Occasionally, I will create designs for furniture and cabinets that we will go on to build or that we may build in the future. I often start with a rough pencil sketch, then recreate the design in Illustrator or a 3D program–to make sure that the dimensions work out. Here are some of the designs I have created so far.
Projects:
Pergola and Deck
I designed a pergola for the new deck we were having built. I used a 3D program, AC3D, that works like Lightwave, but is much simpler at a fraction of the cost.
Ten Foot-long Desktop
For my office space, I designed a desktop to fill the 10-1/2 foot space from one wall to the other. At the outside edges, the desk is almost 4 feet deep, and then angles towards a 29″ deep center section. I designed it to fit snugly on top of some store-bought rubberwood cabinets.
Storage Shelves for Cardboard
I keep a lot of large cardboard boxes and styrofoam on hand for when I need to ship my paintings. I needed a simple shelf for containing the large cardboard. I built a very simple one in less than 2 days.
Garden Bench
I built a bench out of some scrap lumber. I made it “narrow-stance” to allow for the severely rounded edges on the two pieces of 2×6. As is often the case, I made some changes to the design while I was building it (turned the legs 90 degrees for better stability in the real world).
Wood Storage Cart
We needed a small wood storage cart on wheels to safely store small cut sheets of plywood and masonite, and with a second side to contain cut dimensional lumber. I took my design from Woodworking for Mere Mortals, though designed to be smaller in both horizontal directions and without the shelves in the middle.
CD Shelves
Having searched in stores and online for CD shelves that would be just the right size, and failed to find any that were suitable, we decided to build our own. I designed the shelves, and my husband built them. I need to stain and varnish them still, but for now, here they are: the unvarnished […]
Furniture Designs
These are some potential projects that I may build in the future, plus some long-abandoned furniture design ideas.
Daybed Cabinet
I designed a cabinet and daybed to go in a odd-sized cubby in our attic room. We had never built any furniture before, but I convinced my husband we could do it. After he carefully worked out ALL the details based on my sketch using a 3D program (and some consultation), he proceeded to build the […]
Daybed
Here is the slideshow of the process my husband used to build the daybed based on my design sketch (and consultation). See also the slideshow for the process of building the attached cabinet.