Abstract

 

Another painting today, just because I felt like it. An abstract this time.

300 x 800 mm, acrylics on canvas.

Tree

 

I think this is about finished. I've had enough of it for the moment at any rate.

300 x 800 mm, acrylics on canvas.

Tee-Vee Stand

 

I finally got around to making a new stand for our living-room TV, to match the oak coffee table I made some time about 2010 (I think).

The oak I had was just a bunch of off-cuts, and it is exceptionally gnarly and twisty and knotty, so it was pretty difficult to work with and required much planing. So much planing.

Snappy Sammy Smoot
by Skip Williamson,
sometime late 1960s.

This is the old stand I replaced. It's a shabby old thing that I knocked up out of 12mm MDF some time about 2005 and pressed into service as a stop-gap.

As tends to happen, it ended up being a very long-lasting stop-gap.

Door Work, Part Two

 

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had a home maintenance job awaiting my attention, and today being warm and fine, I thought I might as well get on with it. I'm scraping the old varnish off one of our doors, from between the kitchen and the living room.

How old the existing varnish is I have no idea. There's a pretty good chance that it's the varnish that went on in 1920 when the house was built.

I'm not sure yet what sort of finish I'm going to put on afterwards, but on the kitchen side at least it had probably better be something pretty tough and moisture-resistant. 

Scraping complete, first coat of polyurethane applied.

The depressing thing about this sort of job is that it's a whole lot of work with entirely unspectacular results. 

People will look at the door when it's done, and they will think "Oh, a door."

"Oh, a door."

Cup

 

Pill Box

 

I made this little wooden box today from a scrap of rimu tongue-and-groove panelling.

The timber had been milled with a pair of grooves running down its length, which I filled with strips of kwila. The hinge is cut down from one of some small brass-plated piano hinges I got from Ukraine not long ago.

The dimensions of the box are roughly 80 x 112 x 25mm, with an internal cavity 55 x 90 x 15mm. It's held closed by four 3x3mm cylindrical rare-earth magnets, which keep it fairly firmly shut without being too difficult to open.

I've rounded off all the corners so that it will sit comfortably in a pocket.

New Painting — First Beginnings

 

I've started a new painting. Acrylics so far.

I have only the vaguest idea about what I want to do with it; I'll just let it develop as it wants to I guess. The terracotta colour is just a base coat, there won't be anything much left of it in the final image.

It's not huge — just 800 x 300 mm, on canvas.

I'm really not confident when it comes to colour.

Note: it's upside-down in the photo, so that I can reach the top half while I'm sitting down.

Door Work

 

Some time ago — a year? Two? Three? I swapped out the door-handles on our kitchen door for these brass lever-style ones, so that I could open the door with my elbow while carrying two plates of food. The old handles had larger escutcheon plates than the new, and their removal left visible silhouettes in the varnish, not to mention ugly screw holes. So, I scraped back the varnish around the area on both sides, fully intending to take the door off its hinges and scrape back  and re-finish the whole thing.

As usual with renovations, I kind of didn't get around to that, and then winter came and we needed the door in place, and I sort of kind of forgot about it.

But no more! I've filled the old screw holes, and I fully intend to get the door off while the weather is good and I can work on it outside with my new(ish) Kunz #80 cabinet scraper.

I'm absolutely definitely positive that I won't forget about it this time. Absolutely.

Easel Shelf

 

My stand-up easel is too tall for the low ceiling in my workroom, which means that a canvas on it is too low to stand at comfortably. One option would be to chop a bit off the top, but I am loathe to do that, so instead I made a shelf to lift the canvas up to a more comfortable height.

It's made of scraps of pine and macrocarpa that I had lying around. I should probably get a couple of small G-clamps to hold it firmly in place, but I think it should be okay for the moment as long as I don't get too enthusiastic.

I have another (smaller) table easel, but I've almost never used it, as I find it rather uncomfortable to paint on a near-vertical surface when sitting at a table.

Oil Palette