Rustic Chest Turned Coffee Table

Suges and I picked up a pine Spanish Chest right after we got married. It came unfinished. I randomly bought some unknown laquer/varish/poly and slapped a coat on it by the moonlight on our old balcony.

Well, 10 years later, it needed a touch up.

Here's the before:

I sanded it down, oiled and waxed it into this:

Furniture Making School

So, I get it in my head that I want to make furniture. A fine idea, I'm sure. And, if I let myself dream, I'd like to turn chair building into a profitable business.

Being a nerdy kind of person, I decide to look into schools. Because it would be ridiculous to just start building stuff without going to class first. The first thing I came upon was something called Penn Foster College. I sign up for some information, which arrived in the mail today. The most interesting thing I learned in PFC's info packet was that furniture makers earn an average of $25,000 a year. I had to read that three times.  Well...

Okay, so maybe this will be a hobby.

Locally there are three or four schools I'm considering taking classes at.

1) Cerritos College

These guys offer a program in Woodworking Manufacturing Technology with a specialization in Furniture Building. They also offer a "Morris Chair" class that can be taken up to 4 times! This may be a nice way for me to build 4 Morris Chairs with access to a complete shop and a teacher.

2) Fullerton College

Fullerton has a Wood Technology program that includes a "furniture making specialist" subprogram.

3) William Ng Woodworks, School of Fine Woodworking

WNW is a private institution that takes woodworkers into William Ng's shop for anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks in order to learn specific techniques or to build specific pieces of furniture. They also offer a Morris Chair class.

4) Los Angeles Trade Tech College

LATT has, by far, the most convenient location. But their program is not really geared towards furniture building but is focused on cabinet making instead. They offer one class on furniture design and manufacture.

The Back Gate

An appropriate first project: Refinishing a gate. I figure we're entering into something, might as well get the entryway looking nice.


View from the alley



Close up




View from inside the yard


I used a scraper and mouse sander to get most of the old paint off. It looked as if the gate had not been painted for several years (if not decades).

I didn't use any chemicals to remove the old paint, not for any greater philosophical reasons, but just because I didn't think of it. In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't. I like how a lot of the old paint is still hanging around.

There was some rot in the wood. I just took it on faith that it would all hold once I got the finish on it. I put two coats of Behr Premium Wood Finish. Pretty happy with it.

These pictures are from today, June 1st, 2008. The gate was refinished on March 29th, 2008.