Built my first peice of furniture. | General Homesteading Discussion | Forums

Growing up my dad basically built our first house. He turned a 600 sq ft, non winterized, 1920s NW New Jersey lake bungalow into a two story, fully modernized 1700 sq ft 3 bedroom 2 bath house. He also built all of the furniture. All of it.

We moved to a bigger house on the same lake when I was 9. While he didn't build the whole house he did portions. The most epic part of his hand in the construction was a commercial overhead exhaust system in the kitchen.  It was beautiful. The man was like Matisse when it cam  to stainless steel and copper.

As a kid I helped him built a 700 sq foot deck with dock, and a gazebo suspended over the lake.

So now, approaching the 10th anniversary of his way to young (54 yrs) passing, I was shopping for chairs and tables for my terrace.

In a decision based 1/2 on nostalgia, 1/4 on wanting to be self sufficient, and 1.4 just so I could buy some tools...... I decided to build them all myself.

This Saturday I built my first chair. I used simple plans I found online. I purchased a power drill/driver, and 12" carpenters pull saw (yeah i did all the cuts by hand), level, square ect....nothing crazy. Went to the local lumber yard and m ade friends ith one of the workers, and picked up some basic wood.

What a fulfilling Saturday afternoon. It took about 4.5 hours to build the chair. All I have left now is to go over the screw holes with wood filler, prime, and paint. This coming Saturday I am going to build another. I ordered some table legs off a guy on Etsy who lathes them himself and am going to re purpose two wooden wine crates into tables.

I love the chair. Had a few beers in it and it did its job well.  IT has a lot of imperfections, but not to shabby for my first furniture building adventure.