The Headboard

The latest addition to the Nelson series, Project Mike: The Headboard.

This was inspired by a customer's request about eight months ago who wanted a slatted headboard. I ended up not making one for that customer, but went ahead and built one for our brand spanking new kingsize bed.

I often wondered if a mattress really did matter when it comes to sleeping comfort. After all, it's just a thing to lay on, right? And I can fall asleep anywhere -- the couch, the floor, the car, the bus, hard surface, soft surface, whatever. So when it came time to replace our 10 year old queen mattress, the woman suggested we go big. Real big. As in King.

Of course this meant scrapping the queen frame too. Now we've got a king (and a split boxspring) that's planted on the floor, sans bedframe.

And to answer my question about whether a mattress has anything to do with sleepability, I have to conclude with a resounding yes indeedy. Now I sleep completely uninterrupted without waking constantly in the middle of the night -- why I thought waking up constantly was normal, I don't know. Now we frequently have trouble getting up in the morning 'cause this new mattress is just so darn enveloping and soft and warm and cozy and squishy and joyful.

Anyway, to the headboard! Slats, all cherry wood, a couple of coats of tung oil (with lots more finishing to do later), and no frame yet. Due to various other projects piling up on my to-do list (a secretary desk, tons of giant scrabble tiles, various turned pieces, and a custom quadruple size scrabble board (to be played with 400 standard scrabble tiles)), I'll have to wait a while before attempting to make a frame. More details on the secretary desk and the ginormous scrabble board are forthcoming.

Dimensions are as follows:

Length: 80"

Height: 42"

Price: not for sale

Cherry wood. Preliminarily finished in tung oil.

To arrange commission of your own slatted headboard, send an email to craigwoodworks at gmail dot com

The Slat House

We were driving around Pasadena on Saturday and my better half wanted to swing by her absolutest favoritest store in the whole wide world - Anthropologie. There's a little ritual she goes through every time one of their catalogs comes in the mail that involves oohing and aahing (but no chanting) at not only the clothing, but also the photography and the layout and the models and the accessories and the thickness of the paper.

Anyway, this particular Pasadena Anthropologie (on Lake Street for those familiar with the area), has a facade that's all slatted. And my natural reaction to this was, hey, that's an Anthropologie-store-cum-Nelson Bench! Of course you can't sit on it, but it's the look that counts.

I didn't think at the time to take a picture, but it goes a little something like this:

So we got to thinking, since we have a dual desire to fence our house and improve the look of the exterior, why not slather it with slats? It's one thing to make vertical slats and create a fence that looks like, well, a regular wooden fence. It's another thing altogether to rotate the slats horizontally and do something not so regular.

My previous life (i.e., occupation) involved driving around areas of the Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills, any other Hills, and the Valley, and encounter I did numerous examples of horizontally placed slats on fences and on houses. But there sure aren't any around our neighborhood where you're apt to find chainlink or picket or stucco or brick or vertical cedar plank. So hey, let's do something crazy. Let's slat it up, flip it, and rub it down. Oh no.

And therefore I christen the George Nelson Bench Project Kilo: The Fence. In combination with an exterior house paint job and construction of a gray water wetlands water treatment system enclosed by a slat wall, this project will most definitely be the whackiest undertaking of the bunch. Part of the George Nelson Bench Project.

Dimensions:

Length: Out of control
Height: Large-ish
Materials used: Wood, lots of it

Price: Not for sale

Follow-ups on this will be posted as I progress.