SOLD! Vintage Green wood Desk with Anthropologie hardware!

Here is my latest makeover subject.  A Vintage wood desk that I refinished and painted a Bamboo Green.  More citrus colors!!!  When will it stop?  (Probably not any time soon.)

I also put some timepiece knobs on this from Anthropologie.

Let me know what you think of the color and hardware.   I love the color but I know it's not for everybody.  I would love to hear your take on it!

I was thinking, if I were going to keep this piece (hmm...don't tempt me...) what are some desk accessories that I would match this up with?  Here are a few items from my fellow Etsy sellers, tushtush, pilotdesigns and ikcdesign, three very creative sellers that all have great stuff.  Please check them out!

Tushtush is one of my favorite painters of small works on Etsy.  Her portraits are intimate, beautifully composed and best of all, very reasonably priced.   This portrait, Acoustic Guitar, is one of my favorites by tushtush

 

and it's only $15 duquets for a print!  Whaaat?!  Yup!  A steal!  ($60 for the original, which, for an original painting is an even bigger steal! [But notice that the link I posted for Acoustic Guitar goes straight to the print version....okay, that's because I want the original.  So do me a favor and don't steal this steal from me...because I wanna' steal it.  Alright, buy it if you really want it but then do me a favor and buy something from my shop so that I can afford one of tushtush's paintings--See, win-win!--what a sneaky Sicilian I am.]) 

Okay, next up to go with the Bamboo Green Desk (that I want to keep but am going to force myself not to), a lamp by Etsy seller,  Keith Moore, whose Etsy shop, pilotdesign, features some very cool, very inspiring and very creative accessories for the home (I know, a lot of "very" but his work is just very "very!").  The Postage Lamp is one of Keith's designs that's just, well, "very," as in it would look very cool on the desk:

 

I love the graphic look of this piece and the fact that Keith uses a lot of recycled and sustainable materials, like bamboo, in his work.  Nice work from a very interesting guy (read his profile here) whose life does sound like a country music song--but not in a Hank Williamsy kind of way.

Lastly, it would be nice to have something to write in whilst sitting at this desk, whether it be a journal, some business papers, or what have you.  Let's go with Etsy seller numero trois, ikcdesign's 

Recycled Record Journal, pictured here (diagonally!--like in the Connect Four commercial!)

At night, whilst sitting at your bamboo green desk...your Postage lamp dimly lit, pondering tushtush's Acoustic guitar print (because the painting is mine--it will be mine....it will be mine...), you can open your brand new, recycled Bob Seger record journal and bust some pen and ink night moves in the form of poetry to your lover (imagined or real) or random musings about life and death (if you're feeling in a particularly French existentialist mood) or just sit there, staring at a blank page, maybe sipping a glass of your favorite two buck Chuck (as I often do in my marathon, non-productive, "writing" sessions) knowing that all is well (and it really is) because at the very least (if not more) you have some nice things to look at in your house--g. dammit!--if really, it's only in your home office (or, for me, the space in my bedroom I refer to as "my office").

Just posted the desk on Craigslist, here in Los Angeles, for all you local folk (and I also offer delivery) and this will also be up for sale in my Etsy shop very soon.
To see the craigslist ad, go here:
Vintage Bamboo Green Writing Desk Anthropologie hdwe
To see more pics of this and some of my other past pieces I've sold, visit my new Flickr photo page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/abodewell/

To see this in person, email me here or on Craigslist!  "0\/0"

Vintage Orange Desk on Apartment Therapy's L.A. Scavenger!!

Apartment Therapy's  Los Angeles Scavenger is featuring some items for sale today in the L.A. area that feature the colors of the citrus rainbow.  My Vintage Orange Desk is one of them!  Thanks to the editors at ATLA for featuring the desk, along with some other really interesting pieces, like this one:

 

and this'n:

 

It looks like I'm not the only who is feeling kinda' fruity!...um...you know what I mean.

Don't you love RED? Red Campaign Desk in Etsy Treasury!

Been busy as a bee lately, working on new projects and hunting for vintage furniture in need of a new lease on life, so, I have LOTS to catch up on here in the upcoming weeks.  Just wanted to mention, though, that my Red Campaign Desk was included in a great new Treasury by a very interesting Etsy Seller out of Pennsylvania, Melissa Mitchell, whose Etsy shop,  Green Home Road, takes recycled materials and furniture pieces and gives them a much needed and bright new hairdid!

Her Treasury is called, "Red Hot Home!" (which is an awesome title, methinks), and includes some of my favorite pieces on Etsy, like the hand painted Sherpa stool (below), by Etsy seller Fauxkiss 

and the Block Printed Lamp Shade by Etsy seller, HomeSweet

Melissa has some very cool, very recycled and tres chic pieces of furniture, in her Etsy shop, Green Home Road, that are (as my dad would say, in his Brooklyn accent) "bee-yootiful!"

Check out her Rustic Recycled Old Door Coffee Table made out of an antique, solid wood, frame and panel door!  Very creative and muy sustainable!

And then, there is the piece of resistance (or should I say, least resistance), her "Little Red Table That Could," a nice little, vintage, demi-lune number with turned legs and a red lacquer finish (nice job on the finish Melissa!--it's very challenging to get such a nice, smooth finish with lacquer and Melissa did a great job).  Love that red!  And I love saying "RED Lacquer!"  Just saying it makes you smile like a loon! (that and the vanilla latte I just drank).  I think the "Little Red Table That Could," could (as the Dude would say) really tie a room together.

Check out more great RED pieces and the rest of her Etsy Treasury here: Red Hot Home!

Thanks for the include Melissa and for such a nice treasury!
Frank @
abodewell.etsy.com

Go Eco-Friendly! Sunlight Candleholder featured on Etsy's Blog, The Storque!

Thanks to Emily Bidwell at Etsy for including my Sunlight Candleholder in her article in The Storque (Etsy's Blog):  Etsy Finds: Lean Green Machine  Thanx, Emily!

While you're there, check out some very cool Earth Friendly finds from some very creative people all over the world!  Etsy seller, Fibrillaria, from Hungary (first of all, how cool is Hungary!), sells construction plans to make your own earth friendly doghouse out of "clay, straw and manure (horse or cow) that stays cool in summer and protects from snow, rain and harsh winds in winter."  All for 6 bucks!  How freaking cool is that??  (Okay, maybe I would use mud instead of manure, but I am, after all, a city boy.  I do live near horse stables though...hmm....?)

Also, too (as it's recently been pointed out to me I say a lot, Thanks, Pete), check out Snowdon's, (located "near Manchester," yes, my friend, in "EEN-glond") eco-friendly "Nutter Bag."  How's that for mixing eco-friendly with English cheeky...mate!  (I used "mate" in a sentence, even though, no one really says "mate" in England--see the film Rushmore.  [giving myself a gentle punch on my shoulder...my other shoulder--not the same one with the fist--it's confusing to me too, just trust me on this]).

The Making of a Dovetail Cubby

I don't like to waste things.  In fact, if I can reuse something to make something else, that's even better.  Sometimes though, thinking about what to make out of something is often harder than the actual making of the new thing you're trying to make.  The Dovetail Cubby was one of those things.

I had acquired some beautiful but thin walnut boards (only about 3/8ths of an inch thick) from a man in Pasadena who was looking to get rid of a whole bunch of prized hardwood and some tools.  His father, a life long woodworker, had passed on a few years back and left behind a treasure trove of lumber, much of which he had cut himself from the actual trees and a few old, but very well made tools.  After some negotiating and some interesting history about his father, I drove away with a truck full of wood, an old, cast iron lathe (something I had always wanted) and a front seat full of clamps, hand tools and doo dads.  He gave me a good deal and I promised him that I would make good use of the wood and the tools and not let any of it go to waste.

I wanted a simple, small cubby on my living room wall to display some of my favorite books, candleholders and art.  So I thought of this simple yet elegant design: a box, with no back, with the top overhanging just a bit (I like things a little off center) and a rough, or "live" edge on the front.

I decided I would make it out of the thin walnut I had acquired, as I wanted it to appear light, like it was floating in the air.  I was excited because after two years of looking at the beautiful wood sitting in my shop, I found a use for it that I thought was worthy of the all the old woodworker's time and effort.

I liked the design immediately but the problem was the wall I wanted to hang it on only had one accessible stud that I could hang something from and the dimensions of the cubby weren't wide enough.  I could have made it really wide (to reach all three studs) but at that length the thin boards would look flimsy and would eventually bow due to the extra weight sitting across its length, which would amount to the material being practically wasted.

So I stuck to my guns and figured a way to keep the aesthetic and function intact.  I came up with an idea to fasten a thin, dovetailed board to the wall stud horizontally and cut two notches into the sides of the cubby so that once the dovetailed board was fastened the cubby could slide right on.

The result marries function and form.  This design also makes the construction extremely sturdy as when the back board is fastened to the wall, it bows forward slightly, actually pinning the sides of the cubby closer to the wall, making it fall proof.  Who knew one screw could be so strong?

The following series of photos shows the process of making a dovetail cubby (actually three) from start to finish.  This series of cubbies was made from wood that came from the sides of drawers of a vintage oak filing cabinet.

Step 1: Gluing up the drawer sides together to make the tops and bottoms of the cubbies.  You can see that the original, badly marred finish is still on the wood at this point.

Step Deuce: The now wide boards have been planed down to strip the original, plasticky finish (yechh!) and to get them ready to be cut.  The finger joints of the boards are still attached (but not for long).

Step 3: The boards are then cut to finished size and put together (without glue) to make sure I didn't screw up.  If everything looks good then I cut the joints and hope I don't screw those up.

Step 4: No screw-ups means quick glue ups!  This is where I carefully glue the boards together and clamp everything.  Did I mention this design does not include any nails?  Just good old-fashioned joints and glue.

Step 5: This is where the boards go into my medieval torture device/brundle fly machine to be squeezed into becoming one piece of wood (well, one piece of furniture made from four separate boards).  I clamp these overnight so that the boards can really bond (and I mean that literally and figuratively) and just in case there are any boards that are resistant to being part of a team.  Remember, wood is alive and each individual board has its own personality.  I have seen boards not bond to others simply because they didn't want to, not that I have anything against individuality.  To those boards I say, go on and be free my little wooden beatnik.

Step 6:  The transformation is complete.  Brundle has become Fly and vice versa.

Step 7:  As a reward for the boards coming together, I then give them a nice bath in Danish oil (my own secret recipe which I cannot divulge [because it's secret]) and let them sit out in the loverly California sunshine.  This literally tans the wood and gives it a nice, mellow patina, which will only get darker as it ages, kind of like Pam Anderson.

The result is a trio of cubbies that despite being sliced, diced and bathed in oil, all seem to be very happy together.