Custom Furniture Pieces | Custom Design

I love building custom items. That being said, the mission of Dr Al's Furniture Rehab Studio is to repair and restore EXISTING pieces of furniture. When we take on a Custom Creation our priorities remain:

1. Safety Issues - When the condition of a piece is such that it could endanger the health or safety of its owners or users - That is our first priority!

2. Repair and Restoration - OUR PRIMARY FOCUS (The truth is that a lot of the time involved in repair and restoration is spent waiting for stain, paint, finish or glue to dry or cure before we can go to the next step. Thus there are lots of "time blanks" that we fill with Custom Creations.)

3. Custom Creations - We work on these as we can without losing our PRIMARY FOCUS.

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The book shelves shown here were actually built, several years ago, in our shop for these homeowners for a different home and a different purpose. At their new residence, this is all the space they have to house just a small portion of their extensive collection of Cookbooks, ranging from a copy of Martha Washington's to the most up to date ones and worldwide from Russian to South African cuisine, and many Recipies from family and others.

The new Bookcase is 31" wide, 12 " deep and 84" tall. It will have 6 shelves plus 3 drawers for storage for recipies on cards. It will be red/brown in color to blend with the other furniture in the room.

This one will have a small base, to raise it above the dog food and water dishes, to protect the bottom books.

We chose select pine, with knots, for the case and the shelves because it will take the color and finish very well and because it helps with the budget.

It took quite a bit of time to find the right 1" X 12" eight foot boards. They needed to be straight with tight knots and no twists. Finally we settled on this stack for the main materials.

After several days of cutting, machining, sanding and sealing we end up with 47 parts ready for assembly. The drawers are already done except for the specially designed pulls.

The top will be over sized to create a Crown and receive trim molding. We are using our board "Stretcher" for this. Actually, we are splicing in a strip at the back using biscuit joinery. In the back ground you can see a 13 drawer dresser about to be stripped for refinishing.

To quote Norm Abrams of the New Yankee Workshop, "Now its time for some assembly."

First the sides are attached to the top and the base is built. Then the shelves are fitted into Dado groves in the case sides.

Remember what I said about glue drying? There is a lot of that going on here.

Well its all assembled and trimed out. I don't nkow why but I'm always sort of amazed when a piece can stand up by it's self! The back will be added later because it is better when spraying color and finish, to let the material go through rather than blowing back in your face.

In the back ground are the drawers for a bedroom set and one of the side tables. They are stripped, sanded and ready for sealer.

The dining room table in the fore ground has a broken leg. I think I like this work, because when I was a boy I was always trying to fix birds with broken wings.

Okay. All sanded up to 320 grit and ready for a final application of sealer.

When this is dry, we're ready for color.

Color went too fast for pictures. Basically it is 2 coats of rosewood stain with a brown mahogany glaze, finished with 2 coats of satin polyurathane.

The bookcase is installed and loaded. The owners have at least 12 more boxes of cookbooks, so the next stage is some serious sorting. The three receipe drawer handles are hand crafted as a Sauce pan, a Dutch oven, and an oven door. Everything is hand carved except the knobs, they are beads. They lady at the bead store did not resopnd well to my order for 2 silver beads, 4 black ones, 6 flat head pins and 6 sequines ( sequines only come in pack of 7 million!)