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.
At 18″ tall (45 cm dining chair height) this little stool is the perfect size for woodcutters to enjoy a quiet lunch. But looks are deceiving, despite its small stature, this stool weighs 40 lbs (18 kgs). That’s a heavy slab of fir. The legs are also bulky, approximately 3″ thick lengths of maple.
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The joints are notched out then pounded together to form a tight fit when the fibres dry. The legs have dowels inset and the fir top is pounded down with a heavy mallet. Some glue was added to the maple joints to prevent splitting. There are four legs, with pairs connected by a trestle. The pairs are then joined with a third trestle. The front legs have a wider gap to take advantage of the odd shaped round, with a narrower gap at the back of the stool. The design takes a lot of adjusting in the mitre saw to fit all pieces together. It’s patient work. This is a very sturdy stool. The wood is thick and heavy, and this becomes obvious sitting on it.
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The fir top was rough sanded with 60 grit and then the entire round was smothered in left over clear oil finish to seal up any cracks and prevent new ones. Once dry, the edge was ground to a smooth, touchable surface and the entire top was coated in water-based polyurethane semi-gloss finish. The legs were quite light in color so a torch was used to add some artificial age. The result is a warm, soft appearance that begs to be handled. The bark is left on.
The goal was to give some reverence to a nice fir round we found in a wood pile. It had a unique crescent shape probably formed from this tree growing too close to a neighboring tree. The wood came from a farm down the road and the maple is grown at our site. We grow pine, hazelnut, maple, fir, spruce, cedar, apple, cherry, plum, walnut, hawthorn and mountain ash.
#10-22-19 is spoken for and will find a home in a cozy cottage near a hearth. It will be a great stool to perch on in a big housecoat and warm up by the stove. For these images, we took the stool out back to a creek under a Tree of Heaven. The autumn colors make a great setting to sit, have a snack, and watch rush hour… Prairie Bench style.
We found an interesting steel rod chair. It’s rusty and the seat was missing, but there are no accidental bends and the ball bearing feet are intact. The welds are still good. Rather than paint the metal, we’ve weather treated it the way we found it. The seat was made from left over spruce slats tongue and grooved, glued and stained a deep burgundy—the inspiration was the evening sky, perfect for a quality cup of coffee and some quiet reflection.
There was more spruce than we knew what to do with, so we also made hallway shelves, a spice rack, a tea cupboard, and a little table for one. Same technique, glued to fit and the leg was cut from six slats and pressed together like a vertical jigsaw puzzle. We did two tables, one with a round top and one square…alas the round top was claimed by a friend. We hope to have a picture of the entire set together some time.
It was a fun side project using slightly warped, left over spruce.
This is a traditional empire stool which was designed for travel on long journeys. We’ve used reclaimed spruce planks, complete with scratches, and drill marks plugged with ash dowels. There are no nails or screws, in fact no metal is used in the design. The seat is pegged to the frame with hemlock dowels. A cubby connects the frame and adds lateral support. Hand grips are ground out on the underside of the seat. The finish is polyurethane. No stain is used.
These chairs are great accents in a hall or bedroom and can often be found with a few clothes or jackets resting on top.
The finished size is 21″x15″ and stands 18″ tall. #07-29-18 Click on images to expand.
