French Cherry - part 1

 
Putting a title on this house full of furniture didn't seem necessary when I was designing it, but as I sit typing now, coming up with a title forces me to recall where all the design elements came from.
It was so much fun receiving snap shots of ideas from my client along with scanned rough sketches. We would discuss on the phone what we both thought were interesting details, and I might show an interest in something in a corner of the photo, and the next thing I knew, she was off to get a different angle shot or a close up on some other "French Country" armoire.  It really was fun. (The only frustration on my part was that I was still on dial-up, and the 5MB uncompressed pictures would tie up my phone line for hours. Now, with higher  speed out here in the country, I'm finally able to send links back and forth while chatting on the phone with clients, what a difference.)
Eventually, I had pages printed out with lines drawn on top, rescanned, redrawn, resent, and on it went till my desk was covered with sketches and pictures taped together with notes and dimensions scribbled all about. Luckily, since she and I knew that I was completely absorbed by all these details and was obviously keeping track, further cleaned up drawings were deemed unnecessary, as we both just wanted to get the wood into my studio and get to it.
I got the message early on that this was going to be "heirloom furniture" for her boys (to fight over). This was all that was needed to trigger a woodworker's desire to finally build a full bedroom set with all solid wood and all traditional joinery, but with today's stronger adhesives, hardware and better finishes. This personal mission was a secret bonus for her, and an excuse for me to use my accumulated skills once again.

The first "Mother" (and I'm using that in the respectful way) of the bedroom set was a triple armoire. Oh boy.  It had to house a medium TV in the upper center, and then have clothes hanging below the TV, and 2 levels of hanging in each side wing, all with a 90" ceiling. The kicker was that they are both taller people, and so the hanging room had to be carefully accounted for. The hanging space inside on the 2 side compartments actually extends up into the crown area, and down below into the base, both of which are lined with aromatic cedar. As space requirements were worked out, I had to work overtime to make sure the proportions were still going to sing. They did. Once again, I put the extra time into going through every single board of air dried lumber to select the positioning of critical pieces. Most importantly were the panels in the doors. The Furniture Gods came through once again and gave me enough boards to make all the front panels with single pieces. Amazing. Only another woodworker can appreciate this satisfaction I'd have to say, unless you are the deserving person leaning back in bed every night staring at a carefully chosen grain selection of solid cherry across a whole wall.

Finally, I should point out the rounded corners.  This is something I saw in one of Dianne's shots of some dilapidated European armoire sitting in the corner of a crowded antique barn.  It hadn't been made with enough consideration of seasonal changes, so it was severely buckled, but it had some beautifully thought out curves. In order to get the more elegant French Country look, I was determined to incorporate these graceful curves instead of a standard sharp corner. This means that the radius increases as it gets bigger up at the large crown, so the crown had to be extra thick to allow for the corner getting chopped off and rounded. I still have a pile of templates from this job. The machining was all done with a series of router set-ups, the table saw and finished by hand. Needing bun feet gave me an opportunity to pull out my lathe and make a copying jig to make them consistent.

Pulling off the triple armoire made the single armoire seem easier.
All pieces were first oiled to bring out the depth of the grain in the cherry, and then sprayed with lacquer.
Fabulous pieces I must say. I hope they don't get scratched when the boys start to fight.

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