We want to hear from you
It’s Katrina (Paul’s daughter in law).
The builders have just finished a pretty extensive remodel, including loft conversion, of the upstairs of Sellers Home, Paul’s home in Oxfordshire, UK.
Paul has been making all the furniture for his house and he is about to do the same for the bedrooms. You can watch along on woodworkingmasterclasses.com . Paul has begun to start to think about furniture and this is where we need your help. We want to know a little about your bedroom: What do you like about the space? What furniture you have? The answers help to shape the kinds of furniture that Paul will make for his own home. We want to create furniture that you would want to make for your own home.
You may be thinking of furniture pieces that decorate your rooms. My wife has unlimited personal decoration demands. I fit all my clothing in the drawers and closet I have. the rest is tossed. Our home is mostly warehouse storage.
Desirable intent of home is to personalize. However, resale can control how much one fiddles with the design. Home style can really cause horrible living conditions. Just look at any halloween spook mansion. I’ve been in some of the costliest historical homes in the Puget Sound area of Washington state. Most have made my little domicile a heaven. As a designer, I’ve been involved in some atrocious client demands that park a Versailles on a cliff. But in most cases one just tries to do the best with what is available.
The questionnaire is filled based on the latter assumption.
There is no point examining the whys and the wherefores, only what people want to live with.Your minimalist need and intent would not suit the majority and especially in so pervasive a consumerist culture. In my culture, never having heard of Halloween spook mansion, I doubt that we would see the extremes you speak of. I wasn’t really thinking of furniture as being particularly decorative so much as neat, orderly, simple and well made. Placing any item in a room changes the look of it without necessarily introducing a style per see. The Shakers had no intention of creating a style that would exist today so much as pieces that would last into our today. So it is for us. We want to teach people to make and use the designs as the vehicle by which they will learn about the craft of hand made furniture together with mastering the tools. It’s you that introduced decoration, warehouse storage, peronalising a home, home styling leading to horrible living conditions, spook mansions, historical homes, atrocious client demands. I am not really sure what the point was to be honest.
This seems like the perfect opportunity to cover a project style that I think has never been covered on masterclass. That would be a case of drawers using frame and panel construction for the carcass. The bedside cabinet was close but with only one drawer. Seems a bedroom dresser would be a good piece to show this. I know that I would personally be very interested in how to handle drawer runners and other construction details on such a piece.
I did a large chest of drawers as a dresser in cherry in 2017.
I’m actually working on that dresser right now. It is a piece I’ve wanted to build ever since I joined masterclasses. However it uses solid wood panels in the carcass construction. I’ve wondered how the drawer runners and other details would differ on a piece using frame and panel sides.
I have been planning on that chest of drawers. In fact it is why I joined master class. I remember one gal wanted to add a drawer on top. It seemed like a few modifications were necessary, most of which I had not thought about. I want to make that same chest of drawers, with more drawers and the entire chest more narrow. I can scale the width, but I need help with adding more drawers, particularly if I want to split the width, with two adjacent drawers above a single drawer. So….. help.???
I am afraid you will need to go this alone. Too many variables and unknowns for me to get into I am afraid. It should not be too complicated to rethink size and proportion, Gary, but tat the end of the day you will be better for it if you just take your time and give it your best shot.
i would really like to see some beds. i plan on making one for new granddaughter. do you have videos on previos builds for these?
I live in Upper Michigan in the boreal forest. My home was originally a seasonal backwoods cabin which was 100 percent built with hand tools in the 1930s as there was no electricity. We have since winterized, modernized and expanded it and it is now a year round residence, retaining the cabin environment.
While I have made many of Mr. Sellers’ pieces for use here, I find the Sellers Home pieces way too modernistic for here. I enjoy the videos and it is always enjoyable to watch Mr Sellers work. But I’m afraid I won’t be able to make much use of the current pieces as designed.
I love my floating nightstands held to the wall with French cleats. A dovetailed cabinet with small drawer in the top and open space in the bottom. Made in walnut, giving a nice cool, comforting feel.
With some larger pieces of furniture (chest of drawers) some Costa are prohibitive to many. It might be nice to see a piece made with veneered plywood or some hybrid. I’ve planned on doing something for a chest of drawers. With solid drawer fronts, but a carcass made with plywood the costs could be contained a little better.
I hear you but as we use hand tools only it’s not too practical for hand work. Planing plywood, making it look good/nice. I understand plywood itself can add its own texture to a finished piece but still extremely hard to give it a good feel, look and finish. Also, you should remember that plywood was developed for mass-making industries. That means machine-only woodworking and there are a zillion channels out there doing that. In my work, the case is as important as the rest of the cabinet so solid wood will remain at the centre of my work.
I write music, sometimes stream live or make films, polish gems, design and cast jewelry, and of course woodworking. My studio room is quite industrial looking, and I have swing away screens so I can do computer work in a chair-bed because I’m crippled. I’m working on making the whole affair either look not so industrial, or just embracing that look. Maybe going steampunk with it. One thing for sure everything must be custom made, especially the cases? cabinets? for my music recording hard deck and rackmount FX, and external hard drives.
Wow, I am seriously impressed! Sounds like you are making it work for you, Rebecca. It sounds fascinating–creative. I’m always happy and encouraged when I see/hear of and from people like yourself who work things out that they want/need and then ‘fix’ things. I’m guessing you are not here in the UK. Would love you to meet the team here. Great creatives!
(Questionnaire done.) Over winter I’ll be redoing Dad’s bedroom. Priority items are replacing double sliding doors to recessed wardrobe and new double bed frame (current too low). Wishlist includes tall narrow chest with drawers on legs with wastebasket space below and plant pot holders. Have wooden floor so all items will be raised slightly for vacuuming 😉 Also need to come up with something to hold walking stick which is functional enough to actually be used. (Many other things.) Really need a CD rack for audiobooks and headphones.
I better go finish my coffee table for conservatory first.