Sunday, February 10, 2008

Sunday chez Virago and Bullock

I'm about to brave the single digit temperature and the wind chill to go to a neighborhood coffee shop to do some grading. I find I have to get out of the house to grade efficiently, otherwise I mess around on blogs, read Entertainment Weekly, or what have you, and stretch it out much longer than it should take.

In the mean time, Bullock is working in his basement workshop on our dining room table. I thought I'd show you the pictures of the work in progress.

Here's the upside down base having just been glued up (hence the clamps):

Here it is without the clamps:


And below is the base right side up, in situ, with one of the chairs we bought to go with it. (Bullock doesn't do upholstery.) We were adjusting just where we want the table and rug to go because once the top's on, it's going to be too heavy for the two of us to move. And the reason for the plastic, by the way, is because Bullock is going to do the staining work on the top in place, rather than in his workshop. The unfinished top surfaces you can see will of course be covered by the table top when it's done. Anyway, voila, the base and one of the chairs:

And here are some of the rest of the chairs, patiently waiting in the corner of our living room (some are in the family room and the two arm chairs have not yet arrived -- we'll have eight total when it's all said and done). Our sage green walls look rather gray in this picture, but they're a true "dry sage" color:

And here's the top in progress in Bullock's shop. My battery was running low, so the flash didn't go off and I had to use the tiny view-finder instead of the digital screen, hence my having cut off the corner of the table top:


When it's all done, we'll have a Stickley style trestle table with six side chairs and two arm chairs. You'll have to come over for dinner some time!

7 comments:

Sisyphus said...

Ooh, I love the whole Mackintosh-craftsman look! And I like the cool wall paint too!

I may wait until it warms up over there before coming over for dinner though.

Karl Steel said...

I don't suppose Bullock's looking for a place to stay in NYC for the time it takes, say, to build a table....

What? I'm just thinking out loud here?

Short version: Even at this stage, it looks great.

Heo said...

Bullock is quite talented! That really is a beautiful table ( in progress).

Bardiac said...

What a beautiful table! That's a keeper, for sure!

Dr. Virago said...

Bardiac, do you mean the table or Bullock? Because I kind of like them both! :)

Karl -- somehow I doubt you have the big scary tools he needs. His table saw weighs something like 400 pounds!

As for the taste in wall colors, Bullock gets credit for that, too. No chromophobia in this house!

What Now? said...

Love the wall colors! And the table looks like it's going to be fabulous!

Is the table going to be too heavy for you two to lift because it's going to be so large, or is this a particularly heavy type of wood? (For some reason, it pleases me that the last sentence has all three of the "to" homonyms.)

Dr. Virago said...

WN -- it will be too heavy *both* because it will be large *and* because it's made of solid quarter-sawn oak.

We'll be able to lift one end at a time to slide the plastic out, but lifting the whole thing off the ground will be too difficult for just the two of us. Well, especially for me.

But never fear -- if we move someday, Bullock is making it so that we can partly disassemble it by taking the top off the bottom.