Portfolio of commissioned work

After the amount of time and energy spent on converting two tiny spaces into this one functional space which is to be a walk-in wardrobe, I would have been more than happy at this stage of the project to stick a few Ikea units in there and call it a day (perhaps adding some bespoke doors for a touch of interest). However, due to the strange shape of the room, getting an ‘off the shelf’ solution so to speak, would’ve been pretty difficult. So I decided to build some floating units for the hanging sections which would span the full width on both sides.

This one came from a kind of half challenge from someone in my family Whatsapp group who posted a bath caddy (didn’t even know that’s what it was called at the time).

Similar to the first picture. She asked where it’s even possible to get something like this from (don’t think Etsy was quite as big at the time ;-). I replied “you make one”, and from there the gauntlet was thrown down.

I had some nice old pine from an old broken down sideboard which I repurposed for a few projects and set to work creating my own take on an old classic bath caddy.

Another commission build. The customer was after some built-in alcove units. I asked them to send something similar to what they were after (Pic 4) and measured up.

I went on my own search for an example which I thought would suit the space while still in keeping with the brief and settled on the style from the fifth image.

The trickiest part for me was the fact that I was building these units remotely to fit into spaces that were nowhere near square. So my main concern and consideration was the fitting. Therefore I made sure to leave a few extra mm on either side to allow a margin for error.

Building the units themselves wasn’t too technically demanding aside from dealing with pieces that size in my tiny (and overly full) workshop. To help with this I made both units in 2 parts, top and bottom otherwise building and transporting them would have been too difficult. It also helped get around the fact that, one of the alcoves in particular, was quite a few cms narrower at the top than it was at the bottom.

The units are constructed almost entirely from plywood and the thicker shelves were achieved by glueing 2 15mm boards together. I also had to make sure to allow enough space between the worktops and the bottom shelves for 60cm statues.

The request for this one was simply to produce a wooden desktop to sit on a pair of trestles and 2 smaller boards as shelves to go underneath.

I decided to make it a little more interesting taking inspiration from a geometric design I intended to make for a sliding door for a wardrobe (and hopefully still will one day).

I had some old boards which I had found abandoned on the street (old bed slats I believe). I glued these together and trimmed to size. I then cut the pattern into the board with a router, filled it with coloured epoxy followed by a lot of scraping and sanding. I finished by dying and oiling the top and added a few themed laser engraved patterns for effect.

Asked by a friend if I would be able to make something similar to the first picture. I sourced some old handlebars, tidied them up a bit and rewrapped them with new bike tape and decided to take it a step further and experiment by wrapping them again with African fabrics for some cool effects.

I also took the opportunity to try out some plywood patterning for the first time for the mounting board. Really enjoyed seeing the finished result of that!

I fancied some stylish bike pegs and found some similar to these online, but they were a bit pricy. So I figured, as I often do, that I could have a go at making some myself.

This is my version made from 34mm doweling. I had originally attempted to make them using metal rods with a large screw thread on the other end, which goes into a large wall plug. I had all manner of problems with that design, not least of all getting a straight hole smack dab in the centre of the dowel. Also because I had added notches to the end of the dowels to prevent the bike from sliding off. Making sure they were screwed in and lined up so that the notches were precisely at the top, was extremely difficult. In the end, I decided on using some scaffolding fixtures to fix them to the wall. Not as slick or clean as I had originally hoped, but they were much easier and stonger by far and also added a charm of their own especially as they can be sprayed to add to the decorative theme.

They were very popular with everyone who came to the house and saw them and I ended up making quite a few more sets for those who kept asking.

In a vain attempt to keep my workshop somewhat organised, I decided to create some purpose-built storage. I used lengths of plywood and some heavy-duty brackets to create some long shelves on which to store ripped down sheets of plywood and other long thin timber, as well, as paint tins, etc.

For the pegboard I treated myself to some birch ply and spent a gruelling weekend of marking out and drilling holes, not the most pleasant job, but was pretty happy with the end result.

And for the cabinet, I wanted something fairly shallow mainly to store what seemed like thousands of spray tins to make it a bit more accessible and a little easier to find the colour I was after.

The plan was just to get a cabinet from IKEA and some sliding doors, but unfortunately, they seemed to have stopped doing the sliding rails and only had the hinged options. So rather than the quick and dirty option, I was hoping for, I had to use some offcuts from the plywood sheet I’d used for the pegboard to make a frame that would take a very basic sliding rail.

All in all, it kept the workshop tidy for a couple of weeks…