Yesterday a friend helped me to deliver this unit to the client — good deal for the delivery charges; a cup of Starbucks and a treat!  This is a picture of it in the house and, as you can see my client is still in the early stages of moving in.  The TV that will be on the unit is sitting behind it.

Nicks’ Media Stand in place

The unit went upstairs and luckily, they were wide and my friend was strong!  All of the pictures show a bit of distortion, sorry; it was difficult to get enough distance to eliminate that both in my shop and their house.  The pictures in my shop show it on dollies with furniture pads used for backdrops.

Inspiration Photo

During our early planning stages for this unit I was given this image as an example of what they were looking for.  Over-all their piece measures 65″ long by 20″ wide and stands 26″ high.  As you can see, there is a resemblance between my work and the inspiration piece with some notable differences.  The material in mine is recycled  material that started life as dog-eared, 1″ x 8″ Redwood fence boards.  They came from somewhere in California and are probably about 50 years old!  I mentioned in one of the blogs that who knows,  I could have cut these as a teenager.   I worked for a Silvera Lumber in Antioch then and that was a job I would do at times!  In any case, the bottoms had quite a bit of the expected rot and the top, dog-eared sections were beat up as well.

Drawer Unit

The first step to prepare them was to run one face through the planer to establish a fresh, smooth surface.  This was for the glue to adhere when they were attached with brads.  Due to the rough nature of the boards, those brads barely show at all.   The show side of these boards were wire brushed by hand to remove the accumulation of 50 years of dirt, grime, and who knows what else!

Drawer Detail

Being able to find a suitable board that would span the drawer was of importance to me.  After all, in fine furniture construction you select a single board for your drawer fronts for a continuos flow of the grain and even though this is constructed of recycled materials it had to be done right.  The drawer box and top are made of shop grade, Maple plywood.  The drawers are 1/2″ Poplar and feature full extension, ball bearing slides rated for 100 pounds.  The drawer pulls haven’t arrived yet but the mounting holes are drilled and ready.

The metal legs came from an Etsy store, Blue Ridge Metalworks.  The finish chosen for this project is multiple coats of General Finishes Enduro-Var which is a water based, Polyurethane.  This was sprayed on as brushing on the rough surface of the recycled boards wouldn’t have good results.  There’s talk of a companion unit to go into their living room — that’s would be a good indication that my client was pleased with my work!