The Bistro Counter is designed with a ‘live edge’ cut top, shelf, and legs, as well as two sculpted stools for intimate outdoor patio entertaining. The style could work as a breakfast nook. It’s designed in reclaimed spruce and fir with a coat of oil based polyurethane for a water seal and easy maintenance. It’s a fun, in a woodland style, and the chairs fit under the table in a compact eye-pleasing arrangement. All left over wood eventually gets used up!
The table is set at 36″ high (a traditional dining table is around 27″) with a width of 21″ and length of 42″. Design number: 50-BL-12-11, stools are 51, 52.
A kitchen cabinet we did for a rustic country cottage with some onsite pine stock. The entire assembly can be detached from the wall using six screws. Finished in butcher block and poly surrounding the sink. Sink is top mounted, siliconed, and strapped. Tile is sandstone and mixed pencil tile. The counter frame is spruce with laminated pine and spruce on the top. Doors are pine and spruce framed, finished in polyurethane. Handles are natural pieces of mountain ash. Total cost of materials including taps, $150. The stool was a fun extra because we were designing chairs for another project: spruce, a dark stain mix on the legs, finished in poly and topped with a waterproof satin finish.
A traditional 36″ counter bar (background right) is dwarfed by the massive Hemlock slab.
It’s big.
The piece:
Local Hemlock slab 3″ thick 60″x 20″ live edge
Local rough cut Fir timbers 4″ thick hand chiseled
Hazelnut dowels on frame
Hemlock dowels to moor slab
42″ tall
Rubber skid pads
Finished in polyurethane for easy polishing and durability
The hemlock slab was our work bench until we flipped it over and saw it had nice grain. So we polished it up with a hand planer and some high grit sand paper, and the result was stunning.
This piece is a fine example of West Coast Hemlock, and very strong. It is a soft wood, an evergreen, so the surface may get nicked and bumped—but that’s part of its story. We even left some of the original mill saw marks, and there is a compression mark from early in the tree’s history. It’s a wain cut so the slab does have a slight twist, compensated by the custom frame. Belly up to the bar, we estimate the load bearing for this unit to be about eight tons, however we only recommend the table for lattes and a few brews.
One side has a nice arc that invites patrons to sit around the server and bartender side has a convenient knot hole for tips. Each post of the fir frame is hand chiseled and joins in a locking pattern on three sides, then pinned with sturdy hazelnut hardwood dowels. Sanded smooth, the blunt dowels and over cut edges give the piece a sturdy wild west look and in the category Country Collection.
For matching chairs, we’ll shop for some nice iron ones to complement the piece.
Size: 42″ tall x 60″ long x 20″ wide
Finished in polyurethane
#270-BL-02-14
Frame of the Hemlock Bistro Bar being built on the new work bench, a huge cedar slab. Looking forward making something with that monolith.
A local tree harvester saved a nice round of Norwegian maple from the chipper and we had it slabbed for a future table and bench. The wain with the bark was wide enough to sand out and turn into an interesting table.
There were some band saw marks that needed to be ground and the piece included metal that someone hammered in long ago.
Next the sand with the grain to highlight the wavy quilting. The result is a surface with subtle ripples and quite smooth. We didn’t want this piece perfectly flat , only that it caught all the available light.
The legs are hazelnut, two with the bark polished to a natural bronze and one that had lost it’s bark but had an ideal curve. They’re inset and doweled, then glued into a tripod design that’s quite stable. The surface finished in poly so it’s durable and sits just shy of 28 inches (71 cm) which makes it a decent desk height.
The result is a space to compose or read–on a surface made by someone wonderful, nature. The maple grain is truly inspiring and the live edge creates a new environment anywhere you sit.
Approximately 28″ tall, 42″ long and 20″ at its widest.#137-BL-06-13
We start by tracing the grain with an orbital sander to expose the art inside.
Sometimes we leave a few band saw marks, but this piece was sanded smooth.
Using a finishing sander to
Sanding the poly finish builds up on the paper. Clean with brush or compressor before it scratches the finish.
The surface is smooth enough for finishing. We use compressed air and dust fans, then a wipe down with a tack cloth,
The second layer of poly is applied and the shimmer is really beginning to show.
A close up of the maple cell structure. Working wth maple is sort of mesmorizing, like you’re looking at stars and galaxies
Another section of the writing desk.
More interwoven grain called quilting
Beautiful tones of maple bark are polished on the underside.
At the request of a client, we tried our version of a retro sixties credenza, complete with shelves, three sliding doors, and those skinny little six inch legs. The project went together quite well and all was designed and cut to fit, then assembled in the kitchen, because the outdoor shop was too cold for the glue to set. The finish is stained dark walnut per the client’s wishes and the interior was wiped in poly using the natural birch color of the interior. As we were working on it, some had flashbacks of parents’ furnishings. We sort of went by memory.
The dimensions were to fit: 5′ x 1′ x 32″. The credenza was designed in pine, birch ply, with a spruce top. #130-BL-01-13
