Alcove Furniture WIP (Week 3)

Cont’d from Week 1 and Week 2 …

The last part of the workshop process is the finishing. It is very important to put the preparation in before applying the finish. This involves scraping off excess glue, sanding out any saw marks, pencil lines, scratches and steaming out any knocks before keying or prepping the surfaces through the sand paper grits to a 180/240 grit finish.

Here we can be seen the MDF face frame components and the two beech frames (behind) being prepped. I like to apply two coats of WB (water based) acrylic primer one after the other and allow to dry overnight so the MDF edges go nice and hard. The primer is knocked back flat with 240 grit on the faces and 180 grit on the MDF cut edges. I am often asked how best to seal the MDF edges. The important thing is to harden them off so that when rubbed back you stop that perpetual fluffing or flowering of the surface. There are many ways to do this… wallpaper boarder adhesive, PVA, shellac sanding sealer, polyurethane varnish, acrylic varnish, wood stopping fillers… It’s all about binding those fibers so you can knock off the nibs (denib) to leave a smooth edge.

Alcove Furniture WIP (Week 2)

Cont’d from Week 1…

Once cleaned up the Beech doors are hung and the rebates are measured for the toughened 4mm glass and ordered along with the 6mm toughened, polished edge shelves. These will take a few days to be manufactured and BS stamped at the glass factory.

With the doors in place the locks are marked out and fitted.

Alcove Furniture WIP (Week 1)

This post is going to follow the WIP (work in progress) of a built-in alcove project from the drawings to installation and completion.

Once reaching stage three of the Commissioning Process I can place an order for the timber, sheet stock, hardware and finishing materials. First to arrive is the sheet stock. 4 Oak veneered and 4 MDf standard.

Plantation shutters

This was a venture into the unknown, a challenging but great learning experience. A client got in touch to ask about making some custom 2/3 height plantation shutters to fit a splayed bay.

We looked into various timber options and decided as the shutters were to be internal and paint finished that Poplar/Tulip wood could be an ideal candidate. It’s not necessary the most attractive timber as it has little figure and tends to vary from yellow-grey-green where heartwood meets sapwood. However its stability, price, machine ability and paint finish quality made it the perfect choice

Bread and butter

Here’s a recent MDF masterpiece which illustrates the previous post nicely. It’s also a great example of bespoke as this is 100% purpose built.

The brief

The brief was to install a utility and storage area into a generous sized bathroom. Lower cabinetry (with worktop) for storage and concealment of a standard 600mm washing machine with upper cabinetry to hide an unsightly electric meter board and consumer unit. In the photo below can be seen the pitch of the roof line and purlin to the right. Behind the logs you can just about make out the cold water feed, waste pipes and power ready for the washer.

The treatment

The cabinets were hand painted in the clients chosen finish. I like to hand paint over spray finishing as sometimes a spray finish can look too manufactured and looses a little of that homely feel. It also has the added benefit of being a doddle to touch up knocks and scratches or if the kids decide to decorate it in felt tip!

Time to try something different…

OK.  I’ve decided to give blogging a go as an addition to the website and keep things a little more ‘live’ in the web presence dept.. This will be an opportunity to feature a variety of topical subjects such as new additions to the shop, WIP (work in progress) an insight into how a project evolves from consultation to completion; the way we work in the shop (how many tea breaks?), sneaky previews of speculative ideas in the pipeline and some other bits and pieces as things develop. *breathe*

Ultimately I’d like to showcase projects that quite often get dismissed from the website that, even though they’re the bee’s knees (of course ), they’re not quite ready for the full ‘J S McKay Furniture Design‘ website treatment because…

• the scene isn’t right (e.g. no furnishing/ dressing, poor lighting, other trades still have work to do etc…etc.).

• I have no camera, lighting, scene dresser, tea boy to set up great promo shots.

• editing and polishing the website is tricky.

• the project is a bit too ‘out there’.

• I’m too pooped to document properly and need to go home for a scrub, feed and sleep / avoid a telling off for working late…again! (more likely).

With the blog it’ll be more spontaneous, Ker-POW, loose,  informal, juxtaposed, radical, way out there, ruff ‘n’ ready, there’ll be links to other makers and some off-piste stuff which isn’t TOO far off topic.

Of course this all sounds fab, as long I’m efficient at posting (please not another dusty out-of-date blog) and more importantly if can I get my NOT ‘down with the kids’, going slightly out of technological fashion, head round this blogging malarky!

Wish me luck – this could be professional suicide!