This is a desk I built on commission. It is solid Mesquite with maple for the drawers. I am pleased with the results. Mesquite has become my favorite wood to work with. The desk is 60” wide and 32” deep and is quite heavy for its size. I finished it in Danish oil. As I always try to do, I took the opportunity of having a new project to buy another tool. I picked up the Osborne EB-3 miter gauge. I bought it from Osborne directly. I love it. It came in quite handy to cut all of the slats to exactly the same dimension.

My latest project was a mantle for a local couple. What she had to start with was a boring brick fireplace. I used comercially available carved posts. This is my first project in quite a while due to back issues.

I built two of these for a specific location, but they were designed so that they could also be used as bedside cabinets. They have a secret compartment under the top. It is unlatched by turning the piece of wood on the back with my brand on it. It was a fun project and I enjoy finding a way to install secret compartments

This is a pair of bookcases and an entertainment center unit I built for my father. This is the furniture I was writing about in my blog “Sir step away from the project”. I had numerous headaches on this project from begining to end. I will not bore you with the details, but just say I have never had such a cantankerous project as this one. In the end I am pleased with the results. Better yet, my folks love it. The bookcases are 3’ wide, 6’ high, and 15” deep. It is made of cherry. The entertainment center is 4’ wide, 6’ high, and 18” deep. The moulding is designed to run around all three units, but can separate for moving.

This is another set of built-ins I made in my family room. They were made first. I am an avid reader and we needed some book shelves. It was previously useless space, and did not take up much of the floor space.
I ran LED rope on the back side of the stiles, across the top of the fireplace and down the stile on the other side. I have them controlled by a timer and give the perfect light while we are watching a movie.

This is a new set of built-ins I made in my family room. Since they are painted I did not go crazy with wood selection. The cases were built from 3/4” birch ply 2nds. They were bought from a discount building supply and had plenty of defects, but then again they were only $28/ sheet. Anyway, given the paint it did not matter. The face frames were just #2 pine boards from Lowes. I did my best to find the pieces that had the fewest knots that would need to have Kilz applied to them. All in all my wife and I are very pleased with how they came out. They are far shallower than any entertainment center we have had. The center section is 16” deep to accomodate the audio equipment. I sized it for an eventual 42” tv (I hope). The end units are 12” deep. I installed LED rope light up and down all of the stiles on all of the units. The ropes are concealed and give nice indirect light. I installed receptacles in the bottom to accomodate the power needs of all the eqipment. The middle unit has a false bottom and many of the spare wires reside there.

This is a table I built for my sister-in-law. She had a very specific idea in mind for my to build. She wanted a table that looked old and somewhat care worn. This was a style that was not something I had much desire to work in. However after I got into it I ended up enjoying the project very much. The wood came from a 100+ year old share croppers house in a rural section of North Carolina that was being torn down. I culled out as much wood as I could from the house, being careful to not bring home any of the termites infesting this house. Getting the wood into a useable state took a great deal of time. The number of nails were unbelievable. They were old cut nails. Many did not want to come out. Even after getting what I believed was all of the nails out I still did a number on my planer knives. I do think that in the end the results were worth the aggravation. I left as many imperfections as I could. The nail holes, knots, checks, all added to the character of the table. I am not a big fan of pine, but this very old southern yellow pine that had been seasoning for a hundred years was another story. It was hard and close grained. I used a hand drill with a flap sander in it and went over all of the parts to give is an uneven and worn look. I then uses a flutter sander to soften all the edges. I used an unusual stain. I used roofing tar. I used the kind in the tube. I squeezed a little out and took a rag soaked in mineral spirits and worked it into the table. I think it made the table look more “aged” than stained. After all was said and done I enjoyed this project very much and would not mind at all working in this style again, especially since my sister-in-law says it is very fashionable right now. I have enough of the wood left to do one more table not quite as big as hers.

The only thing that did not make this my biggest project is that I just built the cabinets, I did not istall them.
The cabinets are built from Mesquite. I built them for my brother who lives in Arizona. He shipped the wood to me in North Carolina and then came out and trailered them back himself. Mesquite is some of the nicest wood I have ever worked with. It is certainly the prettiest wood. I had to take the wood to someone to plane it for me due to how hard it is. I am hoping to get better pictures that show better the figure in the wood. This Mesquite came from Argentina. Argentinian Mesquite comes in longer pieces without major defects.

This is a set of shelves I made for DVD storage. It featured six shelves tilted back about 15 degrees from vertical. The shelves have spacers that fit into two rows of holes on the shelves. I need to get more pictures to better show the design. It is made of oak and stain medium red mohogany and finished with wipe on poly.

This was a fun project. It is a table that could be used in many different locations. I have it in my bed room for my tv. It is made from cherry and walnut. It has a floating top. The base is held together with mortise and tenon joints. It is finished in tung oil

This is another of my earlier projects. It is an entertainment center that is now totaly out of date. It really can’t be used for much now unless they want to use it for an armoire. I also made a pair of side cabinets for it that I don’t have pictures of.

This is a pair of some of my earliest projects. One is a coffee table and the other is one of a pair of beds I made for my sons out of walnut.

This is the follow up piece to my daughters sleigh bed and barrel top desk. It is made as a bed side table. It is also made of maple with purple heart accents.

This is my favorite project. It is a barrel top desk for my daughter. It doubles as a bureau. The desk is more of those recycled handrails from the hospital. It is trimmed in purple heart. The drawers are made of aromatic cedar. There is a pull our desk top under the coopered barrel top. There is also three secret compartments.

The biggest project I have done was my own kitchen. Nothing went according to schedule. Right in the middle of the installation side of the project my daughter had a burst appendix, and three weeks later had to go back in to remove an abscess. My wife, God bless her, was doing dishes in the half bath.
The Cabinets were made of maple. If you looked at my “Rex” billiard table, the wood for this project came from the same source. We decided since we were only going to do this once we were going to do it right. We used stainless bar pulls, all ballbearing slides, and we put on a Sile Stone counter. The boxes were all 3/4” birch ply. We have 9’ ceilings and utilized all of it. I built a top cabinet to go over the uppers. They were designed to overhang the uppers by 2”. It made for a very nice look.

This is a media/stereo cabinet I built. It was made out of maple and walnut burl veneer. I cut the book matching veneer myself. I have since learned that the piece has been stolen.

This is a Mission style blanket chest I built as a gift for my brother and sister-in-law.

This was a corner hutch I made for my brother. It was my own design and had some unique challenges. It was built from Maple.

This was an entertainment center I built for a client. She gave me a picture of what she wanted. I was happy with the results.

This was a round oak kitchen table I made for my parents. Plenty of mortise and tennon joints on this.