It dawned on us around here at the shop as well as some of the readers who follow this blog that I haven’t posted for quite some time. I can’t say it didn’t cross my mind, but the truth is that things have been hectic around here; I’ve been doing everything in my power to just keep the most basic of things maintained. I say all of this not in a negative way but more out of excitement. With all the recent interest in what we’re doing here, it has brought in some new help, and energy. I feel like we’re learning how to refine our process not only in fabrication but also regarding the business side of things. And the hope for the blog and website is to continue to put out creative visuals to go along with the furniture.
The last time this blog was updated was right after the 9th episode of Framework and although I really would prefer not to focus too much on the reality show, I figure I’ll wrap it up and get it to the parts where winning Framework opened up the doors for new things in my career.
The Final Pieces
Its been about 8 months since we filmed the final episode of Framework, so it may be that I only remember certain details, but here goes...
The Challenge was to make an “iconic piece of Furniture. This was exciting to me because I feel like that was an attainable goal. To me, iconic means being original, which by now I had found was the demise of most of the other contestants…. well that along with poorly executed designs. But, I was only worried about Jason who had always been my only concern from the beginning, not only did he make quality pieces but he also thought outside the box more so than any of the others.
To our surprise, they announced each contestant was to be paired with three “helpers”, who ended up being all the past contestants which had already been sent home. None of us were happy about this, I was missing the days I could work with my guys at the shop again, or by myself for that matter. I’ll try to steer away from the drama that created, but I’ll say this, it's frustrating to deal with certain people who don’t share the same work ethic and standards of quality that I do.
My team and I Built 3 pieces. A Credenza, coffee table and end table. I played it safe making the credenza and side table, working with materials I am comfortable working with and the credenza allowed me to use elements which define my design such as hand carved teak drawers, and a latch that I came up with. The end table was just a filler incase something failed.
The Coffee Table
When it came to the coffee table, I really went all out and got weird, so much to the point where I almost didn’t even show it. Come to find out that was probably the piece I liked the most out of the 3 and have gotten a ton of emails and comments about the coffee table, so I think I’ll go through the process quickly.
I wanted to find a way to marry the synthetic with the organic and in a way that I have never seen before. The tricky part was making that happen in the allotted 24 hours. The idea in my head was to cast a slab of walnut, live edge and all in concrete. In order for that to happen, you need to first make a mold of the slab in silicone, so that every detail of the live edge will show up. Silicon typically takes a full day to dry, and even longer to off-gass. In the past, I have poured the concrete into the fresh molds too soon and it would leave a chalky finish that can be rubbed off with your fingers. To avoid this I decided to design and build two different but similar designs, using two different Silicones. My hope was that one of them would work. I build the coffee table out of the wood first with a "waterfall” holding up one end, and a planter for the other.
After using the Domino to join the mitered end where it made the 90 degree angle for the leg, or “waterfall” we cut it. We took both of the pieces of Walnut and cast them. The idea was to use both pieces of concrete and both pieces of walnut for the two tables. One would have a concrete “waterfall” and walnut top and the other would have a Walnut “waterfall” with a concrete top. I was hoping that both forms would off-gas and cure in time giving me two perfect pieces of concrete. Unfortunately this was not the case. I ended up with a nice concrete top and a failed, crusty and chalky “waterfall”. I tossed the one table and focused on the other.
We polished the surface and stained the “live edge” darker, leaving the stain soaking into the texture to give it definition from the top just as you would see in wood. The concrete planter wasn’t perfect but it was usable. I had used the domino to mortise the joining parts before casting it so that I would have a way to join the wood to concrete by means of a domino and Epoxy. Most of the weight was being held up by the planter so there was very little stress on the joints.
The Judges' Decision
To my surprise, Freddy ended up standing next to me after the judges's decided Jason didn’t deliver. Freddy had built a chair, mirror and a set of pendant lights, all of which he had built before. He won the judges over with the pendant lights, and then it was just Freddy and I.
Although if you watched the finale, it doesn’t take too long for the three judges to deliberate. But for me, it felt like a terribly long time! It was probably only 15 minutes and the decision came down: two to one in my favor.
I do have to say that I am so happy its over, the entire filming process took 9 1/2 weeks and I think my wife took the brunt of me being gone. Luckily, my two kids, that were 4 and 5 years old, still remembered me and seemed to have forgiven me for being gone.
I received my prize package a few months ago and have been having a blast shopping at my local Miners Ace Hardware. For winning, Ace gave me 80 gift cards worth $250 each and I have used them mostly to barter for recent photoshoots, catalog design, and payment for models. The local Ace hardware here in San luis obispo is incredible, they have everything including Beef Jerky! Needless to say, we are buying even our laundry detergent there. As for the rest of the prize, the $100,000 has given us the freedom to create two new collections and lots of photo shoots to fill our new 76 page catalog that turned out so good it qualifies as a coffee table book.
Thanks for all your support and interest in the show and a bit into the background of my work. There is more that I would like to cover, but I know this post is long, so I will be posting soon on how we are growing as a company, the direction we are moving in, and a bit about the showroom in New York that is representing us.