I've been remiss updating things and I've got a few to catch up on. First up, Nate's record console — a birch and white-melamine cabinet which is a bit of a structural departure from the typical CSSU faire. At 80in wide, it's a large one — and it features birch sliding doors and walnut accents. The interior is drilled for easy cable management and we added a pair of white doors for fun — he can swap from birch to white if the mood strikes.
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The door opens into an interior space (vs. atrium) which is always a challenge. Lots of work on the door jamb and threshold helped to ensure that the installation was not only tidy but also weathertight. Take a look!
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We tackled Stephan's media center a few months ago and from there, we began to do more — and more. From the initial media center to a console table, a coffee table, and a set of brutalist shelves, the projects have been both varied and fun. Stephan is a musician and lives in the Mission District in an immaculately restored Victorian — every detail is considered from the hinges to the faucets and it's been a thrill to contribute to the project. He's a fan of contrasts — between lights and darks, rough and polished — and humble materials handled with a deft hand. This is where we come in.
[In this shot, you can see the shelving, the coffee table and just a corner of the media center]
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Eko needed a DCM repaired. The chair had seem some damage from movers — and a previous dodgy repair which left the chair's back with chips, scratches and some glue residue that marred the overall finish. We installed new shock mounts, repaired the damage on the back, gave a light coating of a new finish to even out the sheen, and gave the chair a light once-over to help to bring it back to life. Black ash finishes are a bit hard to repair without completely stripping the chair and re-staining, but the touch-up here is certainly serviceable.
Before + After
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Karen commissioned these a while ago and has been very patient while project after project snuck into the workshop ahead of these … but with the never-before installed drawers, I warned her that it might take a while before I felt they were "just right" (and she probably forgot my measure of perfection when coupled with an extended timeline would /really/ extend the timeline). Nonetheless, they're completed and ready to find a new home. They turned out well.
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Stephan is a good friend of Mary and called me about a few projects for his beautiful Victorian restoration in San Francisco's Mission District. Typically modern/minimal furniture can be an odd fit for a Victorian home, but a just a few steps into his home, you get the idea: "high-meets-low" was one way Mary described it. Meticulous attention to detail using a combination of traditional and very unexpected materials is another way to look at it, but no matter the definition— it's fantastic. Getting the opportunity to make a few pieces for his home is great fun. Not often do you get a client who wants ACX plywood made into furniture.
I'm headed out for the install in a few minutes, but here are some preliminary shots of the media center in the workshop. The paperstone top and shoji-doors are a temporary material. We're looking at raw steel as the final material, but needed these for fit (and to make it useful).
[update: "after" shots after the jump]
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While not "instant", covering the renovation of Mike and Mendi's kitchen (and half of the garage) was a fun project last summer. Proper updates to come soon, but there was some pretty major structural and electrical reconstruction under layers of finished drywall… plus two new exterior doors and a window. Oh, and a solid butcher-block walnut countertop. #whew …
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If you look around, you'll find that the Norcalmod universe is varied and somewhat fluid. From building furniture to renovating bathrooms (to making furniture for bathrooms), fitting things in one box has been a challenge and keeping things up-to-date in the cyber-world is time consuming when you're also your own marketing staff.
That said, Instagram has been nice in that updates can be a bit more frequent and spontaneous. If you haven't checked it out, find us at www.Instagram.com/NorCalMod …
For the sake of the blog-o-sphere, here are some updates and snapshots that might have been missed in the mix.
[What started as a one-off for my kid turned into a small run of instrument hangers]
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Mary needed a pair of shelves for her new office… she now has some!
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Terry contacted me in the hopes to bring some life back to — and fix a botched repair — on one of her dining chairs.
[After… not a bad "refresh"]
We had exchanged photos of it previously and I had assumed it was a just a shock-mount-replacement. When we got the chair into the workshop some of the earlier evils unfolded including lots of scratches… and not only a "botched" repair, but one that put the back on upside down (with lot of dripping glue residue).
She also had a very limited budget and wanted to keep much of the original patina, but repair the obvious damage. In a case like this, new materials (shock mount, epoxy, finishing supplies) can eat up a budget quickly, but I think we did something good within the parameters we gave ourselves — we'll call it a "refresh" versus a restoration (only the back was removed and the back and seat were the main points of focus).
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