Halloween 2016

A good book, some rockin' tunes, and a glass of red. All in one place. 

Custom made pack for my mini adventurer. I designed, crafted, and put to the test in under 2 hours. Booyah.

"Daddy, going on benture." 
-Yami

This wine rack was commissioned by a friend after seeing the Wall Mounted Wine Rack that lives in my dining room.

As part of this project, I decided to try filming the process. I'm happy with the video, though I'll never use my 3 year old smartphone to film again. Sorry about the resolution....

For a change, I'm going to let the video and photos speak for themselves. Enjoy!

Recently, the baby nook that Sarah and I designed and built was featured on the design blog Apartment Therapy.
Check out the photos and Sarah's writeup below, or click here to go to the original post.

"Neither one of us is into traditional baby stuff, so we tried to create a sort of urban/modern feeling with a healthy dose of playfulness. Our favorite component is the San Francisco skyline, which we designed and built ourselves (thanks to Oren's incredible woodworking skills). A shelf on top holds Liyam's tiny shoes and the front opens up to reveal extra storage space for wipes, burp cloths and other sundries.    

We found the bureau for $30 at a thrift store. It had good bones but needed some hard core cleaning, sanding and drawer un-sticking before we could prime and paint and paint and paint and polyurethane it. The red paint is called "California Poppy," which is awesome, and the drawer pulls are matchbox cars that we spray-painted silver and attached to screws--even more awesome. The spaceship print is by local artist Nidhi Chanani, who we discovered at a local street fair... I believe this was one of the very first things we bought for the baby."

- Sarah Persing

If I were to do it again, and I probably will, there are a few things I'd improve on. The skyline, though beautiful, forms a rather sharp point aimed at ones chest when accessing the inner shelf. Being stabbed by the Trans America Building in the middle of the night when changing a diaper is an unfortunate way to be jolted fully awake. Though maybe still preferable to being peed on. Version 2.0
would have a skyline that slides up to reveal the inner shelf rather than folding down.
The bureau has matchbox cars for drawer pulls. We had a blast picking out our favorites and spray painting them. Sarah is partial to sports cars and pick up trucks. I like the one that resembles the Batmobile. To attach them, the screw goes from inside the drawer, through the face, and through a plastic spacer, and then the car is screwed on by drilling a hole in it's chassis. Next time we'll look specifically for cars with metal chassis rather than the mix of metal and plastic that we ended up with since the plastic ones are a bit loose.
Other than that, this nook has been a life saver. I'm thinking it may need an airplane themed mobile or ceiling light above at some point. I welcome design suggestions if you've seen something that might be inspiring!

I Hella Heart bikes. And building things out of wood. And... lamps. It's true.
So the holy grail is combining all three in a single project as with this lamp.

Yes, you turn on the lamp by squeezing the brake lever. You don't want to know how long it took me to figure that one out!
I can tell you that it involved using a paper clip to tie a lamp pull-chain to the end of a brake cable all housed inside a pen cap that just happened to be the right size.

As you may know, I like to use recycled materials because the quirkiness of each re-purposed part brings it's own character to the final piece. So let's break it down:

1. The wood is a super beefy 1.5 inch hardwood from an old desk.
2. The break lever (now switch) and bar grip are from my old Specialized Stump Jumper mountain bike. (After leaving it overnight near the train, all that was left in the morning was the frame, handle bars, and this lever.... serves me right.)
3. The bike fork is from an old steel road bike given to me by a friend back when I worked at  REI. Thanks Aaron! (Whom I haven't seen in 7 years.)
4. The lamp shade is an HVAC duct part.
5. The light bulb.... I bought. Sue me.

As you can see, I had originally sanded most of the paint off the fork, but never finished it. I recently took the lamp apart to properly paint the fork. I chose racecar red. The fork is beautiful!! Unfortunately, I never reassembled the lamp after dismantling it. The parts are all now awaiting a new life maybe as another lamp, maybe as something else. I will always remember this lamp fondly. A memorial service will be held for it, in the dark, next month.