The Pastor's Study

This daylight basement serves as the Pastor's office. It originally had a set of twelve mahogany plywood doors that opened to reveal a long damp and poorly finished storage area.

We were able to reuse those plywood doors to build these beautiful self-cased bookshelves. The solid lumber in the face frames and shelf edges is reclaimed lumber from a deconstructed building owned by the same church.

This project is pretty unusual because we used douglas fir and mahogany together. We overcame the differences in grain and color characteristics by using a stain and glaze finish process with conversion varnish.

Overall this project contained over 80% reused material (by weight). Even the glaze was saved from the Hazardous waste stream.

All the Right Angles

Actually right angles are easy. It's the other ones that cause woodworkers to scratch their heads. But I like to design with angles for several reasons:

First, you can make better use of space. The bookcase in the top picture was designed to fit along a wall, but there was a window only 8" from the wall. The angle allowed me extemd the bookcase all the way across that wall without blocking the window. More room for books, more light streaming into the room, and a happy customer.

Second, ngles can also help to make a space more functional. The second picture shows an angled drawer above a cabinet with cookie sheet dividers. The stove is barely visible to the right. We were working around a chimney that jutted into the kitchen, and this angle enabled us to install the stove with and still have usable counter space and a full size bank of drawers.



Third, angles can serve to soften a corner. The last picture shows a cabinet with a reclaimed wood top and another angled drawer. This angle allowed us to avoid having a sharp angle jutting out into the kitchen. It has visual appeal while it prevents bruises.

The final reason I like angles is that it helps me to keep trigonometry fresh in my mind. Someday, my little boy is going to ask me to help him figure out an angle in a right triangle where the opposite side is 14" and the adjacent side is 24". And I'll be able to say something more meaningful than "thats's such acute angle."