Upholstery Happens: man-style.

Sewing Machine: check.
Manliness: check.
mad skillz: check.

Upholstery happens in the house of bachelor. You were warned.

Wonderflonium: Do not bounce

I bought these at the NQR store today...because of the sticker.

Highschool Coffee Table

A broken coffee table I built in highschool (exactly 20 years ago this year !!). Every join gave up the ghost to kids dancing on top of it. Dowel glue joins are great, but they just can't withstand the awesome might of 3yr olds dancing.


The original 9mm dowel joins were destroyed, so I had to bore them out and plug them with larger 20mm dowel


The top was initially screwed on with 4 wood screws, sunken through the entire width of this crosspiece.

Deep sunken holes for screws is not ideal. I'm not going to use these again. I'll use brackets or something instead.


Sash clamps to the rescue. You can see the pine strip I placed on the inside upper edge to screw the top onto. Much beefier. It'll get stain to make it invisible of course.


Dowels. Not my first choice of timber joinery...but invisible is the intention I guess.


Taking shape. More clamp action.


Hopefully I get another 20 years out of it. It has some deep dints and marks in the top from previous use, nicely sealed under the new coat of varnish. Looks pretty good. (can't really tell from this shot though) Junk on the top for scale reference.

Keyboard Well: more more

FINALLY finished the keyboard-well in my desk. The original rough-as-guts test was going to be for 2 weeks or so...ended up being 8 months. Shiny.

Still shiny.

Indoors. Varnished the monitor tray also. The larger shelf is in the shed so I can improve the height extensions, which were always an ad-hoc thing due to the ever increasing size of monitors over the years from my original 13'. So long ago.

Keyboard Well: more

A while back I cut a big dirty hole in my desk to drop the keyboard into. I'm happy with the functionality so it's time to finish up.

Nice clean cuts to house a pine timber frame.


Measure a few times, keep cutting till it sorta fits. That's how the saying goes right ?


Snug as a bug in a rug


Tray in place. Had plans for an elaborate adjustable base but abandoned it due to the steep parabolic curve of effort vs reward.


Redgum sawdust is perfect for making my own putty where dark-mahogany stain is used, the color is a nice match after it has the wet varnished look.


Redgum hardwood + glue = tough putty. This stuff needs power tools to sand down. Serious, don't bother hand sanding this mix.


For all you know I'm smearing poo all over my desk.


Dry stained pine embedded in varnished veneer. Looks awfull. Varnish has some pretty magical properties though :)


Varnish has a mild gooping/solvent effect like paint stripper, so it's fine to apply to old coats like this, the disparity between the currently uncoated, and coated sections won't show after the 3rd coat.

Will take another photo after it's done.

more chair 2

Three coats of varnish. New upholstery material chosen (draped over the old cushions). Shot with flash indoors. The timber has a much nicer deep red color with natural light on it, which won't really show in these shots.


Same shot, no flash. The old sofa timber showing next to it. Such a contrast. Can't believe this was being thrown out. Timber furniture is always repairable by anyone with no skills.


Closer shot shows the coarse-weave of the new upholstery. I don't own a sewing machine so this is gonna be a visit-to-a-friends job.


Side profile.