Next Project

 

Around everything else going on in our lives, vacations, garden harvests, other obligations, etc., I have started on my next build project. Above you can see some of the pieces as I work on the joinery that will hold it all together eventually.

Many many years ago, my wife decided she wanted to get into American medicine versus the socialized medicine world she left when she married me. She was burnt out with not being able to adequately care for her patients in a world in which the government paid for everything (I won't go into the details here because it is a long story) so she had gone into medical research but then seeing the (then) American system and how well it worked, decided to return to patient care. That required redoing her residency here in America and that meant that we had to rent an apartment in the urban jungle for her to stay in during the week while I held down a job and took care of our eldest child at our house in a rural part of the state.

Since this living arrangement was only for three years, we weren't looking to invest a lot into furniture and bought one of those IKEA like coffee table kits that you assemble yourself. That coffee table survived the three years in that apartment and then was moved down to our house in rural Iowa and then survived another move to our current house where it resides in our downstairs family room that we mainly only use during the winter since it has a nice woodburning fireplace. 

Time and the subsequent moves haven't been easy on the coffee table and it is falling apart. In fact, during the last move one of the many pieces broke off and is just friction fitted into place. But since it isn't a heavily used piece of furniture and is not in a visible (to guests) part of our house, we have lived with it over the last 19 years. It will remain with us for only a couple months longer hopefully and then be retired to the landfill. 

My intent is to make the new one generational in the sense it should last the rest of my life, my kid's lives and then get passed on so that I'm not continually contributing to our country's waste problem. I am also attempting to match a set of nesting side tables I made many years ago in style. They consisted of oak frames with walnut tops and some walnut accenting pieces on the ends. This will largely be my first completely designed by me piece of furniture (not counting the altar I just finished), with all the others largely based off plans with a fair amount of tweaking on my part. 

Hopefully it will turn out alright and structurally sound so that I can accomplish my generational goals. Only time can answer that question.