Building Stuff

Bethany and I have been venturing into new creative territories recently.

First up: I built Bethany a computer specced out to suit architectural programs she uses. It was something I had never done before, and learned a lot from... in particular that there is absolutely no need to every buy a prebuilt PC again, because they're so easy to make yourself and soooo much less expensive that way. Here's what it looks like:

Upon completion of this project however, we needed a desk to put it. Bethany had the ingenious idea of replacing our crap, not digital ready tv with our brand new HD computer monitor. But we had to devise a way of doing this that would suit both conventional tv viewing settings and proper workstation desk settings. What we came up with is the following:

We bought a piece of wood from the section of Ikea with all of the broken parts, and found a really nice section of wood (real wood... not particle board) from what was supposed to be a table. It wedged perfectly into one of our bookshelves and was only ten dollars. So with some hinges we devised a way of plotting the wood plank into the shelf, so that it might act as a cover for the computer, when we're watching tv; and also may be pulled out so as to act as a desk for basic computer work. We used some old, busted pool cues as supports and applied hinges to those as well. The wine cork is used to properly wedge the desk plank into the shelf, leaving a little bit of space at the bottom for us to lift it up and out.

This pseudo desk/bookshelf/entertainment center option also gave us the added benefit of decreased visual clutter. There used to be a huge pile of dvds on the shelf, which are now in a box, awaiting placement upon a future art project.

I think we were on a roll, but Bethany had mentioned that this coffee table she had had for the past few years was really taking up room. After failing to sell it on craigslist for a mere $10, she half joked that we should saw it in half and make a shelf. I was the one that got really excited and pushed her to agree to actually follow through.

So instead of a bookshelf (which we do need) we decided to create small bedside tables. Right now Bethany has a cluttered corner of items next to her bed and I have a small table that I pulled out of the dumpster next to mine. What we did was saw the coffee table into quarters. We then stacked two quarters a piece on top of each other to give us two bedside tables. From there we took apart an old chair we found at a thrift store, and adapted pieces of it into the various legs and parts needed to finish the tables.

We had disagreements on how to carry out our tables, and ultimately decided to create each of our tables in our own way. Needless to say, Bethany's has a clearer visual style, and a much more obvious regard for craftsmanship than mine, however with the addition of the rest of the pool cue from our desk, I like the appropriated art collage look of mine. Bethany added some cool hooks she cut from the back of the chair.



As soon as we finish putting together Bethany's table, we're going to sand them down and paint them.

After that, I'm hoping to actually put together the much needed bookshelf we wanted to begin with. My birthday is coming up and I'm hoping to get a router. I thought it would be really cool to route some designs into the shelves, but at the moment we are running out of parts. I wanted to use some of the legs we cut off of the table, stick them to a slab of wood and then just figure it out from there, but Bethany says she is more concerned with planning it out and appropriating parts in less of a stacked way. Whatever the case, the name of the game is adaptive reuse; taking the old and properly applying it to the new. It's like a three dimensional art collage that just happens to have a degree of functionality.

Anyways... I'm not a computer technician, and by no means am I trained woodworker, but I'm having fun, figuring it out.