furniture

Furniture

When I first moved to L.A. in March of 2003 I needed to fill my place with furniture. I wanted to get stuff that had its own distinctive style and didn't cost too much. My solution was to pick up unfinished pine furniture at Goodwill, Home Depot, and my building's trash, and finish it myself. I wanted to get a dark weathered look, so I burned the edges of each piece, at first using my stove but later switching to a propane torch, and then applied a dark mahogany stain. I then coated it in several layers of polyurethane varnish. Finally, to contrast the dark wood, I tiled the top of the furniture with ceramic tile and white grout to get the "antique meets modern" look. My first project was just a small end table, with a pretty simple black and blue tile pattern on top. After that I had more confidence working with tile and tried some more creative patterns.

Here are some pictures of my work in my apartment:

 

Furniture
White unfinished pine, burned at the edges, covered in dark mahogany stain, and tiled.

These are in reverse chronological order. The newest work is at the top.

Large Coffee Table

I has this big oak veneer coffee table for a long time before I decided to spruce it up. I stenciled celtic knot patterns on the sides and burned them into the wood using a propane torch, then stained the wood a dark mahogany color, before tiling the top with a celtic themed mosaic.

More images of this piece are below. 

Coffee Table

I started with an unfinished pine coffee table and stenciled a pattern on the legs, stained the body dark mahogany, and tiled the top in a broken tile mosaic pattern using ceramic and stone tiles.

I have a step by step breakdown of how it all came together below.

 

Small Cabinet

This started as a 3 drawer dresser that I picked out of the trash. This time I tried a mosaic tile pattern on top using broken colored tile. I really like how it turned out. The drawer runners were broken so I attached the drawers together to form a door and put 3 shelves inside. You can see the small hinges on the right.

Large Dresser

I picked up this unfinished pine 3 door dresser at Lowes and decided to try something new by integrating large marble slabs in the tile pattern. It looks nice but the varying thickness of the tile makes the surface pretty uneven.

 

Small Side Table

This one was my first project and it was through playing with this ideas on this piece that I cam up with the style I would use for all of the rest.

 

3 of my pieces in my studio apartment.

 

 

Work In Progress

Several people have asked me questions about how I do my work. With my latest piece I have been taking pictures at each step of the process to show how its all done. This piece is coffee table that I am finishing to match with my previous work. One new element that I wanted to play with this time was a geometric pattern stenciled on the legs. I tried out several ways to do the stencil and finally came up with a nice easy that involved printing the pattern out on sticky label paper.

Work In Progress

This is how it all started.

Stencil Cutout

I first drew the pattern on my computer and printed it out on sticky label paper. I then stuck it on the wood and cut out the sections with a blade.

Stencil Painting

Next I painted over the stencil with black acrylic paint.

Stencil Peeling

After the paint dried I peeled the paper away to reveal the pattern.

 

Stencil Final

The stencil pattern is done on all 4 legs of the table.

Burn

Next I held each leg over the gas burner on my stove to get the charred look and texture.

Acrylic Paint

After the burning I used watered down black acrylic pain to darken the edges of the wood. Its a pretty subtle effect that gives some more variety in the wood color under the stain.

Stain

Next I covered everything but the top of the table with a dark mahogany stain.

Tile Breaking

After that it was off to Home Depot where I spent a few hours testing various tile patterns on the floor. Once I had my colors picked and the right amounts of tile purchased I went home and went to work with the hammer. I tried out the layout for the first time to see how it would look and make sure that I had enough tile broken up to get the job done.

 

Polyurethane Varnish

It was sad to dismantle the tile pattern, but it had to be done. I needed to put the table on its side so I could brush on a coat of semi-gloss varnish. I then sprayed on several more coats to get it the wood as smooth and "touchable" as possible. This whole process took quite a while cause I had to do the table in sections and the varnish takes many hours to dry.

Tile Down

It took me a couple of hours to lay all the tiles down on the table again. This time I spent the extra effort to fit them as tightly as possible for the final result. It was like putting together a puzzle. Once all the tiles were down and it looked good I took each tile, picked it up, spread grout on it, and stuck it back down in its place. This is the first time I tried tiling this way. Usually you're supposed to spread all the grout on the surface and stick the tiles down all at once. But the size and complexity of the mosaic made it impossible to do that in time before the grout dried.

Grout and Clean Up

After the tile adhesive was dry and the tiles were stuck in place I covered the entire surface with grout to fill the spaces between the tiles. Once that was done and mostly dry I used water and a tile sponge to wash the excess grout off the tiles and reveal the finished product. 

Now all I had to do was clean up the mess I made in my apartment. I'll leave out the pictures, cause I think you can imagine how fun that was.

Detailed View

Just in case the one picture up top didn't show you enough, here are some more pictures of my work.

 

Large Coffee Table

Top View

Side View 1

Side View 2

Celtic Knot 1

This is the pattern that I stenciled and burned into side 1.

 

Celtic Knot 2

This is the pattern that I stenciled and burned into side 2