High Class Joint

Facing East 776 Street, the living room is connected to the dining room by an ovoid cut-our, either side of which hang a pair of c1840 New York State mirrors. These in turn are flanked by brass jardinière pedestals topped with purple Minton urns designed by Christopher Dresser, which were bought in a shop in Greenwich Village. The sofas came from the Freeman family home in Haverhill, Massachusetts. while the mirror-top cable is a William Pahlmann piece. The Chinese Deco carpet was purchased at Sotheby's - immediately after the auction, while that particular lot was still unrolled on the saleroom floor, Roy Yeager was to be heard instructing unsuccessful rival bidders not to walk on it at any cost - The World of Interiors

The thumbnail image on Jigsaw Planet caught my eye. When I finished the puzzle I asked Google about it and found this much bigger image. I wouldn't want a room like this, but it is lovely.

P.S. The person who posted this image on Jigsaw Planet has over a thousand interior images posted.

Chair

La-Z-Boy Manager's Chair

My wife wanted a new chair for home office since I stole her last one, so went to Costco and picked up this luxo model. $200, but it's a La-Z-Boy. 

My old office chair

The last office chair I had I bought from Amazon for a like a hunnerd bucks and it lasted a year before it started falling apart. The support piston lost its gas and then the foam in the armrest collapsed, hence the towel and bungee cord. When the remodeling project started this summer, her home office disappeared so I replaced my chair with her old one.

Death of a Chair

We'd been home for a couple of hours and I was sitting in my chair happily sorting old screws when the leg on my old office chair gave out and dumped me on the floor. Can't really complain though, the chair is like 25 years old. I think we got it at Office Depot.  Looks like we need another chair.

DPS Centurion Gaming Chair

So back to Costco we go and we pick up a gaming chair for me. The La-Z-Boy chair has folding armrests which is nice if you need to be close to your desk, but they don't fold all the way back, though I don't know if that is a real issue or if it just looks funny. The DPS Chair doesn't have folding armrests, but when I sit in it, the armrests are low enough that they will go under my work table.

P. S. June 2025. Both of these new chairs have a major flaw. The seat cushion sags in the center, so it kind of forces you to slump. I slump enough on my own, I don't need any help, thank you. I finally folded up an towel and set it in the center of the Centurion Gaming Chair. It helps.

Dresser

Ikea Dresser Back in Business

One corner of an old Ikea dresser broke during a move. Remodeling project is 99.99% done so there is room to move around in the garage, so I set to work fixing it.

Ikea Dresser Repair

It wasn't too tough, one of the little studs that Ikea likes to use got pulled out of a side panel and a brace across the back got broken. The dresser is made out of particle board, so it's just strong enough to do its job as long as no one asks it to do anything more. You don't want to use it to store engine parts and you don't want it to be in the same room as a rowdy drunk. Anyway, there wasn't any damage to the outside surfaces. I made the repair with a couple of pieces of scrap wood, some drywall screws, some wood glue and one big screw to fasten the back brace to the scrap piece I sistered onto the side panel.

I have been saving screws that show up on my doorstep, but most of them are too short to be useful for anything I want to do. I find drywall screws are very handy for most of my scrap wood projects. I know they aren't the best, but for where I use them they are perfectly adequate.

Resolute Desk

Caroline Kennedy & Kerry Kennedy under the Resolute Desk

Tam mentions the 'Resolute desk' which means nothing to me. Is she referring to some vessel from Star Trek or some other science fiction story? I mean, she does dabble in those waters. No, it's in the White House.

The White House Historical Association has the story:

H.M.S. 'Resolute', forming part of the expedition sent in search of Sir John Franklin in 1852, was abandoned in Latitude 74º 41' N. Longitude 101º 22' W. on 15th May 1854. She was discovered and extricated in September 1855, in Latitude 67º N. by Captain Buddington of the United States Whaler 'George Henry'. The ship was purchased, fitted out and sent to England, as a gift to Her Majesty Queen Victoria by the President and People of the United States, as a token of goodwill & friendship. This table was made from her timbers when she was broken up, and is presented by the Queen of Great Britain & Ireland, to the President of the United States, as a memorial of the courtesy and loving kindness which dictated the offer of the gift of the "Resolute'.

Okay then, British ship, doomed Arctic expedition, sounds a whole lot like The Terror. 

HMS Resolute Abandoned

67 degrees North (where it was recovered) would be about 500 miles south of where it was abandoned.

HMS Resolute in search of Sir John Franklin 1850 - Francois Musin

I chose the picture of the desk (top) because it revealed the existence of the door.

Pipe Organ Desk

Pipe Organ Desk

Kagen Sound built this desk for Darren Aronofsky, the film director. There is a small pipe organ built into this desk, but it is not there to make music, it is part of a complex mechanism to unlock a secret compartment. It's really quite spectacular. The entire desk is riddled with complex puzzles. There are several videos on YouTube that show how some of it works. I didn't find them particularly engaging.

Via older son.

The Furnishing of Desks

Bayou Renaissance Man was talking about bookcases, which led to JK Brown posting a link to Woodgears.ca wherein Matthias mentions tables made at Blackberry, which because I haven't had my coffee yet, I took to mean an old line furniture manufacturer, so I went looking for this venerable old company and found nothing. Well, nothing about the Blackberry Furniture Manufacturing Company, mostly because there didn't seem to be one, but I did find this story from 1917, which you might find entertaining. I know I did.

The Furnishing of Desks 

THERE came from the Quarter Master General, who has his headquarters in Chicago it seems, on June 30, blanks upon which were to be filled out bids for 2,375 flat top desks. With some of these blanks there were also enclosed specifications for these desks which, according to these specifications, could not be made for less than $35, even if they could be built at that figure. The desks were to be cross-banded, with heavy legs, brass cup feet, etc. Remember that it was then the 30th day of July. The specifications called for bids to be in the quartermaster’s office with a sample of the article to be furnished on the 2nd day of August, and the 2,375 desks to be ready for delivery on the 15th day of August. Needless to say to furniture makers that the thing could not be done. These desks are wanted for the cantonments now being built, scattered from Battle Creek to Waco, Tex., and from Ayers, Mass., and Yaphaw, L. I., to Linda Vista, Cal. Similar calls have been made by other of the Quartermasters in five cities to the total of approximately 10,000 desks. All the desk factories of the country have been busy for months and have accumulated no stock. The proposals assume that the desks could be had from stock, and assumed further that they could be built within two weeks, and called for an article unnecessarily good. The desk manufacturers were thrown into a panic. They would like to get some of the business—or manufacturers of furniture in other lines would like to have a hand at it, but found it absolutely impossible to enter the competition. The situation in the desk market is typified by some illustrations which Henry M. Hyde, a careful investigator for the Chicago Tribune gives in one of his letters from Washington to that paper. Here is the story as told by Mr. Hyde:  

The War Department has experts on almost every subject in its employ. They are real experts. They are careful, scientific men of recognized authority in their specialties. One of them is an expert on jams.
As the result of long continued and scientifically conducted experiments he has demonstrated that blackberry Jam is the most appetizing and nutritious of all the jam family. Consequently blackberry jam is part of the official ration of the American soldier.
Having reached that determination. the War Department would, in normal times, prepare careful specifications defining the quality of jam desired and the exact size of the containers in which it must be packed. It would then advertise for bids and, at the end of some 90 days. would let the contract to the lowest and best bidder.
That system worked well enough when there was plenty of time and jam had to be supplied to less than 100,000 men.
Now. with the biggest war in history on our hands. the situation is entirely changed.
In the first place the need of jam is instant. To advertise for bids and wait 90 days before letting contracts would leave all the new armies, now gathering in their cantonments, jamless.
In the second place. though it is not difficult to find blackberry jam enough to feed 100,000 men. there is probably not sufficient blackberry jam in the United States to spread the bread for more than 1,000,000,000 soldiers.
At this point the bureaucrats of the War Department and the business men who serve on the advisory board of the National Council of Defense come into one of their characteristic conflicts.
The position of the business men is that, since the jam must be secured without an instant's delay, the proper plan is to go out into the open market and buy it, using such patriotic appeals and such government pressure as are available to get low prices and quick deliveries.
Also, since the existing supply of blackberry jam is vastly insufficient, the business mind can see no other way out than to add to all the blackberry jam which can be purchased. enough plum, raspberry. and other jams to make up the necessary quantity.
Now, the bureaucrats of the war and all government departments work by system. The chief characteristics of that system are its exactness and its rigidity. It is put together like the wheels of a fine watch and when properly oiled and wound up it works with equal perfection. It is related that, at the time of the Spanish war, one of the permanent officials of the war department complained bitterly of the situation.
"I have spent 20 years putting the system in my office in perfect condition," he declared, "and now just when the work is done, along comes this damned war and knocks it all to pieces."
Here is another instance illustrating the same defect: Until a few days ago the regulations of the Quartermaster’s Department required that corned beef for the army be packed in cans containing exactly two pounds of meat. A two pound can of corned beef is not put up commercially. The great Chicago packers, on the other hand, make millions of cans which hold 28 ounces of meat. All their machinery and their arrangements are made for packing corned beef in 28 ounce cans.
When the War Department has asked for bids on cans holding 32 ounces. most of the packers have not even troubled to submit figures. And the extra four ounces of meat in the cans supplied to the army have cost proportionately as much as the same quantity in cans of ordinary commercial sizes.
It took a lot of diplomacy and a special trip to Chicago, with a formal conference at the Union League club to persuade the powers that be to agree to accept corned beef in the smaller cans at a reduced rate per ounce of meat. 

It will take diplomacy to bring about the changes which need to be made, and possibly a trip by furniture makers and a personal interview with the officials of War Department in Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Boston, Seattle and Washington to make it evident that the furniture factories of the country are not able to get out in two weeks, or two months, 10,000 of the kind of desks which are being called for, that they can not be had at any price within the period specified.
We haven’t heard about refrigerators at this writing. But the same thing must needs be gone through when the refrigerator stage is reached, and refrigerators are vastly more important when the health of the troops are under consideration than are crossed banded, brass tipped desks, or anything akin thereto.
Foreseeing some of these difficulties, THE FURNITURE MANUFACTURER AND ARTISAN two months ago urged that the Federation of Furniture Manufacturers send a delegation to Washington to get out of the oilicials in that seat of government some of the adoration of red tape, and offer them instead a workable plan for obtaining the furniture which must be used by 1,000,000 men at war. But no one seems to have listened. Possibly because they did not then appreciate, and seemingly do not now, that we are at war.

Distributed Furniture Making

Ana White Benchright Farmhouse Table

Went furniture shopping with the kids today. There is something wrong with the furniture industry, or maybe it's just their customer base (human beings). You can't find simple, well made furniture. Everything we saw was either too big, too short, and / or didn't have enough storage space. Argentina is supposed to be big on wood, and the furniture we saw in a couple of small shops was indeed made of real wood (as opposed to particle board like everything from IKEA, which does not have a store here).
    After spending several hours tramping around looking at what was available, I got to thinking that a distributed method of building furniture might be a good business. Building your own furniture is mostly the province of crazed do-it-yourselfers who are willing to spend thousands of dollars on elaborate woodworking machines and thousands of hours of their time building a knick knack table that will be of no use to anyone.
    Furniture manufacturers are building stuff that will sell in suburban malls to suburbanites with stars in their eyes. Simple, well made, functional furniture is the province of custom builders and they want real money for their products, more than most people are willing to spend.
    So I got to thinking. There are several steps to building furniture:

1. Decide what you want.
2. Draw up a plan and a Bill-Of-Materials (BOM).
3. Select the lumber.
4. Cut the pieces to size.
5. Assemble.
6. Finish.

Only you can decide what you want, I can't help you with that. Furniture plans are easily delivered over the internet. Good plans include the BOM. Selecting the lumber is the first actual physical thing that needs to be done, and who knows more about lumber, you, or the people who work with lumber all day long? I'm thinking that if you sent your BOM to the lumberyard, they would be glad to pull the correct boards out of stock. Now it might be that your local lumberyard, the one that supplies the construction industry is not going to stock a large selection of furniture grade lumber. But there are places that do. 

    Next we need to cut the lumber into the correct size pieces. A good table saw comes in handy here, but buying a table saw in order to build one table is a little counter-productive. I am willing to bet that there are a zillion table saws sitting idle in the USA right now, and at least half of them are owned by a competent person who would just love to put it to use.

    So what we do is set up a directory service. You select the piece of furniture you want to build, make any adjustments to the dimensions you want. Your order is sent to your closest lumberyard, who pull the required boards and deliver them to your local table saw man who cuts the pieces to size. Now we just need to get these pieces into your hands. Since it's a local operation, that should not be a big deal, even if you have to pay to ship it.

    All that's left is to assemble it, and that should be easy enough. You will need a few hand tools, maybe a drill and some clamps if you are using any glue, but that should do it. 

   Okay, there is also the finish. That is a personal preference and you can put as much time and effort into it as you want. We could put finishing after cutting, as it is the work of a few minutes to run boards through a sander and then spray them with varnish or paint. Then assembly really would be the last step.

    Setting up an operation like this would take a great deal of detail work. You might want to start with just one metropolitan area to see if it could be made to work. You would need to qualify your saw and finish guys and get your lumber yards sorted out. And you would need plans that would work with this kind of scheme. Making a few trial runs would probably be a good idea.