Thursday, October 21, 2010

Look what we made!


I'd been wanting to replace our bookcase/tv stand/ugly cart audio/video situation since we set it up.  The problem was finding something we liked that we could afford.  That turned out to be a problem that took about 2 1/2 years to solve.  I kept looking on Craigs list, at thrift stores, garage sales, used furniture stores, and even at Ikea.  Then, while I was perusing a book on 60s built-in furniture I got the idea of building a simple console on legs.  Morgan and I sat down and I showed him what I wanted, and we figured out what the optimum video viewing height was, how big the inside of the piece needed to be, and the leg height.  I found the 12" legs online.  And last weekend we started and finished the project.  Morgan did a beautiful job of building it from furniture-grade pine.  Then we sealed it with shellac which is harder than poly urethane and has a nice finish. 
 (Did you know that shellac begins as a resin secreted by the female lac bug on trees in India and Thailand?   It's processed into flakes and dissolved in denatured alcohol to make liquid shellac.)
Here's the finished piece, doing a fine job at what it was created for:
  

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