Google Analytics Alternative

A Design is Born From Ugly

4 post bed

Notice the flanking, Lingerie chests…and how I tried to crop them out of the shot.

I finished a bed recently for my guest room. I’m really happy with the build but now more than ever I really hate the flanking Lingerie chests that my wife and I bought decades ago. Truthfully I didn’t much care for them when we bought them but this was before I became a woodworker and didn’t really know anything about furniture anyway. I don’t even remember where we got them but its a safe bet it was some place like Wal-Mart. They are boring and cheap with plastic laminate MDF and knockdown hardware. We replaced the faux wooden knobs years ago with metal ones to try and dress it up. What’s that expression about dressing up a turd?

The thing is from a functional perspective they do a great job. My wife loves the multiple drawers and keeps a lot of stuff in there. Its to the point where whenever I talk about getting rid of them she immediately gets protective because of how useful the storage space is. The drawers don’t pull out cleanly anymore because the case has racked over the years but that doesn’t seem to matter to her.

So with the new bed in place, I cautiously broached the subject about replacing them.

“Fine, but I want them to look exactly the same and have the same storage capacity”

I can’t even begin to describe what a triumph this admission is after more than 15 years of suggesting we get rid of these atrocities to quality craftsmanship. Moreover now I’m faced with an exciting challenge of designing a chest that doesn’t change in function at all and remains the same from an overall appearance.

lumber bolster

When I went back to photograph the notched bolster it was gone…use your imagination

Today it hit me. I was walking across the lumber yard and watching a forklift unload a pack from a shipping container. As the lift lowered the lumber to the 3×3 bolsters we use to raise lumber off the ground, I saw it. This particular bolster for some unknown reason had a notch cut out of the end. Imagine a big rabbet on the end of it. When the lumber pack was set on top of it, it appeared to be floating over the bolster.

This floating cabinet idea is far from a new one and you will see if everywhere once you start looking. But it was that tiny detail that got me thinking not about changing the Lingerie chest itself but instead changing the base.

Out comes my tablet and stylus and I’m sketching away. A french foot with scalloped cross pieces creates an elegant foot and floats the case above it. Just using quality materials and construction will dress up the case above it and ensure that I maintain the overall look and function that is so dear to my wife.
floating foot design

The Woodworker’s Curse

Now to the details, where I screw up the design and flabbergast my wife because like all woodworkers I have to over complicate things and add details that add nothing to the design. I admit that the blocky case bothers me. I also admit that my overwhelming prejudice against the existing chest has given me a serious bias. So I feel like I need to mess with the design there. However I keep hearing my wife’s voice telling me not to mess with it. So I start sketching ideas where I do a complementary species drawer front or a figured drawer front. Then I start looking at stringing on the drawer fronts instead. Both of these significantly change the look and feel of the piece and I realize that messing with the case itself actually does more harm than good to the simplicity of the design.

Anything I add to it makes it feel showy and pretentious. So I do what everyone does when they hit a creative wall…go to lunch. As I sit eating a sandwich and staring at a wooden fence it hits me. A typical wooden fence is boring, vertical planks stacked next to each other. What makes it interesting is the shape of the tops of each plank. Some just come to a point, while others add cut outs and play on negative space. But everything below that is just straight lines.

My case is the same situation. I need to keep the straight, blocky lines of the case and avoid changing any of that. Make it well and it will be sufficient. But if I add a simple contracting inlay along the edge of the top, it changes everything. I blame Garret Hack for this as I’m definitely channeling his designs here with a Ebony and Holly straight line inlay.

Lingerie Chest designThen because I can’t leave well enough alone, I sketch in the same inlay at the bottom of the case right above the floating base to punctuate the transition as well as highlight the floating effect. Finally I sketch in some blocky, Ebony drawer pulls. That part will evolve later, but I think the Ebony (or something dark) will tie together the inlays.

And I’m done. I’ll build the whole thing in Cherry to match the Cherry of the bed in the room already and with just an alteration of the base and a tiny bit of inlay at the top and bottom of the form, I’m pretty happy with the idea. Whats amazing is just how little I had to change the design from the form that I hate so much to be truly excited about the new piece.

Now I just need to get the wife’s approval on the design.

Leave a Comment:

All fields with “*” are required

Brian

And it all fell apart in one tiny line at the very end of the article…. 😉

    Shannon

    So true. Though I’ve developed a pretty good sense of her style over the years so I don’t anticipate too much in the way of changes. I’m hoping she doesn’t notice the 6th drawer from the original 5. 5 made for really bulky looking drawers.

Ethan

“Fine, but I want them to look exactly the same and have the same storage capacity”

Funny, that sounds a whole lot like what I heard when I first started off as the Newsletter Editor of the St. Louis Woodworkers Guild. Up to the point where I took over, the newsletter was a bulk mailed mass of text, conceived in MS Word and forced into a two-column farce of a “format” with pictures so blurry you could barely tell it was a table, much less that it was supposed to be a contemporary hall table in curly cherry with ebonized maple accents.

I told them I would work with another guild member to redesign the newsletter. We would make it a PDF that would be e-mailed, but could also initially be printed and mailed to the stalwart few who rejected a digital format. It would drastically reduce monthly printing/mailing costs. It would be interactive, with links to websites and additional articles. It would be in colour, with detailed images that people could actually see. It would be a huge leap in bringing the guild up to current woodworking guild newsletter standards, which was necessary in order to increase the 40-and-under demographic we lacked.

“As long as I can get it in the mail and it looks exactly like the old newsletter,” was the first response I got back from one of the board members.

(What’s your point????)

(I’m getting to it!)

My immediate response was, “Oh, then find someone else to do this. I’m not going to waste my time.”

But one of the other board members approached me after the initial meeting and we talked a bit. What we finally figured out is that they didn’t so much want it to be exactly the same as much as they didn’t KNOW what the potential for change really was!

So we showed them. We created a faux newsletter with links and images and a new layout that was easier to read and follow and then we sent it to them. And they all loved it (well… all but one, but I didn’t need unanimous; I needed majority) and we pushed forward with it.

I guess what I’m saying is that any time I hear someone say, “as long as it looks and acts the same as before”, what that tells me is they just don’t realize the potential of what it COULD be. They’re so used to how it is, they can’t picture it any other way.

Your job is to show them how it can be better than the way it is!

Translating that concept to the software industry, “Because that’s the way we’ve always done it” is NEVER a good answer, at least where I work. It’s a great way to get crucified by my old boss, if you like that sort of thing.

Believe me, nobody likes that sort of thing.

Good luck with your project.

Michael Kieweg

Very elegant solution for a nasty problem. Chapeau!
In our household, furniture and other things, that either my wife or I really hate, have a tendency to have rather nasty accidents….

Greetings from Germany
Michael

Glen C

I think that’s “polishing a turd.” You’re welcome!

Kurt

Nicely done.

Only thing about 5 drawers versus 6 drawers: The 5 equally sized large drawers in the top photo do look a little clunky compared to the 6 smaller drawers in the picture, but smaller drawers might not have enough individual capacity for bulkier items. Maybe make 5, but of varying size from bigger-than-now to smaller-than-now? Admittedly that would change the columnar look the piece, but there was that dictate about storage… please post a picture when it’s finished.