Benches

 My buddy Taylor is renovating his house. They had to take down an old oak tree that they really loved, so he had a portable sawmill come over and cut a bunch of slabs out of the trunk, then he brought them over to my house to air dry for a while. After going to his house and checking out the addition, I'm going to build him an outdoor bar, some outdoor bench seating, a coffee table, some floating shelves, and a dining room table & benches. 

Live edge stuff is pretty straightforward, you just have to work the wood until it's done. No complex joinery or anything. Just plane out the sawmill marks, get the top flat, and clean everything else down good. Put a good finish on it and some legs and you're done. 

The Full Stack

That's a lot of lumber.  Going to make for some mighty fine furniture. 

Rough cut

Cleaned off, I dumped some water to bring out the grain

From the top  all sanded & ready for finish

Now with finish - Old Master's Ascend Exterior

This bench is ready, his wife hasn't decided on what kind of legs to put on these benches. Once I get some legs this one is ready to deliver. The grain really pops, the live edge is cool, it sits great... just need some legs.

The big thick slabs at the top of the stack make 2 of these benches and the thicker one for a coffee table. Taylor loves it.

Finishing a cool bunk bed

 I finished off a really cool bunk bed setup recently. It started with the same basic setup, making boxes on the frames, and making the supports. But they also wanted a climbing wall, a slide, and a few drawers.

Supports are in and this bunk is standing

The middle supports determine how wide I need to make the slide

This is the frame for the drawers

Drawer frame is installed, with the slides

Climbing wall is getting there

Slide is going together

This drawer came out a little small

I swear I had to build 6 drawers to get 3 to fit right

Now painted!

Hardware is installed

Getting my kids involved with the install

Lena really got into it

Finished! They loved it.

Drawers turned out pretty clean.

My helpers

The kid is a natural!

You can make cool bunk beds like this. Just take it one component at a time. This is a twin/twin bunk, standard twin mattress is 38" x 75", so start with a square box there. I use 2x3's for the core, cover it with 1x3 furring strips, then wrap the core with 2x6's. The supports are all made with 2x4's, cut a 12.5" length off of one end, and a 9" block off. The total height for this bed was 75", so I glued and screwed the 9" block 18" from the top, and the larger block flush with the bottom. The boxes then sit on top of the blocks, attached with 3 screws through the supports. Then I add a 1x4 and 1x3 to the top as safety rails, cut to length.

For the climbing wall, I glue & screw 2x6 boards to the end supports, then ordered the playground handles and holds from Amazon. They came with hardware to mount on 2" stock (which is really only 1.5" thick) so that was straightforward. The slide is tricky. I started with a couple of 2x6x8' boards, calculated the angle for the top & bottom cuts. Then I measured for 2x3's to go under the plywood for support, and cut a groove through the inside of both boards to hold the plywood. I used one sheet of plywood for the slide and the drawers. After cutting the plywood to size, install it into the grooves with finish nails. Sand the plywood so it gets smooth, I used 120 and 180 grit for this. Then I coat the plywood with some marine epoxy (TotalBoat) that I had hanging around. Install the 2x3's underneath for stability, so the plywood doesn't flex. Out of habit, I put them every 16" like it was a wall stud or something. I attach the slide to the upper bed with door hinges, they are heavy duty for the weight, and it prevents toys from getting stuck under the slide.

For the drawers, I built this frame that provided a front face and stability by screwing it to the supports and for the back it screwed to the bottom bed, creating a frame that was parallel to the floor. Then I put sides up so I could mount the drawer slides. The drawers are just boxes made of plywood and assembled with the finish nailer.  I put a 1x8 face on the boxes, and mounted the rest of the drawer slides. The important part there is to get the sides on the frame exactly parallel, and don't make the boxes try to fit exactly. Leave about 1/8" shorter than you think they will need so the slide can operate easily. 

This one really did pull out all of the stops, and the kid was so excited! I thought the slide came out a little steep. But really everything was clean, the parents were super happy with it.

Standing Daybed

 This one I built for a friend at work, she absolutely loved it. The cool part was that I built it pretty much in a day. I started with rough cypress and pine, built the frame, then wrapped everything with the cypress so I had to size and mill one piece at a time. 

The raw lumber, some pine and (3) 1x6x12' cypress rough cut

Built the frame in the molds

the working setup, planer, table saw, miter saw, nail gun

At this point, I have to mill the cypress one piece at a time. The boards are rough cut 1x6, which means they are actually 1" thick and 6" wide, not the nominal dimensioned 3/4" x 5 1/2" boards you normally buy at the store, this stuff is air dried straight from the sawmill. So I need to first cut a square end on the board, then cut to length for the piece that I need, cut around any defects, rip it to the 2.5" width that I need from the table saw, then feed it through the planer to get all of that exterior graying ripped off. Then I can nail that board to the frame.

This is WAY more work than if you could just buy clean 1x3 cypress boards at the big box store. But you're going to pay about 12x as much, this cypress was only $2.50/boardfoot and most Lowe's/Home Depot's don't even carry it. The most comparable thing they carry is oak for around $15 per bf, and I get it rough cut from this sawmill for about $2/bf. No way I want to pay big box prices for that. And I sell these beds, so I'm not even the one footing the bill.

Start with the legs, be sure the most broad side of the joint faces out

Add the arms next

Formed the back and added a vertical member

Finished the woodworking.

Detail of the side pieces

That cypress is beautiful!

Man that cypress is beautiful! It is a naturally oily wood, but starts out very light then can gray over time if you leave it natural. I prefer to stain or seal it.

Sealed with a Thompson's Timber Oil outdoor protective coating. This has a cedar color stain mixed in.

Came out really clean, I thought

Lisa's cool balcony in the hip, young part of Raleigh

Enjoy! This was an easy install.

This was the easiest install yet, my daughter and I just had to carry it up the stairs. Lisa wanted a shorter back on this one, I thought it turned out absolutely fabulous. It's a clean look with a long lasting finish that will give her some outdoor comfort for a long time to come. Most importantly, she absolutely loved it!

Finish the Queens

Eventually, finally, I finished building and fitting all of these dang drawers. The install went pretty smooth after that!

Finished off this bank!

Getting there

The top bank is going onto the white bed and the bottom bank is for the whitewashed bed, if that wasn't obvious. The whitewashed drawers turned out really cool, you can see the grain pattern show through, but the faces form a continuous grain. I numbered the faces and where they go in the cases. Time to install! These banks of drawers sit on top of a couple of 2x4's on the floor and I left exactly enough room under the bed for that. sure.

We had some fun helpers

She had 17 pillows on top of the bed

I can't even

These drawers and nightstand fit! really

got the bank and nightstand on this side too

notice the gap between the nightstand and the platform rail that shouldn't be there

Put some paint on the frame

This turned out amazingly cool

The drawers went into the other bed too

Notice the Toby photobomb

With Ginny and Sam, the customers. Such a sweet, kind family

These beds turned out to be amazing! Don't think I'm going to take on a project this size again anytime soon but these are definitely some of the coolest beds I've ever made. 2 queen beds, 4 nightstands, and 28 drawers in total - all cool.