Truck Tailgate Bench

After a nice afternoon kiting in the Delta, I was sitting on my tailgate checking out people surfing, and decided wanted a more comfortable seat for this type of scene. Here is a photo from that afternoon:



In typical fashion, I got carried away and built a teak bench for the tailgate...

Along with a flagpole and some custom cushions...




This is going to be EPIC for Stanford football games.

Sandy Patio Set

I always looked at the trapezoidal alcove on our patio and imagined a big table there. After giving it some more thought, I divided it into two tables to make it easier to fit in the basement in the winter, and to make access easier to the center inside seats.

Built from solid Cedar. Many fun meals to come!

1991 Ford F350

Ever since I started doing carpentry, I have wanted a truck. Actually I wanted one even before that, but this gives me a good excuse.

So now I am the proud owner of a 1991 Ford F350 XLT Lariat, single cab full bed, with the 7.5L engine. 400 ft*lbs of torque... and plenty of towing capacity to move a boat around. (Someday.)

Sandy Way Dartboard Frame

My family's place at Squaw used to have a terrible dartboard over the fireplace upstairs -- it was worn down, at the wrong height, in one of those bar-style mini-cabinets with doors.

I finally got around to tearing that down and replacing it with a new board from New Zealand company DMI darts. It plays really well, and has a super skinny "spider" (metal frame that divides the scoring regions). Highly recommended.

The frame is made of vertical-grain Douglas Fir, with a water based dark brown stain. The carved letters are the natural color of the fir.

The chalkboard is genuine slate that used to hang in a San Francisco School District classroom. I found it at a spot in SF called Andreas Stone & Marble, some old Italian guys who took down a bunch of schoolroom chalkboards and put in new white boards around the city. I like the thought that generations of people (many older than me) learned from that stone.

More importantly, this project nearly used up the enormous trove of wine corks that people have been giving me for the past few years (since I started making trivets). Not sure how many are there in total ... maybe sometime we're snowed in with a blizzard we can count them.

I used the same method I used on the dartboard in my SF pad ... scroll down to see that one.

Sutro Tower coat rack

Aliph's walls are cast concrete, making it tough to hang things like coat hooks on the wall. After a few months of setting my clothing and backpack down on a crowded desk or distant floor, I decided some kind of standing or leaning coat rack was in order.

I ended up using a structural column to locate the lean-to, which is made of solid padauk:



The edges are routed with a sine / radio wave design and the graphic was carved from a vertically stretched photo of the Sutro Tower, the 762-foot antenna that stands atop central San Francisco:

1919 living room set

The front room at my house used to be the TV room. At some point Noble and I cooked up a scheme to redesign the "bar room" as the living room, and turn the front room into an office / sitting room.

I built two desks out of Red Oak with a thin stripe of American Walnut trim:



The window desk:



The wall desk:



Then we hooked up the sitting area with a coffee table and matching end table. The end table houses electronic components that drive a projector for big screen action.

The end table has the material scheme flipped -- walnut with red oak trim:



Same with the coffee table:



Projector ledge:



Projection:



The coup de grace was the idea to hang the projector over a mirror. This way people sitting across the coffee table from the projector can still see the TV image in the mirror:



Of course, all the text is inverted ... what can ya do?

Jen's TV stand / wine rack

For her birthday, I built my beautiful girlfriend a stand for her TV. I decided to integrate a wine rack, since she has a pretty nice collection of wine ... she has been studying for the bar, so I thought this piece would tie together two nice distractions from the 16-hour-a-day routine.

The semi-octagonal shape is based on a smaller coffee table that Jen got from her family. Construction is solid American Walnut. It holds dozens of DVDs / VHS tapes (yes Jen has some choice movies on tape), 18 bottles of wine, a big TV, cable box, and a combo VHS/DVD player.



Happy birthday, baby!