Neil's Furniture Pages

I like to build my own furniture. It allows me a freedom of design that's rarely found in the corporate world and it is very satisfying to me to know I made something myself. I'm completely self taught and everything I have made has been of my own design.

When I design and build furniture, I use the "design a bit, build a bit, iterate" methodology. I'll start off thinking the project through completely, sketching bits and pieces of it as required (I've now started using Visio to add some rigour to the process). Because I use an iterative design & build process, I focus on one sub-assembly at a time then re-evaluate how it fits with the overall design.

This is just the start of my Furniture page. Over the coming months I'll be adding details of more of the items I've built, so please feel free to check back for more (the Main Menu page has a list of recent page changes).

In May of 2009 our friend and neighbor Peter had a dilemma, one that I was in a unique position to solve. He had an old canoe made from ¼” thick PVC, with a tubular aluminum frame, that he wanted to get rid of. He’d tried selling it at a yard sale but it didn’t move, even though it was totally functional as a canoe. If it had been a sit-on-top ocean canoe I would have jumped on it for diving but it was for lakes and rivers and thus not dive friendly.

I said “If you really want to get rid of it, I’ll cut it in half and make chairs out of it”. I was joking initially but Peter agreed and so that is what I did. The full story of making the chairs can be found here.

I got Flo a mixer for Christmas one year. One of the big problems with a mixer is the need to store it someplace out of the way, which means it has to be moved and set up before it can be used. My solution was a Mixer Stand – the alternative was a kitchen remodel, which we’re not ready to tackle yet.

All the wood in the mixer stand is original 100 year old Doug Fir 2x4s (old style, meaning it measures roughly 2” x 4”) which came from our attic bedroom, pulled out as part of the bedroom remodel. The physical connection between the house and the Mixer Stand was too good to pass up. The full story of making the Mixer Stand can be found here.