Oh, Mr Carpenter

“…knock us up a chair out of wood,
make it comfortable yet attractive,
so that all the people in the world can have a good sit-down”

– Vic Reeves, 1989ish

At a recent dinner with Friend Alex and his lovely wife Jess, Alex said he had been working on learning simple woodwork. He showed me a picture of an Adirondack chair he had made, to which I said that I wanted one – the sit-up plastic chairs we have are no good for relaxing on the deck. To which he said, “Come over and we can make one together”. I enthusiastically agreed.

The following Sunday, I went to the (only) lumber store (that was open on a Sunday) and bought a bunch of redwood planks, according to the instructions we were going to follow. Then I headed over to Jess and Alex’s lovely new place, which has a great garage/workshop which I am totally envious of.

We got straight to work. Alex had already worked out the clever ways to make the required cuts, so we were able to breeze through it, in between chatting about how electricity works and eating pizza. After a while we got into the swing of it, with him wielding the circular saw and me drilling holes and screwing things together. In what felt like no time (but was in fact about four hours) we had a beautiful completed Adirondack chair.

There was some wood left over, but Alex already had a plan for it. While I made the final jigsaw cuts and made the final assembly, he whacked together a fantastic matching footstool with collapsible legs so it can either be a stool or a calf-rest.

The chair and stool are now in my garage, awaiting a sanding and three coats of something – probably marine varnish which will stink to high heck but keep the wood protected and looking great for years.

Thank you so much to Alex for suggesting this and helping do it, and also to Jess for indulging our “play date”!

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