to fill the rest of the bed with some more plants.
Jessica trimmed back the old Horsetail Reed and its new growth is amazing. I think it looks very prehistoric and I'm hopeing it gets a little taller than it did last year. I can see how it is known as invasive by the way it filled the planters.
Saturday night we made a trip to the Brookside Art Fair with our neighbors Eric and Elise. We were just going to wander around and look at stuff and wish we were rich enough to have a few extra thousand laying around to buy a painting or two. As we were walking through to last few booths on our way to the car we found an awesome artist making some really cool yard art. We purchased a couple of small pieces. First up is a piece from the gnome be gone series.

First Friday

2009-04-30T09:19:00.002-06:00

A little exciting event for myself is occuring this Friday. I'm showing some of my furniture work at a First Friday Gallery at Urbana Modern Furniture Studio. Its at 1910 Main Street and these events usually get going after happy hour and last a few hours. Urbana is hosting a fund raising event for Greensburg, Kansas........specifically I believe the money is going to the Big Well. They were looking for artist that use recycled objects in their art, so everything I'll be showing is recycled in some way. The planters I just finished up will be on display as well as a couple of dining chairs and the little mahogany end table.

Ipe Raised Vegtable Garden part 2 the installation

2009-04-08T07:37:00.003-06:00

After a busy two days I got the garden bed installed. I must say its massive, but it does look really cool in the yard. Jessica was off yesterday and was able to help me set the sections in place which made it go a lot easier.

Ipe Raised Vegtable Garden

2009-04-06T15:17:00.003-06:00

Made some good progress on the raised garden over the weekend. Worked in the garage with my neighbors John and Eric on various things as we recovered from too many Pabst Blue Ribbons. The ipe is amazingly hard and I really think this planter is going to last longer than I am. Today I sanded, predrilled, finished, and waxed the ipe. Hopefully I'll get it partially assembled this evening.

Before the planks were oiled.

Studio Build

2009-04-03T09:29:00.003-06:00

I have been busy lately working on some Studio Build stuff. Building a fireplace mantle for my job in Wichita, designing and making some Ipe and Steel planters. We have decided to build a large raised garden this year our attempt at growing tomatoes and jalapeno peppers last year in pots has spurred Jessica to want to test her green thumb. I've been working on making the raised bed look really nice in our yard, so I tracked down some really cheap Ipe. I plan on building the raised bed this weekend so look for those next week.

Eames Lounge Chair !

2009-03-30T08:59:00.003-06:00

Exciting news, as many of you know I've been looking for an Eames 670 Lounge Chair for some time. Given that they are very expensive I've been holding out on purchasing a new one and have been looking for a used one at a value price. Sunday night after having dinner with our neighbors John and Sam I sat down and did my daily searchs on craigslist. After typing Eames in the search query I hit enter fully expecting somebody to have posted their grandmothers ugly couch as an eames era sofa. As I read the heading Eames Rosewood Lounger $500 I clicked as fast as I could, sure enough there it was, plenty of pictures, and the Herman Miller tags on the bottom. One catch, no bottom seat cushion and no ottoman cushion. Not hesitating I immediately email the seller.....cursing gmail for opening so slowly....typing quickly....first I type that I would like to look at it...send. Then I start googling replacement cushions and I find a couple of sets that are reasonable (well as reasonable as an Eames Herman Miller replacement can be). Ok now I go back and scour over the photos looking for big scratches, breaks, looking for any sign that its a knock off. Then I email again.......I want it, please call asap, have cash....yadda yadda.......then I get a phone call about 20 min later....get his address and set up a time before he goes to work. Luckily the bank is open that early and I head off with cash in hand. Its as advertised, other than the cushions missing it shows normal wear and tear for a 40 year old chair. Here are some pictures of it with whats left of the 4" of snow we got on Saturday. So if any of you readers know of some replacement cushions for sale please email me, or even if you have a set of worn out cushions I only need the backs to have them reappoulstered.

A Mid Century Road Trip

2009-03-24T17:38:00.006-06:00

House by Isadore Shank

Last weekend I took a road trip to St. Louis to check out the exhibit on Eero Saarinan. I went with a few guys from KC Modern, we met up with my college buddy Grant, and Dan Semar who frequents the lotta living forums as STLModern. We checked out all the local mcm's and several gutt busting meals along the way. I'm amazed at how many cool houses there are in STL. Apparently they are getting torn down at an alarming rate for mcmansions, most of the houses we checked out are in the nicer parts of town on large lots. The exhibit is really nice and Saarinan doesn't get the due he deserves in history. Its amazing the amount of work he accomplished in the short time before his early death at the age of 51. The most interesting part of the exhibit was looking for tie ins to David Runnells the architect of my house. He worked for Saarinan and Ralph Rapson ( a frequent collaborator) and many of the early projects that Saarinan did while at Cranbrook he could have had a hand in. We didn't find any specific ties although many of the early drawings and projects are very similar to some slides we have of Runnells early work. More on that later.

Harris Armstrong's Studio

House by William Bernoudy
Dan's House showing of his new landscaping

Naples Florida

2009-03-06T14:59:00.004-07:00

Last weekend Jessica and I took a little vacation down to Naples, Florida. We had a blast, spent some time on the beach, went on an awesome sailing trip on a catamaran, walked through a swamp, ate some good food. We came back fully charged and ready to get back to work, we have been hampered somewhat by our washing machine. We came home to an error message for some part that takes a week to get, you have to love that a new washer only last 4 months before it breaks.

New Tools for the Shop

2009-02-26T09:49:00.005-07:00

Well it was a pretty uneventful week as far as furniture building goes. Working on some designs that aren't quite worked out yet and finishing up the drywall in the garage consumed most of the week. I did manage to spend more than my tool allowance this week on some serious tool upgrades for the shop. First up was a General International 8" jointer, this thing is almost twice the size of my last jointer and it is in like new condition. Then yesterday I picked up an old Powermatic 100 planer. This things is built like a tank, I think it was built sometime in the early 60's and has all american made parts. It tips the scales at over 600 lbs and was a royal pain getting it out of the guys basement where I bought it. It came with a neat attachment that allows you to sharpen the knives on the machine in place.

Mahogany End Table Prototype

2009-02-16T13:15:00.006-07:00

I posted pictures of an end table I was working on a few weeks ago. I finally got around to taking some pics of it. This is the first prototype or full scale mockup of the piece I'm getting ready to make a few more and I'm going to change a few minor things to help the piece look a little better. The top is a little to thick still I think so I'm going to make it a little thinner. Here are some quick pics of it. I think the Mahogany really shows through nice on the black and white images as well.

Mahogany Bench

2009-02-08T11:04:00.004-07:00

I finally got around to taking some pics of the bench.

Working on an Endtable

2009-02-01T13:30:00.003-07:00

I built a little end table on Thursday and Friday. First I went through the pile of Mahogany and picked out several pieces that had a similar color and really nice grain. I then jointed and cut them down to the same thickness then glued them up for the table top.
I cut a taper on the legs and used the Domino to join the legs together.

Since the tabletop was larger than my planer, I had to handplane the top down. It took me about 30 minutes, but I got the top all nice and flat and removed the extra glue.
I had to make a little jig to cut a circle on the bandsaw. It works really well in theory but cutting a 18" circle on 1.5" thick Mahogany is not an easy task. This was by far the hardest part of the whole thing.
After some extensive sanding I put a coat of finish on the top and the base. I took this picture just as I poured some of the finish on the top, you can see the really nice grain show through immediately. I still need to get some finished pictures of the bench I helped Eric with and the finished little table. I think I'm going to make a couple more, so I will have some for sale if your interested.

Mahogany Bench

2009-01-26T15:11:00.004-07:00

Well the garage is taking some serious shape. A little bit more cleaning and moving a few tools allowed me to make a bench with my neighbor Eric this past weekend. I can't give out to many specifics the bench is somewhat of a suprise to his wife and she reads the blog so I can't give out too many juicy photos. I got to try out my Festool Domino and I must say that thing works as good as advertised. Its going to take my woodworking to a whole new level.

A weekend of Work

2009-01-20T16:02:00.006-07:00

The garage improvement project is improving nicely. I spent the weekend working away, Lee came and helped me on Saturday and my neighbor Eric worked a long day with me on Sunday helping build some shelves. I had quite the pile of stuff in the driveway for a week and thankfully Monday was spent putting objects back in the shop and on the new shelves. Here are some pics and it still looks like a mess but believe me you didn't see this place before we started. Another day or two just cleaning and organizing and the place is going to look amazing.
This wall used to be full of some horribly crappy shelves from the previous owners garage. We tore the old shelves apart saved the salvaged wood and rebuilt two super sturdy shelves. I started organizing all my wood clamps, they have been in piles spread around the garage for a few years now.

Thursday

2009-01-15T18:44:00.002-07:00

The garage as it looked Thursday morning, I spent the day building shelves for their new locations in order to move enough stuff to finish insulating and putting the osb up on the walls.
Shelf for wood scraps and other heavy tools.
Another storage shelf, you can't have too many. All of these where built from scraps I've collected lately.
New shelf for all the various nails and screws.

Wednesday

2009-01-15T18:27:00.000-07:00

Wednesday morning was a bit chilly, Lee and I fired up the heater moved more stuff out into the yard and started insulating the walls that we could. I just went with batt insulation for the walls, I'm a firm believer in blown in cellulose insulation but for a detached garage it just didn't make sense.

I decided to go with osb sheets for the walls it cost the same as sheetrock and will be much tougher to abuse. I got to really try out the new saw and I must say that thing is awesome. Most the time I was able to just sit the track on the mark and cut it, no clamping necessary.

Monday and Tuesday

2009-01-15T18:22:00.001-07:00

Lee and I spent all of Monday and Tuesday hanging drywall on the ceiling of the garage. I ended up renting a lift from Home Depot and it was well worth it. Its amazing how much brighter the garage is just from the drywall. The insulators should be coming next week and I have a lot left to get done. I have accumulated so much stuff that I have a whole pile of stuff in the driveway and in the backyard, luckily the neighbors havn't complained yet.

A week in the Garage.

2009-01-10T15:36:00.002-07:00

I've decided to go ahead and get the garage situated the way I want in order to crank out some woodworking projects in the coming months. I couldn't think of a better way to spend the time while I'm slow with work other than use the pile of wood I have and the tools to make some cool furniture projects. This got me interested in finishing the garage the way I want before I get in the middle of another project. So last week I finished wiring the ceiling in preparation of sheetrocking and insulating the ceiling. I've been working today on a shop layout to enable Jessica to park her car in the garage some of the time. So a massive shop organization is underway to eliminate unwanted items and some much needed shelving is being built to organize all the tools I've accumulated in the past and to make way for a few new ones. I'll post more next week of the progress pics.

Here is a sketchup model of the finished shop layout. It will probably take me a long while to get it all built in like shown. But I wanted a plan for wiring etc. before I got started.

DeWalt Tracksaw

2009-01-02T15:59:00.005-07:00

I recently got a new tool to try out, somehow DeWalt found my blog and wanted me to review a tool for them. Its a new circular saw with a guide rail that offers extremely precise cuts and awesome portability. I got it just in time for christmas and actually just in time to use it on installing some cork flooring in Lawrence (more pics at StudioBuild). I must say the saw works as advertised and I really like it. I'll be posting some more pics as I get to use it on some more projects soon.
Guide track
The saw in action.
Splinter free cuts.

If any of you want to come try it out. Just let me know.

Its been to long

2008-12-23T13:03:00.006-07:00

Sorry its taken me so long to do a post. I've been swamped, who knew that no longer having a full time architecture job would be so time consuming. I've been really busy doing some side jobs and I've taken a larger role in working for my dad doing snow removal in KC. Luckily it pays well and it keeps me really busy. I've been looking forward to having some free time to build some furniture and it looks like once I make it through the holidays that may finally become a reality. I recently picked up a bunch of really really nice Mahogany so look for some projects in that soon. I also picked up a really nice Jens Risom lounge chair, from my buddy Steve, we traded some wood for the chair. It should look really sharp once I get it reappoulstered. The photos look a little grainy because I'm playing with some fun options on my iphone. I may be given the chance to test out some new tools from Dewalt, I'll keep you posted on that.

Studio Build is Officially Launched

2008-11-21T17:25:00.005-07:00

Many of you know that over the past few months my work has taken a little turn. With the slowdown of the housing industry my workload at RDM Architecture dwindled. In August I took a voluntary month long leave to take a vacation to Montana and help my dad finish up a custom home he was building. Well one month quickly turned to four, I worked a few days for RDM but mainly I've been working for myself and for my dad doing construction. I've been absolutely swamped with work and I'm loving it. Last week I officially went to part time at RDM, basically its official that I'm not coming back full time there but we are going to continue to work together on a part time basis. I've drummed up some exciting projects over the past couple of months and have a line on a few more. So I'm writing to make the official web launch of Studio Build
I've started a little blog and a friend is helping me get a website up and going. This all started when I couldn't decide if I should post all the little furniture projects I was doing for other people on this blog, so the Studio Build blog was launched to document those projects. Obviously one thing led to another and those little side projects have turned into large projects on more of a full time basis. So check out the blog, I'll be updating it more frequently in the coming weeks as progress is made on the projects I'm currently working on.

KC Home Design

2008-11-02T19:00:00.002-07:00

Run to the newstand! Our house is featured in this month's KC Home Design magazine. Eames didn't make the cover , but she still claims to be cuter than the dog that made the cover.

Finally some more work on the house.

2008-10-27T19:34:00.002-06:00

It seems like forever since I did a project for the house, well this past weekend I tackled a little project that I had been putting off ever since we moved in. Our downstairs bathroom always needed a little cabinet to help store the laundry soap etc. I have tried to document the build step by step so you can follow along. Another post will follow showing its completion.
Step one; buy a sheet of walnut plywood and a sheet of melamine from craigslist ( $75)
step two; rip the plywood to width on the table saw
step three; cut the shelves to length on the miter saw
step four; cut the dado's in the shelves for the sliding panels
step five; drill for pockethole screws
step six; start assembling the shelf
step seven; realize you screwed up and cut not enough shelves. repeat steps one through six for one more shelf.
step eight; unit is fully glued and screwed together

I will follow up with part II of the shelf project.

What I've Been Up to.

2008-10-23T11:23:00.003-06:00

Well you havn't heard from me in a few weeks now, I've been busy as ever. One of the projects I've been working on just officially launched yesterday. I've helped set up the KCModern guys with a new blog, I'll be contributing as well. We are hoping that the easy navigation and ease of posting will allow KC Modern to reach a new audience and get a wealth of information out there. Click the image to check out the new KC Modern Blog.

Fall is here.

2008-10-12T18:50:00.002-06:00

Things around the house have been kinda slow lately. After getting the house ready for the photoshoot we have taken the last couple of weeks off to relax and enjoy the fall weather. We took a trip down to Wichita this past weekend and had a great time. Had a chance to stop by and see a couple of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings in town, and drove around and spotted a couple of Mid Century houses that were pretty cool.

Charles Phoenix This Weekend!

2008-10-02T19:17:00.003-06:00

I wanted to remind you all that the KC Modern Charles Phoenix retro slideshow is happening this weekend. Its going to a really funny show and unlike anything you've ever seen before. If any of you plan to attend please let me know and we can meet up.
Visit KC Modern for more information.

On another note our friends Steve and Cathy had their home featured on the Apartment Therapy Chicago Home tour today. Check it out!

We are going to be in KC Home Design!

2008-09-21T18:33:00.002-06:00

Last week was an exciting one. The house was photographed by our friend Bob Greenspan to be in KC Home Design magazine. It was the first time I've been involved with an architectural photo shoot. It was an interesting process involving moving a lot of furniture and staging various scenes. I think Bob shot 15 scenes or so and took about 180 pictures to get those 15 scenes. I borrowed some patio furniture from one of my neighbors and a few small pieces from Retro Inferno so a big thanks goes out to Rod and Dwight. The shoot took a little over 8 hours from start to finish and that didn't count all the work we had to do to get the house ready. Look for us in the Nov/Dec issue, I think there is a small chance that Eames will get the cover shot.

The pile of stuff that Eryn brought for the shoot.
Eames getting ready for her shoot.
Bob shooting the Nelson Clock that I borrowed for the shoot. I need to get one of those.

Eames

2008-09-14T21:00:00.004-06:00

We would like to introduce you to the newest member of the remodel team. Originally we were going to call her Hemingway since she has six toes on her front paws, but it was a little boyish and way to long. So Eames it is!
Bella and Eames working hard. You can see our new Nelson Clock in the background. Our neighbors Eric and Elise gifted that to us after we helped them do some tile work in their bathroom.

We've been featured at Apartment Therapy!

2008-09-11T17:52:00.002-06:00

Well a few of you die hard readers probably already found out but we were featured today on Apartment Therapy Chicago. I love reading the comments and get a kick out of what other people notice about our house. Its been a few weeks proces to get some photos thrown together and to take the time to fill out their survey. For those of you new to the blog I've tried to categorize everything appropriately for easy searching. Thanks for visiting.

On other news I put in an offer on another mcm the other day, looking for the drummond remodel part two. I'll keep you posted on that one. I found out today as well that we are going to be photographed next week for a local magazine. I don't want to jinx it so I tell you more later.

Save the Date for the next KC Modern Event

2008-09-08T17:52:00.002-06:00

Please spread the word.

Stay Tuned

2008-09-01T17:32:00.004-06:00

To say I have a few things up my sleeve would be an understatement. I have a some exciting news to post soon, we got word that were going to be featured on a large national blog. As you can tell the blog is getting a little update in the time being. I've started a couple of other blogs in the past few weeks and once they get enough info on them I'll give them a feature as well. Work is dreadfully slow I havn't been into work at RDM in a month and a half, luckily my dad has been keeping me busy as we try and finish a large custom home he built for a client north of the river. I've recieved a few emails about both design work and build work, a few of them may actually pan out so I'll keep you posted on that. If you have a project that needs my services shoot me an email. So until later Ciao!

Eames Storage Unit

2008-08-13T19:57:00.003-06:00

Exciting news on the Record Storage I built for Rod Parks the owner of Retro Inferno, its in a small pic in this month's issue of Spaces magazine. Barrett has some pictures of the storage unit and as soon as I get them from him I will post some pics of it in action. The last part of my furniture trade with Rod involved a large Eames Storage Unit. I can't say that I would have been able to stomach paying for one of these as they are really really expensive, but it was a lot easier to justify when I was trading some of my sweet equity and not actual cash. The unit is awesome and looking back it is one of the best pieces in the house. It looks cool and is extremely functional and well built.

I finally got the house numbers installed on the house. I put them on a scrap of Teak I had and simply hung them on the brick.
I finally got around to painting out the doors on the closets. I struggled with the idea of painting these for almost two years, I should have just followed my gut from the beginning. Since our house has so much Birch Paneling I always thought adding a strong punch of color would really set off the closets. I went with two colors to tie the house together. The brown is actually the exterior color of the house. The blue picks up the blue of the tile and the blue of the Angela Adams Rug. I really like how the blue pulls together all three levels of the house now, its subtle and I'm probably the only person who will ever notice but I'm really happy we did it.

Walnut Bed is done!

2008-07-27T20:21:00.003-06:00

I got the bed done last week as promised just in time for the scout for Better Homes and Gardens to come by and look at the house. She liked it and they snapped about 30 pictures of the place to show to the editors. I don't know when I will know something about if they want to shoot the house or not. My friend Bob Greenspan is going to be taking the photos and he said that a local magazine he shoots for is interested as well. So hopefully one of these will pan out and you all can be looking at pictures of the house in a mag. Barrett came over and took some pictures while I had the place cleaned up. Here is a shot of the bed and the nightstand. As you can tell it didn't take Bella long to find her spot and do some power napping.

Busy Weekend

2008-07-14T08:57:00.001-06:00

I had some exciting news last week this Wed. a scout for Better Homes and Gardens is coming to take a look at our house to see if they are interested in photographing it. Jessica is out of town on vacation so that nominates me to get the house all cleaned up and ready. It also made me tackle projects I had been procrastinating on for months. So look for some really nice pictures of the place at the end of the week.

Back of Bed headboard.

The bed prior to being disassembled for finishing.

Eames Shell Chairs

2008-07-08T16:14:00.003-06:00

We got our set of Eames Shell Chairs from Retro Inferno last week just in time for the Fourth. Here is a shot of our dining room after we put them in place. I struggled for a long time with what to do for dining chairs. I kept looking and looking for a cool danish modern set of chairs that went with the table and credenza. I always considered giving some really bright chairs a chance, Rod mentioned that he had some really nice blue shell chairs so since blue is my favorite color we decided to pull the trigger. I couldn't be happier I think they look awesome it give our kitchen/dining a punch of color that I think looks really nice. The chairs have the narrow shock mounts so eventually I can add nicer Eiffel bases to them. The print in the background is new as well its an Alexander Girard for Herman Miller print that we picked up with our couch a few weeks back. The bed is coming along nicely expect a post on it asap.

Bed Progress

2008-06-30T08:12:00.001-06:00

Well I enjoyed the unusually cool weather this past weekend and made some serious progress on the bed. I've begun to make a big push to get this and a few other little jobs done I'm hoping to get the house photographed sometime late summer. So here is the base of the bed all assembled it went together extremely well and is rock solid. I may add a few more reinforcements but I'm going to wait till I get the headboard on and see how that stiffens it up. Since its bee so long you have to look back a ways to find the old post of the bed design.

Barrett came over and helped on Sat. and Sun. trying to teach him a thing or two along the way. Sunday we planed down a huge stack of oak I recently got a really cheap deal on craigslist. Of the 20 3"thick 10" wide 8' long boards four of them were white oak(which I plan on using for some outdoor patio furniture this fall) I had a few that were birch, and a bunch that were red oak. So after getting them planed down the next task will be cutting them into the slats that make up the base of the bed.

I'm quite proud of my ingenious little method to hold the frame together, just a simple 1/2" bolt in the corners. It worked really well and is incredibally strong.

I want a Wide Angle Camera

2008-06-24T09:23:00.001-06:00

Well here is my attempt to photoshop a couple of images together to get a complete shot of my living room. You can see all of the new furniture in place. I'm looking for something to put over in front of the windows that look out to the pool. I don't know what we are going to put there yet. Maybe a cool plant, or a bench. You can see the new Angela Adams rug very clearly in this photo. I recently found out that our rotating walnut coffee table is a Jens Risom design. We are also contemplating trading out the Bertoia Diamond chairs for two red Eames LCW's.

Design Snob

2008-06-23T08:58:00.005-06:00

I turned the ripe old age of 27 today, this past weekend we cashed in some of our trade with Retro Inferno. If you remember I built some Record storage book cases for Rod about 5 months ago, I'm trying to get in to his place to get some photos of it all set up I'll post them when I do. Well as part of our trade I got to pick out some stuff from his store and let me tell you shopping there on credit is an awesome time and Rod and his staff are very friendly and let us try out a few things that didn't look quite right in our house. First up is a shot of Bella on our new Eames Aluminum Group office chair, she took a liking to the chair immediately and I'm pretty sure she claimed it for herself. Over the past few months Bella has become some what of a design snob she only naps in the finest examples of modern furniture.

We also picked up a really nice print, I don't remember the artist but we really like the way it looks in the living room.

We recently picked up a Dux sofa from another furniture seller recently, its very comfy and almost 9' long so you can really stretch out on it. Obviously Bella approves of this selection as well, its her second favorite place to take a nap. On the floor you can see a new Angela Adams rug we picked up from Retro Inferno. It looks really cool I'll try to get a better picture of it soon. We are picking up some other new stuff later this week.

Our New Herb Garden

2008-06-09T13:26:00.001-06:00

Its been a while since I updated anything. I wish I could say I've done all kinds of really cool projects to the house in the past month but the reality is I've been kind of slacking. Through in a lot of mowing mix in an out of town wedding and some beer drinking and you end up with a month of not a lot of progress. I've made a lot of good contacts for potential projects in the past few weeks so things are good in on that front. We are still very slow at work so I don't know whats going to happen in that department, I think a lot of people are slow its just the economy. Anyway this past weekend Jessica had me help get her an area to have a little herb garden. We had the perfect area right outside our kitchen door. I had to remove the river rock we put in when we were doing the patio. I never really planned on keeping the rock there it was convenient at the time.

So a little shoveling and about 6 wheelbarrels of rock later.

We were down to bare dirt. We needed to add a little good topsoil so off to Lowes we went. Three bags of Miracle grow garden soil later we had enough dirt. I must say that Miracle grow stuff is expensive but if you like your plants to grow crazy fast its money well spent. We took a trip to Family Tree Nursery to stock up on some herb's. So I think the herb run down is chives, oregano, basil, rosemary, cilantro, mojito mint, and dill. Couple bags of black mulch to top it all off and here is our little herb garden.

What a difference a year makes.

2008-05-21T11:02:00.002-06:00

5-21-07

This is the same area taken this morning May 21, 2008. I just got done putting down about 3 yards of mulch but I didn't have time to clean the concrete. Its amazing how quick some plants grow. That red twig dogwood is taking over and we even trimmed a few feet off of it last year.

A shot of the Bamboo, its hard to see many of the new taller stalks they havn't fully leafed out yet. Try taking a look at the picture a little large. The tallest stalk is about 5'6" I was hoping to reach the six foot mark this year but we came up a little short. It did spread like crazy I'm guessing we have 40 new stalks this year. Next year we should really take off. In a few years we probably won't be able to see the white house next door.

We decided to give Horsetail Reed a try this year in screening out the pool pumps. Its supposedly evergreen and a perenial so hopefully it will survive the winter in the pot. Its really cool almost like bamboo without leaves. It should spread to fill the planter really quick and get 3'-4' tall in no time.

We got the CB2 planters set up on the corner of the patio. We went with castor bean plants in the pots, they have very nice large tropical leaf and grow very quickly. Those should get to be pretty tall by the end of the summer. They are one of the most poisonous plants out there so no matter what I tell you don't eat any part of the plants. If I could grow grass as well as every other plant we would have it made.

Sweet Home Chicago

2008-05-07T09:58:00.000-06:00

Greening Up

2008-04-28T08:27:00.001-06:00

Want to Hire Me?

2008-04-25T15:13:00.005-06:00

Do any of you need to hire an Architect? We are currently super slow at work, so if any of you need a project designed or built look me up. No project is to big or to small. So if any of you have anything your looking for including furniture send me an email jerad.foster (at) gmail.com

Thats enough self promoting. I took a lot of pictures last night of the bamboo and I forgot my camera at home so you will have to wait till next week for a picture update

Greening up the backyard

2008-04-21T09:09:00.004-06:00

I don't have any pic's to share yet but I thought I would let you know that Jessica and I got a ton of plants in the backyard over the weekend. We are slowly getting it planted up. Its hard to pick what to put where especially before you see how each plant changes through the seasons. We got some really cool planters from CB2 so I'm currently looking for some plants to put in them. If you have any advice please let me know. The bamboo is growing we had four shoots come up over the weekend and they are all right together so I think we could have a bamboo explosion shortly.

Here is a pic of the planter from another blog. I really like the ferns and we may be doing that in our planters. I also like the Eero Aarnio puppy from CB2 as well. Jessica thinks I'm absolutely crazy and that its stupid. But I have the go ahead to buy one if it goes on sale.

I added another blog to the blogroll you should check them out. Blue Ant Studio

Another slow week.

2008-04-18T09:03:00.001-06:00

I wish I could say that I got the bed finished this last week, but it didn't happen. I should make some progress this weekend, if I don't spend the whole weekend out planting in the yard. I think spring is finally here, many of our plants are leafing out and I imagine by the end of the weekend we should be in good shape. Here is a picture of our latest furniture additions. The green Eames rocker is a new Modernica version, it was a wedding gift from my Grandma. The chairs that Bella is checking out are two Walnut Cherner chairs, I don't know a whole lot about them. My boss picked them up for me last night at the Pembroke Hill garage sale. I think I'm going to use them in our dining room, so if any of you know were to find four more I would love to have a set.

Opening Day!

2008-04-10T10:22:00.000-06:00

Well I wish I had some progress to report, but I've been worthless lateley. Jessica worked in the yard last weekend getting ready for spring we have a few plants poking through, I think we are about a week away from some good growth. My dad came down and we installed some flashing that I have been putting off for over a year now, nothing major but with the spring rains it was about time. We also tackled reventing the dryer, in my miniture laundry room this is no small feet. So I finished up some deferred maintenance but I didn't get any thing done on the bed and probably won't this weekend either so you will have to stay tuned. I did get a chance to go to opening day this year and check out the K in its half renovated state. As you can see it was a very ugly day, rainy and cold, but we beat the Yankees so who cares about the weather.

Word on the circle is we may be getting some new neighbors in the coming months. I know they read the blog, how weird is that. Well lets hope there aren't any snags and we will be having a welcome to the neighborhood bbq this summer.

Recent Aquisitions

2008-04-04T09:00:00.001-06:00

I wish I could be posting some amazing progress on the bed. But it would be a lie, as most of you know I'm addicted to craigslist. I check it religiously and buy a lot more stuff then Jessica likes. Its how I've collected the majority of my tools, my lumber and just about everything else in my garage. I think last Friday I got the best value for my money. I responded at the right time to two post, and said I would buy immediately no questions asked. Craigslist if a funny animal I've dealt with a lot of shady and weird people, as well as some really nice honest ones as well. Luckily these sellers were honest, they took my word that I would show up over the weekend a rid them of their merchandise.

First up is a 8' long workbench. Its awesome really sturdy the drawers are all metal and made to take some abuse. The top has been a little abused but it looks to be solid maple. The seller was a great guy moving across the country and didn't have room for this behemoth.

The crown jewel on the bench is this awesome vise. I don't really need it for anything but when does that ever stop you. Its an Emmert Pattern Makers Vise, extremely old and extremely collectible. This thing is built like a tank back when they used hand tools for woodworking. It has a cult following and can easily fetch over $500 on Ebay. Whats so special you ask, well it functions as a normal vise but what you can't see is that the entire vise can be rotated 180 degrees and raised/lowered all while the piece is still clamped in place. I got bench and all for $125.

My other purchase was 8 of these really heavy duty clamps. They are really nice and heavy and after I googled the company that made them I noticed they went out of business in 1928 so these are at least that old and better than any clamp you can buy today. As I was leaving the guy who sold them asked if I would be interested in a Incra Ultra Jig. I said sure, the price was definitely right. So now I have some awesome capabilities with the router table and will be doing dovetails on the bed's nightstands drawers.

Quick Bed Update

2008-03-25T14:20:00.001-06:00

I changed the design of the bed a little. The nightstands are a little different and the headboard is a little shorter. What do you think?

Just a few picks to show you I'm working on it. Maybe after the next few days I'll be able to show something a bit more. Walnut is super cool.........its like working with Chocolate, well maybe I've just been eating too much Christopher Elbow chocolates and I wish I was that good.

Sawdust

2008-03-18T14:21:00.002-06:00

I've started the bed process. The design hasn't changed much I've changed a few little things here and there to make the construction more durable. I thought I would let you guys follow the process on the bed. First I took the rough stack of walnut I had and started planeing it down so that I could select the best stock for the bed. Seperating the good from the bad, and trying to pick pieces that look good together.

Next I jointed two edges to make the stock square and flat. Then it was back to the planer to thickness the lumber down to a uniform 3/4". So I'm now at the point where if I went out and bought the lumber from a hardwood lumber store like Schutte. So I spent about 15 hours processing the rough lumber down to smooth usable lumber. Its not glamourous work, and it doesn't make it feel like you achieved very much.

In that 15 hrs I produced 6 42 gal trash bags full of sawdust. I would typically use the sawdust as mulch but Walnut wood has something in it that makes it bad for plants.

I looked through a few of the comments from previous post. To answer a few of your questions Craig, whenever you want a dresser like Eric's let me know. I guess as a general note, If you see anything on the blog that I make and you like it, please let me know I would love to do some commissioned work for you. I think of myself as being reasonably priced, but I'm not Ikea. I will get finished pics of the record storage as soon as the client lets me know its ready. I'm as curious as you guys are.

Jessica and I have commissioned Cassie Lane to do a custom piece of art for our house. I found her through Etsy , believe it or not you can search for local artist. She has a blog and an etsy store. If you like her work and end up buying something please tell her I sent you, she might be a little more generous when she prices our custom piece.

It looks like our house is going to be a part of the KCModern home tour 2008. It looks like its going to be the first weekend in June, but nothing is set in stone yet. This is probably good news for blog readers because its going to force me to get a lot done between now and then. Nothing like a deadline to get an architect working.

Our Platform Bed Design

2008-03-10T13:18:00.003-06:00

Ok here are some preliminary images of the bed. I havn't really resolved the built in nightstands but everything else is very close to what the final bed will look like. Let me know what you guys think.

A Quick Update

2008-03-09T20:55:00.002-06:00

Well Jessica and I havn't been doing a lot, I have been enjoying having some free time on the weekends and spending a Saturday doing nothing productive. I'm sure many of you are curious, we ended up selecting the Knoll Circa in Charcoal, thanks to everyone who voted. The more and more we thought about it it was probably best to pick a plain fabric as opposed to a pattern. Laura, (please send me a link if you have blog of your own) My kitchen cabinets are Walnut with a pre-catalysed lacquer finish. It's in a hand rubbed finish or satin. The cabinet pulls are by Epco, http://www.epcohardware.com/ .

I have our bed somewhat designed and will be starting it this week. I'm pretty excited, I've been building several things for other people but this will be the first piece of furniture I will make for myself. I find myself really enjoying making furniture, I don't know if I could ever do it as a full time job but it is very rewarding. I find that it is so nice to be able to design and build something with no setbacks. I'll post some pics of the bed design this week and I'll try to take pictures throughout the process.

Help Pick our Upholstery

2008-02-27T12:22:00.002-07:00

Well we are going with the Wormley Sofa. Now the question is what fabric. I've assembled a huge collection of fabric samples, with more choices than one should ever have. Jessica and I have pretty much narrowed it down through the process of elimination. A few classic Maharam choices and a couple Classic Knoll choices.

First up is the Eames Large Dot Pattern in Taupe, by Maharam. This is Jessica and I's lead choice, we always thought we wanted a pattern. This might be a little cliche, but we decided we didn't care.

Next up is the Knoll Textile Circa in Brick. Its really a rusty red color and is probably the boldest color we thought about using. It certainly would stand out in our house. I will say Jessica absolutely hates it, but I love it so its still in the mix.

Next up is the Knoll Textile Circa in Charcoal. Its a really nice color and would look very sleak, I don't know how well it will look with the Walnut legs on the sofa.
The last choice is the Eames Small Dot in Sand. This color is really nice, but its probably too small of a scale of a print for the sofa.

Handplanes

2008-02-21T10:46:00.001-07:00

Well I thought it was about time for a post. I've finished a custom teak bench for one of the jobs I helped design at work. So it looks like I've finally gotten all the projects out of my way and can finally start on some stuff for myself. I'll be starting the bed next, I think. I'm currently working on several designs to try and figure out exactly what I want. I do know it will be made out of Walnut since I have a lot of it to use. Here is a picture of whats known as a crotch slab, I have a matching pair that i'm planing down to possibly use as the headboard on the bed. I'm not completely certain yet, but I think it could be really cool. The slabs have some really amazing figure (grain) on them and are going to look really cool on whatever I use them on. As you can see the slabs are very large, and much to big for my planer. So I finally got to use some of the handplanes I've been slowly collecting over the past couple of months. I must say there is something about taking all that wood off by hand. You get to see the beauty of the wood slowly come into the picture. The best way I can describe it to some of you is that its like hand drawing a drawing as opposed to the doing it on the computer. There is a lot more satisfaction when you are done, but its a long and hard road. I 'll post some more pics as I progress further on the slabs.

I recently purchased a whole bunch of handplanes off of craigslist (sorry Jill) the majority of them are kind of cheap and crappy. But I really wanted one of these. Which is known as a Stanley #7 jointer. It basically takes the place of a power jointer, its very big, 22" long and weighs in at 9 lbs. Well I got together with another local woodworker who knows a lot more about handplanes than I do, and he said this one looks old and that I should try and figure out how old it is.
I started cleaning it up this last weekend to get it ready to use. I took it apart and found that it is in really good shape, just needs a little tlc. Well this morning I started trying to date this thing. These old Stanley planes have quite the following so there are several sights that show the exact signs to look for and to date the plane. I posted some pictures on a woodworking forum and the handtool experts quickly told me this is a Stanley type 5 #7. Which means that it was made between 1885-1888.

I had no idea its that old, and can't believe its in this good of shape. Crazy huh.

Wormley Sofa

2008-02-08T14:56:00.001-07:00

Help us Pick our Retro Sofa

2008-02-08T14:11:00.001-07:00

Now that I finished the record storage units for Rod, we are now in the process of picking out our sofa. First up is the Milo Baughman designed sofa above. We will be having it reappoulstered in the fabric of our choosing and we will probably have them rework the rear cushions so it looks similar to the classic Florence Knoll Sofa shown below.

The next choice which is the one I'm leaning towards is an Edward Wormley designed Dunbar Sofa. It will be reappoulstered as well, the fabric and these photos don't really do it justice. Its very nice and comfortable, and I think with some killer fabric it will be very nice. I really like the Walnut leg detail on the back of the sofa. This sofa is a little more expensive than the other one but I they are both in our budget.

The Dresser is Completed

2008-01-21T15:37:00.001-07:00

Well last weekend Eric and I finally put the finishing touches on his dresser. Barrett from the Noshery came over and took a few pictures for me on his fancy new camera. I'm really pleased with the way it turned out.

A detail of the Paduak drawer pulls.

Storage Units in Transit

2008-01-15T10:49:00.001-07:00

Here is a pic from last weekend. All but one of the record storage units are done(yes I screwed one of them up). Here is a shot of them in the trailor we used to move them. As soon as they get completely assembled and done I'll post some more pictures. Let me know what you all think.

Record Storage is almost done

2008-01-11T09:34:00.001-07:00

Well its been a while since I posted. I havn't really been up to a whole lot. I got the record storage units built and Doug my painter sprayed them with lacquer this week. I must confess I did screw one of them up, so I have to make one more. Here are some pictures I took while I was cutting all the material, and glueing them up. I'll be selling my tablesaw soon I found a larger saw for myself so if anybody who reads this is interested just message me.

This is the various shapes all cut out ready for glue up.

Glue up was a real pain since the shapes are so complex. I think they turned out pretty cool, not as perfect as I imagined them but hey I'm still getting the hang of this. I have several other projects on the boards. My neighbor Eric and I are gettting ready to start a small desk for his house. I'm also getting ready to start on a Teak shower bench for a project I helped design at work. I possibly have a few more bookcases for another client and I'm also talking to someone about doing a small childrens bed. So as you can see the work is piling in but thats good I'm trying to save up to buy a truck to make things alot easier.

Dresser is Almost Completed

2007-12-13T07:47:00.001-07:00

Eric's dresser is almost completed. These pics are from over a week ago, taken the night we mounted all of the drawer slides. We thought it looked pretty good in this form.

I can't wait till we get the Walnut and Paduak drawer fronts on this thing is going to be awesome. I think Eric is really pleased with the way everything turned out. He did the majority of the work, I supplied the tools, a little bit of knowledge, and a little bit of design.

We went with Walnut for the drawer bottoms to contrast nicely. The back panel is Walnut as well. I really like the color the Shellac gives the Walnut though Eric said it was a pain to put it on. As you can see we went with the full extension drawers, a lock rabbit on the drawers to hold up to some good use.

I'll try and get some pictures of it when its completed. If you like the dresser let me know, If you want one for yourself just email me that can be arranged. I should be finishing up the record storage by the first of the year at the latest, so I'll post some more pictures of that in the future.

Well we came up a little short.

2007-12-10T07:53:00.001-07:00

Well I thought I would let you all know that we didn't the blog competition. Everyone made a strong push for us but in the end we fell short. We finished with 102 votes, we had about 180 by my count. They only counted one vote per IP address, so all of you who voted for a couple of different email addresses from one computer only counted as one. I don't really agree with it, but they had to draw the line somewhere to make it fair otherwise people would have just been making up email addresses. SO THANK YOU ALL WHO PULLED FOR US AND VOTED.

Record Storage Update.

2007-12-03T07:30:00.001-07:00

Well I thought I would post a little update picture of the record storage system I'm building for Rod. I've got two of them completed and set up to complete several more this week. I thought I would get a few more done this weekend but I got rearended in Jessica's car on saturday, so now its sitting in the garage.

Thanks to all of you who came through and voted on the contest. We ended up about 10 votes short according to their website, but who knows how accurate that is. Keep your fingers crossed for me, we will find out about the winners of the contest on Friday.

The Contest Ends Today

2007-11-30T08:35:00.000-07:00

Well everyone thanks for voting for us on the contest. Voting officially ends today. Here are a few interior before and afters for comparison. Wish us luck on the contest.

Before and After photos of the Home Remodel

2007-11-26T11:18:00.001-07:00

Well I had a request for some side by side comparison photos of the remodel. Here are some of the exterior, I think it clearly shows how we impacted the exterior of the house in a year and a half. If anyone wants more photos of a specific area or has any questions just ask. I'm still working on some comparisons for the interior its even more of a drastic change I think. I've been working on the record storage units and will try and get a few pictures up in the next few days. They are turning out really nice and should be really cool.

Don't Forget To Vote For Us

2007-11-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

First a little public service announcement. If you guys havn't noticed we are getting our butts kicked in the blogging competition. So please vote if you have not voted please do so soon the competition ends in few days. If you have voted thanks, now hit up everyone else you know to vote please.

I'm working a way on the dresser for my neighbor Eric, well I'm working a little and he's working a lot. But here's a picture of th outer shelf put together and clamped so the glue can dry.

Here are the drawer fronts, they aren't finished or cut to size yet but you get the idea. The Red wood is African Paduak, its really cool. The other wood is Walnut, they make a striking combination that should look really cool when we get done. The goal is to have this thing done by Thanksgiving, we are right on pace to be completed. I don't know that the finish will be on it yet but we should be close.

Finished Pictures of the Remodel

2007-11-08T14:28:00.001-07:00

Pictures During the Remodel

2007-11-08T14:14:00.000-07:00

Photos of the House Before the Remodel

2007-11-08T12:16:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween

2007-10-31T09:06:00.000-06:00

I thought I would post some images of Jessica and I at a Halloween party a few weekends ago. That is us with Abby and Barrett (the author of the Noshery blog) we went as the Mario Brothers obviously. Happy Halloween

Ready for Production

2007-10-31T08:59:00.001-06:00

Well I got the garage all cleaned up and ready to start making some furniture. In the past couple of weeks I've wired a subpanel, and added a few new circuits with new outlets so I have all the juice I need for some sawdust making. Here is a shot of the garage all cleaned up and ready to go. You can see the stack of plywood front and center, that should be enough to make all of the Record Storage Units.

The design has changed quite a bit since you guys saw it last. I may still build a unit or two of the other design, especially if any of you want to hire me to do it. The record storage is now going to occur in stacking pieces, just like the Tetris video game. It will be a much more flexible solution that will allow the unit to adapt with changes in location. So the image above shows two versions of the units with records and the image below shows the same units without records. I'm making it out of Baltic Birch plywood with an exposed edge and Walnut backing where needed. Let me know what you guys think.

I love Craigslist

2007-10-29T09:18:00.001-06:00

Many of you know I have a little storage problem in the garage. Well its not really a problem in everyones eyes, for the past six months I've had about 1000 bd.ft. of Walnut sitting on the floor of my garage. Since I have this large woodworking project to complete (more on that in a few days) I figured I needed to get some lumber storage. So I spent last week scowering craigslist for my options, several phonecalls and a lot of internet research later here we go. The picture above was taken a week ago prior to me having any storage, that hunk of crap in the center is the pile of walnut with all kinds of stuff sitting on it.

This is a picture taken saturday afternoon. The shelving is partly up. You can barely see the Cypress siding I have left is on the top shelf.

The shelving fully installed and screwed to the wall.

I managed to get all of the walnut on the shelf. I think its around 2000lb's of wood and stuff on the shelf. I actually might be able to pull a car in the garage now. The best part about the shelves is I got all of it for $90, so if any of you want any its still on craigslist and the guy has a warehouse full.

If any of you havn't voted in the remodel blog competition please follow the link on the right that says vote for me. If you have voted pass the blog along to everyone you know. Please!

Workbench for under $200

2007-10-19T08:20:00.001-06:00

Well I have the workbench nearly completed. I constructed the legs and got them clamped and glued together.

You attach the two sets of legs together with two plywood panels. I drilled pocket holes for screws to attach the top. It was the first time I had used a pocket hole jig and I have to say for a really simple operation it works really nice.

Here is a shot of the new bench sitting on the old bench. I must say those rubbermaid trashcans are quite sturdy. I would guess the bench is close to a hundred pounds.

I don't have the top screwed on yet but you get an idea of what this thing is going to look like. I have a vise on the way, so I should get that installed next week. Eventually I plan on making drawers to fill out the bottom of the bench. I highly recomend this workbench to anyone, its cheap, relatively easy to build, and extremely solid. I only have about 10 hours of work in it so far, 3 sheets of plywood, a quart of wood glue, and a box of screws.

Damn You Crate and Barrell

2007-10-09T08:07:00.000-06:00

Well I was hoping to report that we ordered our sofa but as you can tell by the title of the post that is not the case. Jessica and I went do order the sofa on Sunday after watching the Chiefs gets their butts kicked. Fabric Swatch and gift card in hand we walked in determined to order our shiny new sofa. I must say that we had previously been to C&B and talked with a furniture sales associate asked all our questions, got a price etc. So we approach a sales associate, he looks confused and flustered that someone actually asked for his help, bad sign number one. Procede to explain what we want to do, first thing out of his mouth is did they tell you how long this would take, yes we were told 12 weeks, oh well I'm afraid its going to be much longer than that, so we brace for impact, you are looking at this being delivered in 6months. So that is hurdle number two, then we say okay lets think about this, after some deliberation we decide to go ahead and have him tell us how much this thing is going to cost. We still aren't sure which price quote we recieved is accurate, but lets just say this one was $400 more than the last one and you could tell by his voice he wasn't even sure he was correct. So we are still debating this so while he runs around trying to find a sales associate to answer our question since he cannot we decide to go sit on the sofa and wait and dream about having this in our living room hopefully by May of 08. We are then approached by the so called C&B expert in custom upholstery and politely told that our fabric selection will look like crap.

Thankfully this Associate new what she was talking about. We are very thankful for her honesty, and knowledge. Its a shame that there is only one person in the department that has a clue, and can answer questions.

So we are back to the drawing board. The Petrie was the number one choice, but the only way we can get it in a reasonable amount of time is to pick one of the stock colors. White or Cocoa, white is not an option though it would look very nice and cocoa clashes with all of our walnut. So the question is stock plus fabric and a 5 month wait for $1350 or keep looking.

So if any of you have any suggestions let us know. We are looking into Room and Board, and the Bantam sofa from DWR. I also have a lead on a Milo Baughman retro sofa that is currently being reupholstered.......so that may be a really nice option. I'll keep you posted.

Help Pick our Sofa

2007-10-01T08:28:00.000-06:00

Choice number one.........vintage Edward Wormley designed Dunbar Sofa. Its really comfortable the cushions are down. But as you can see the fabric is a little wild, even for my taste

Choice number two......vintage Florence Knoll sofa. This one may not be for sale any longer but we will include it in the discussion.

Choice number three.........Crate and Barrell Petrie Sofa..........in the custom fabric shown below.

Choice Number 4..........Modernica sofa