salt and wood

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An old drawer, take a guess? Say circa 1930s. Great wooden handles dovetail joints and what I am guessing is Eucalyptus side and rear walls! You almost never come across this as everything now is compound material and before that was pine sides and rear to save the good stuff for the visible areas, a matter of supply and demand. There was a time when Sydney’s streets were paved with hardwood cobbles!

 Though ironically the system that the city authorities insist on today is even more environmentally destructive. That is all the pretty unit paving across the footpaths of the city is underpinned with concrete slab!!! The carbon footprint of this activity is phenomenal and no doubt far out ways the touted carbon savings of the cities myriad highly publicized rain gardens and community vegetable groups and so on and completely unnecessary. There are many thriving metropolises across the world that have the common sense to lay there flat cobble or unit paving foot-ways on a compacted sub base that can easily be lifted jiggled and reset to suit street alterations, access to water/ electricity services and so on. So its lay it on a compacted crushed recycled base that can be easily massaged when needed VS:

1 Unnecessarily producing cement (the biggest carbon culprit by far as far as carbon emissions go)  

2 All the machinery, fuel energy and water use involved in the bringing, mixing, laying, and setting of the concrete and cleaning of all the equipment.

3 All the machinery, fuel energy and water use involved in the smashing up (and throwing away and replacing) of the cemented down unit paving and concrete slab to access services or even just adjust mistakes or adjust to new construction or tree roots and so on.

4 And then, like Groundhog Day, you have to REPEAT steps one and two to put it all back again and again and again.

OK so I got a little off track there, I also recovered some (possibly) type of Red Cedar skirting from a skip and devised a way of mounting it backwards such that I could benefit from the width and amazing grain and things would not fall of the shelves, you can see this in picture 10. I restored the timber grain backing then thought I would have a little pattern fun on the back. Decided that was way cooler than the timber finish and reversed the backing. The numbered plugs can be removed and the backing switched at will. I cut all of the drawer surfaces back to the excellent grain but only gave the handles a wipe over before putting them back on (that’s why they are darker). I reinforced the hull with some cross bars that allow the unit to be wall mounted and added the bar feet so it can stand-alone as well, the cross bars were salvaged from and old bed I found on the street. If you look at picture 11 where I have the backing out, you can see it was ‘Karla’ who must have slept in this bed! I wonder where Karla is now?

The colorful ITEM 52 would look great wall mounted in an entry hallway or anywhere really!

And is now available for $200. First in. Drop me a note in the comments box.

Tags: Beach house sculpture, cafe furniture, carpentry, design, re-purpose, recycle, recycled sculpture, street found, street found timber, streetwood, timber restored