I just came across this picture of a job we did last year which totally appealed to my OCD sensibilities.
I designed and built a bed and storage for a client which drew influence from the stunning "Versailles" flooring which they had just had laid elsewhere in their apartment.
So I decided to create some "Versailles" panelling of my own, incorporated into the headboard of the bed.
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"The devil is in the detail" as they say.

It's not just about getting the perfect fit with all the little pieces but getting the grain orientation just right too.

I'll spare the client the invasion of their privacy by not publishing pictures of their bedroom for the world to see.

Having completely fallen off the social media horse in the last year or so it's time to swing my leg over and get back in the saddle. I'll start with a gentle plod rather that a full-on gallop and post a bit of an update on the time that has elapsed since my last post.

Needless to say, we're still very much in business and mostly the business of fitted furniture. These tend to be a variation of our tried and tested hand painted or oiled, solid oak made to measure wardrobes and study units.

My workshop co-habitee Rob (Gower Hardwood Flooring) was approached to install oak flooring throughout this beautiful duplex apartment over-looking Langland Bay. However as you can see from the "before" image below, it wasn't always so beautiful and there was a major obstruction to the panoramic view of the sea in the form of a solid cast concrete ballustrade. This annoyingly meant that to fully appreciate the stunning vista you had to be standing up rather than relaxing on a comfy sofa.

This is exactly what I've been doing in the literal sense of the word for about the last month or so.

It's an unusual house (with some strange occupants – us) but makes a nice little case study to demonstrate some of the work which we could do for you particularly with fitted furniture that you won't be able to find anywhere else.

The house is in a terrace and was once the local dairy. There is a cobblestone passageway running from the front to the back garden along which allegedly the cows used to pass to the milking sheds at the back. No longer having much use for the bovine tunnel, it became part of the house and a large oak door now presides over the entrance. As you'll see from the picture below, this has created an oversized entrance hall/porch complete with commercial sized gas meter that was very difficult to know what to do with. The space just became a junk room for shoes, coats, kid's toys, bikes and unopened mail and looked like you were stepping into some sort of recycling centre. Added to this the whole “room” sloped at about 1 in 30 along it's uneven but characterful length.

What we needed were some cupboards!!

Fortunately, I have some experience in “bespoke storage solutions” but time and money were at a premium so I approached the job with this in mind.

I had accumulated some reclaimed timber over the years, the remains of an church pew, some platform benches beyond repair and some old school desk tops. It's very satisfying to re-use old timber as it gives it a whole new purpose and has great eco-credentials.
When used appropriately it also retains the sense of age and character befitting the setting we had in mind for it.

Firstly, I wanted to create a replica “settle”, which is a traditional piece of Welsh vernacular furniture similar to a parlour seat. This included ample storage for the shoes and boots! We painted this in F&B “downpipe” eggshell and appropriately adorned it with a traditional Welsh blanket.

I built a bespoke unit designed to hide the gas meter and pipework which to all intents and purposes looks like a small sideboard, utilising and old school desk for the top and including two drawers for all the unopened mail, keys and dog leads.

Next to tackle the coats, I designed a full height storage unit with incorporated bench seat and hooks for coats and hats, baskets for bags and a cupboard for my scruffy workshop attire  that “needs to be concealed”.

Finally, to hide the toys and accumulated junk and running out of money we incorporated a simple shelf unit with made-to-measure baskets.

So now everything seems to have its place including the umbrellas in a reclaimed milk churn. We just need to settle the dispute about my bike....

I have mentioned previously (and this will be the last time!) that making furniture wasn't my first career or even my second come to that but it is now the way I choose to scrape a living. Sometimes when faced with the uncertainties of running a small business I do reflect on how my life may have turned out if I'd have stayed with my earlier occupation and whether i'd be satisfied with a big house in suburbia, a convertible sports car and 3 holidays abroad every year. Today, as I watch the August rain through my workshop window, it is ever so slightly appealing.

It was therefore with more than a passing interest last month that I read about the banker who was jailed for 14 years for manipulating the LIBOR rate. It turns out we both studied engineering at the same university and worked at the same London investment bank, albeit our paths never crossed. I had long since escaped the world of questionable financial morality for one of questionable financial viability by the time he was up to his tricks.

I have some good friends who work in the city and it's a shame the unscrupulous actions of a few have tarnished the reputations of many decent people who happen to be well paid. 
For the record, I hadn't got very far up the greasy pole before abandoning it altogether else I might be doing woodwork purely for pleasure...

So as I consider my next project, I will spare a thought for the banker who I don't think is an inherently bad person but just lost all sense of reality in the strange parallel world of banking and finance. I might not earn much from making furniture but I'm glad I made that choice.
Funnily enough, I remember hearing of an organisation that sought to rehabilitate prisoners in a furniture making workshop environment. Ironically it was closed due to financial mismanagement, so there may yet be a further twist in the tale......

My upcoming job is some fitted storage units for a little girl's bedroom together with a solid oak “truckle” bed.

Below are some examples of hand-painted, fitted shelving and cupboards recently built and installed. They transform a room and provide a really effective storage solution.

Warning: This blog is a bit woolly and may best be read with an open mind or some alcohol.

My introduction to woodwork was about 12 years ago with a year long course in cabinetmaking at a private workshop in Devon. From day 1 we were encouraged to approach every piece of work with the aim of achieving “perfection”, whether it be fitting a joint, applying a finish or a host of other wood related endeavours.

This was undoubtedly the right way to go about training a novice to be the best craftsman that they could be and I have taught others in much the same way.

However, a decade on and I find myself striving for “imperfection”, this seems a bit of an odd thing to say, but what I'm referring to is a subtlety that describes an individual maker's distinct touch. It is something I was told about years ago but never really understood

I probably would have said this sounds like a load of old cobblers, why wouldn't you want to achieve perfection, but having lived and breathed this life for a while now, it makes a lot more sense to me. In much the same way my woodworking teacher, all those years ago tried to impart the idea of the rhythm of design; but having seen enough good and bad design, this too begins to make sense.

There is however a huge difference between an “imperfection” and a “cock-up”.

An imperfection can reflect the confidence of the craftsman in his knowledge and abilities to the extent that it adds soul and personality to a piece. Extrapolating this further, it is the confidence and flair of the craftsman to express him or herself in their work.
An analogy can be made with impressionist painters. The fact that they were classically trained artists of the highest order serves to add weight to their later work.

A “cock-up” is exactly that, a mistake, whether it be in the design or the execution of the work, and tends to be glaringly obvious to all concerned. Kind of like a “rubbish” painting where “it's just wrong”.

“Perfection” on the other hand is more easily achieved now that ever before by getting something produced in a factory, but this is infinitely bland and soul-less. Perfection is the mass produced photoshopped image of the furniture world. Why would you try to replicate with your own efforts and imperfect hands what a machine can do in a fraction of the time?

I had an enquiry a few years ago from someone who was ultimately concerned with having something handmade versus the shop bought “mass-produced perfection” as he rather gallingly called it. We would agree to disagree.

Buy something handmade and the user should feel a direct connection to the maker and the piece will tell a unique story, though the true narrative is known only to the person that crafted it.

When I was graduating from University more years ago now than I care to think about, we had this process called the “Milk Round” where representatives from big city firms would come to campus recruitment fairs and use tactics fair and foul to attract graduates to join their ranks.
“Come and train as a Chartered Accountant, it will open doors for you” they would say, “and we'll give you £2,000 to help clear your student debts”, well that was me sold, I could clear some debts and have a nice holiday too!
After enduring 3 years of tedium and mental torture, they'd nearly broken my spirit (but not quite), many doors did indeed open for me, unfortunately all were to banks and finance departments.

It was in hindsight, a rather drastic reaction to give it all up and become a woodworker, I concede the salary of a “fat cat” executive would make life easier, but i'm not sure I would sleep well at night and maybe fate always intended for me to become an impoverished artisan.

Where am I going with this? A tenuous link I know but I was reflecting last week on how the doors I'm now opening are of the solid oak variety, whilst those to the city banks are very likely to be closed by now.

Doors generally fall into the category of joinery rather than cabinetmaking, but essentially the techniques are the same. I don't tend to do them often, as joinery workshops are set up to make doors, windows etc on a commercial scale and produce them more competitively than I can.
Although, if it's something a little different and the sums stack up i'd be happy to consider it..

I recently built an oversized oak door at a local house. I declare a personal interest in this one as it is ours and is something I've been wanting to do for a while. The house was once a local dairy and a passageway ran from the street to the milking sheds at the rear. This meant that a standard door was not an option and making something bespoke was the only way to go. The “before” image shows the brown “timber effect” PVC door that has served the purpose but has not done the house any favours in my opinion.

My intention was to make something contemporary yet sympathetic to the history of the building hence incorporating a traditional planked door references its agricultural past and the sandblasted glazing panels and brushed steel hardware creates a more modern architectural feel.
Functionally it works well and being double skinned and insulated is very energy efficient.
For me I think it works aesthetically, but taste is a highly individual thing and like a new pair of shoes, it's taking a little while to get used to......

People often say how lucky I am to be able to make things for our home, “you must save loads of money”.
Right and wrong
Yes, I am very lucky, I take great pleasure in making things with my own hands, but most of what I produce pays the bills and goes to my greatly appreciated clients. However, occasionally, usually for a few weeks over the summer I turn my attention to my own projects.
It's great in that I get to build things exactly as we want them, but sadly time is money etc so it costs me much the same as I would have to charge clients with the exception of a few corners cut with my own work.

And so it was, a few weeks ago that we decided we needed some new outdoor furniture instead of the old plastic chairs we've been sitting on for 3 years.
As much as i'd like to have a bespoke oak bench hand carved with the names of my children like one I made for a client last summer; as the wife points out, we have different priorities.

We looked online at our options, as ever the sums don't seem to add up for me, “how can they produce it at that price?” is my usual reaction. The main reasons are quality and quantity allied with the cost of labour in the countries in which it is produced.
The same applies to most mass produced furniture which is why I have never tried to compete in that market. Our work is handmade and bespoke and if i'm brutally blunt, you get what you pay for. That's not to say I don't have the odd bit of flatpack furniture wobbling about, it's great if it does what you want it to do.

Anyway, I decided to set myself a challenge, to produce a garden chair that we would want to own for under £100.
I based the design on an old enduring favourite, “The Morris Chair” and paired it back to it essential components. Armed with my simple design I popped down the builder's merchant and bought a few boards of 4x1 planed and tanalised timber. Returning to New Red HQ, I set about producing a chair as efficiently as possible, not rushing, as that's where things get dangerous, but saving time with the use of a nail gun and some fast drying waterproof wood glue. A few hours later a neat little prototype chair emerged to be christened “The NewRed unpicked Morris prototype mark 1a” or “Numpty Chair” for short. See picture below and it's more illustrious cousin.

Produced in hours rather than days or weeks, the result met the brief and was quite liberating to make compared with the usual exacting standards to which we aspire. However, I haven't yet managed to find the time to produce any more, so it's back to plastic for the time being.

Next time, I'll describe how to build your own shed for under £250. This goes against everything we stand for as a business, but it makes a nice change.....

My first commission when I started in business almost 10 years ago was a contemporary solid oak extending table and benches for a London architect friend of mine. It was a nice start as I was able to get a bit of design input from him so it gave me added confidence that if the piece was well made the result would be a good one.

On a recent visit to the big smoke, he and I were having a pint and he mentioned they were moving house and that after 10 years and 3 small children, the table might benefit from a bit of a refurbish.
A week later, I received an email to say the table was on its way and was in a bit of a sad state but had been “much loved”. Indeed it turned up in more pieces than I remember.

It had been specifically designed to come apart so that it could be installed in the flat they lived in at the time, however, during a subsequent house move, it hadn't so much been taken apart as totally dismembered by an overzealous removal man and had not really been quite the same since.
Wobbly isn't the word to describe it. Any dinner parties surely must've been accompanied by a bout of motion sickness. It must've been like eating at the Captain's table on the HMS Victory. This assumption was borne out by the red wine and other food stains (possibly seaweed) which tell their own tales of dining in a Force 8 gale.

It was indeed a sad sight, but somewhere in there was the old table that I lovingly crafted as a first job in my new career as a fledgling cabinet maker many moons ago. So I set about stripping it back together with the benches that had suffered an attack from a ball point pen.

Here lies the beauty of solid oak, in that beneath 10 years of grime and “love” the timber was as fresh as the day it was produced. It is first hand evidence of the virtues in investing in bespoke furniture that I have long been extolling. A mass produced table, usually a composite veneer construction will become irretrievably tatty over time and need to be replaced. Solid oak can be sanded and refinished or can be left to take on the patina of age and if looked after will last many lifetimes. It would be great for business if more people had the foresight of our predecessors when investing in furniture.

I reassembled the table as it was intended, and it stood as proud and solid as the day it was delivered. With it's new coat of oil, my old friend suddenly didn't look so sorry for itself and was fit for many more years of loyal service, this time on dry land.

Somewhat ironically, this time I used a very durable waterproof oil which wasn't available 10 years ago, so any spillages whilst toasting “Wives and Sweethearts (may they never meet)” may be wiped away with a damp cloth, though please use mats under hot plates and skillets.

Avast ye shipmates!!!

The New Red furniture workshop in The Grove (off Queens Road) has been turned over to making wardrobes this last month, fitted and free-standing, hand-painted and natural oiled oak. I was asked this week if I get bored with making them and replied; “yes a bit,” but on reflection I used to sit at a desk all day in a London bank, so relatively speaking, not at all, I love wardrobes.

My 40th birthday is looming over me like the “big bad mouse” in my little boy’s favourite book. However, I count myself very lucky in that I had my major mid-life crisis at 26 when I decided a desk job wasn’t for me and dived blindly into the world of furniture making. I did however have a minor mid-life crisis just last week. The puncture in my wheel-barrow occurred whilst doing some landscaping in the back garden. If that’s as bad as it gets, bring on middle age (and a new wheel).

I was sent a book review a few weeks ago; an account of the life of furniture maker in New England which I look forward to reading. To quote the reviewer, “manual labour has recently enjoyed a welcome return to fashion, almost everyone I know - young and old, male and female, rich and poor - would rather be making or baking, sewing or shaping, farming, tending, growing or hoeing than doing whatever they are doing”.

He goes on to discuss the false distinction between working with your hands and working with your brain; “a great deal more brain power is spent in crafting, say, an oak dining table than in the average white-collar job”. Not my words, but having done both I would definitely concur with that opinion. So I feel philosophically vindicated if somewhat financially poorer for my decision.

Whether my fitted wardrobes “express the values, ideas and world view of the person who made them”, i’ll leave to my clients to decide.

An update on the New Red social media campaign; I’m bored of it for now and refuse to tweet “insightful thoughts” on woodwork to my wife and a company that makes Welsh crisps!

However, I’ll continue to upload pictures of recent work like this lovely hand-painted oak dresser made for a Gower client. More images and description of this and other work can be found on our website: www.newredfurniture.co.uk and follow links to our Facebook page. I’d be pleased to discuss any ideas you may have.


Dan