Grandpa's Hutch

Several years ago, I was just beginning woodworking, mostly as a supplement to my remodeling of the house we were living in at the time. At this time My wife’s grandmother passed away from breast cancer, her grandfather had passed several years before. and wouldn’t you know while she was sick in the hospital her house was flooded by the Mississippi, to the tune of about 2 foot until we caught it and threw in a sump pump.

After the funeral, all of the family gathered around to do the tearful job of cleaning up the house and executing the will. I was allowed to take any and all of Grandpa Setles’s tools that I wanted, he would no have called himself a woodworker, he’d have called him self a cobbler, just interested in fixing whatever needed fixing from whatever I had on had, I only got to meet Setles a handful of times before he passed (before our wedding) but you really get to know someone well when you get to dissect their shop. The tools I received from him, especially the hand tools are the foundation I have built my hobby on

The hutch is interesting in that Setles had the base from a manufactured piece of furniture, but no top… so he built a top, and my wife fondly remembered the piece sitting in their kitchen for years. when they moved to a smaller house, there was no room in the kitchen and the hutch went into the basement, follow up many years later and the muddy waters of the Mississippi rose high enough to destroy the base, but amazingly the top was just fine.

I took the top to my shop where it sat for a year or so while I pondered it. I wanted to build a base but I was just not to that skill level yet, several more remodeling projects and a lot of reading later and I felt ok to begin. I tore down some cabinets in the basement and found all the shelves were made with these beautiful 13 inch wide,3/4” pine boards. I pulled all the nails and cleaned up the wood and knew I had found just the stuff to built the base from, and salvaged from whatever I had around just like Setles would have :)

This was a very big learning project for me, as I taught myself panel construction, raising panels and building doors, I was not comfortable dovetailing yet so the drawers are a locked rabbit design. The glass doors were rectangles of glass leaded together but not in very good shape, I tried to repair the leading and failed miserably so I pulled them out and created the arts & crafts reminiscent design you see here, mostly using the pieces of glass from the original presentation.

I took me about a year and a half to complete all told, mistakes and redoes included. I can see my mistakes now, things that I know better, have learned better. The thing that bugs me most now is the unconventional way I chose to size the drawers, don’t ask me why, it just seemed like the right way to do it at the time. The piece has been in use by the family for several years now, as you can see it holds my wife’s china and a few bottles and knick knacks just fine.

-- Oldwolf - http://insidetheworkshop.blogspot.com/