Project: Foyer Bench
This project was done in the Spring of 2011 for a client and friend in New York. He owns a 1910 rowhouse in a historical neighborhood in downtown Albany. Tall & narrow, each of the 3 main floor has 2-4 rooms; there is also a basement finished basement and backyard. The exterior is mostly red brick; the walls between homes are brick as well. The interior is long & narrow with very high ceilings. The design is genuine to the period with very ornate, dark reddish trim dominating the woodwork. The hardwood floors are mostly original and dark as well. The staircase is a prominent element on all floors, especially in the dining area.
Goals of the project:
- create a functional bench for the foyer that can be used as a place to sit, take off jacket/shoes, and store a couple pairs of shoes/boots underneath
- create a completely original & unique piece, but also fit it into the aesthetic of house, especially have the bench work with the ornate trim
- learn new techniques of woodworking; namely vacuum bending and veneering
I created this project while taking the “Art of Furniture Making” class at MassArt. The class was taught by two veterans: Judith Hanson & Peter Thibeault (my shopmate). Both are extraordinary teachers and have very different perspectives. This class was an opportunity to create something special, get immediate peer review and assistance, learn a lot of tools and techniques, and get to use MassArt’s awesome wood shop!
Note: This story is incomplete and will be updated soon!
Components
The bench is comprised of these features:
- Major components are made from cherry, most of it 6/4; the legs 8/4 (this is a heavy, sturdy, beefy bench!); all cherry is from Downes & Reader
- Mirrored top and bottom pieces made from two glued-up pieces of cherry with biscuits; shape of routed edge is an enormous ogee bit I got from Rockler
- Curved doors made of 2 pieces of bending plywood sandwiching a piece of wacky wood, & edge trimmed in cherry; bending ply & wacky wood from Boulter Plywood
- The door surfaces are veneered; front = cherry, bubinga, & maple strips; back = cherry
- Door hinges are knife hinges from Brusso
- The fronts of the legs are veneered too in order to prevent big section of sapwood from distracting from the facade of the bench
- The feet are cherry, routed with a cove bit
- Back panels are cherry-veneered plywood to provide racking strength; rabbets & glue hold these in place; plywood from Boulter Plywood
- Finish over entire bench is Minwax cherry stain + sealer, and protected by a layer of Minwax wax
Trim
This trim was used as my inspiration for the doors. I wanted to mimick the shell pattern on the front of the doors.
JG FoyerBench 01
JG FoyerBench 02
JG FoyerBench 03
JG FoyerBench 04
Doors
The doors are curved. This curve was drawn in Sketchup and dictates the shape of the entire bench. I lost a lot of time trying to overlap sequencing. For example, I couldn’t cut the top and bottom pieces to finished size until the doors were formed & cut to final size! This mistake was compounded and cause significant delays in the project, and many headaches for me.
The doors are attached with Brusso offset knife hinges. Using a grinder, I removed the 90° corner and made it match the curve of the doors (approximately). Then I mortised in the hinges to the door and to the top and bottom of the bench. Aligning these doors was a huge headache. I really had no idea how to accomplish this since they were to be on an angle and the doors were curved. Having nothing measurable, nothing straight, and no legitimate reference points made this really difficult. Lesson learned: Figure out how to measure and align the hinges in the design!
JG FoyerBench 09b
JG FoyerBench 11
JG FoyerBench 12
JG FoyerBench 13
JG FoyerBench 14
Assembly
Gluing up the bench wasn’t too difficult.
JG FoyerBench 16
JG FoyerBench 17
JG FoyerBench 19
JG FoyerBench 20
Finish
Putting Minwax cherry stain on the entire bench normalized the different cherry colors a bit. As you can see in the pictures, there was quite a bit of sapwood in some of the pieces. As I learned, cherry gets redder and darker over time except for the sapwood which stays light. So the contrast becomes greater over time. Thus the stain helped darken the sapwood just a tiny bit. The stain looked nice even on the veneer and didn’t dirty up the maple too much (I was nervous about this).
My favorite picture is the one in the middle with the doors open. If the last picture looks a bit off, then no, it’s not in your head. I Photoshopped the floor because there was something in the picture that I wanted to remove. I didn’t pay too much attention to the parquet pattern on the floor. My bad!
JG FoyerBench 21
JG FoyerBench 22
JG FoyerBench 23
JG FoyerBench 24
JG FoyerBench 43
Seat Cushion
I have so many pictures of this phase because my wonderful wife helped me create the cushion. She’s great with materials and did all of the work after I cut the cushion and base plate of plywood. The cushion is brown leather stretched and stapled to the plywood. It fits into the routed-out depression on the top of the bench.
JG FoyerBench 25
JG FoyerBench 26
JG FoyerBench 27
JG FoyerBench 28
JG FoyerBench 29
JG FoyerBench 30
JG FoyerBench 31
JG FoyerBench 32
JG FoyerBench 33
JG FoyerBench 34
Top-notch
Thanks!
Beautiful!!