It's not all skateboards and photoshoots....

I've been really busy building these whisky barrel skateboards and longboards recently, it seems that it's all I've been doing, I've squeezed in a few other jobs that needed done, like these two competition winner display boards for the local bowling club. I think theres a secret society that goes on down there, you know like a place where all the decisions in the village are decided, who stays, who goes, who needs to stay off the drink, who slept with who and other important stuff like that.

They turned out nice, I used solid oak along with some 6mm oak veneered plywood and gave it a stain to finish it. Nice to know that the champs' names will go on these and be there for years to come. Bragging rights if your name gets put on this fo' sho'

I've been really getting into design too, I suppose you could call it interior design but ehhhh I don't know if that's what it really is because interior designers have qualifications and stuff to give them the title. Anyway, a few years ago I got right into the architectural orders.  Proportion and the use of architectural mouldings in the composition was my thing, all the info is out there if you want to know how shit goes together. 

Believe it or not, the room above was designed by yours truly. I had a couple of good guys that worked on it with me too. It was taken back to the bare walls then framed and insulated, after that we set about it with this crazy design and I don't think we knew at the time how great it was.

So yeah back to ME.... I was lucky enough to take on a project with homeowners that were willing to let me work on the design of the rooms, I had done small areas and stuff before but this was a massive house. I think we'd came back from America or I had wanted to do coffered ceilings and panelled walls, something along those lines. So I figured out how to layout a coffered ceiling and the technical aspects of it. After that I figured out the proportion and composition of the mouldings. It was pretty accurate, the thing that I felt I couldn't do "right" was the columns and entablatures. The ceilings were 'low-ish' so To get a wide enough column I would have to have a really tall entablature, with the lower ceilings it didn't really fly, I used my new found "designer" schtick and just made the columns wide enough to please myself. 

The above picture has columns and an entablature. I've got a blog post naming all the bits n pieces of the architectural orders, I think it's way down at the bottom, one of the first blog posts here. Anyway, this was my first design gig, I was pleased how it turned out and it was really enjoyable to do. Design is good but doing the actual work was a buzz, doing both together was excellent. There was no input from an architect or interior designer, I just came up with stuff and made sure it was right and respected the orders then ran it passed the homeowner for their input. I had dealt with designers on other projects and thought it was supposed to be difficult :) I think for rooms like this it needs the architectural millwork input, I'm sure interior designers do that too, maybe. But what really makes the room is the actual work, the actual craft of it all.

These two pictures above were my first design and build project ever, it was the same house as the pictures at the top of the post. I had never done a coffered ceiling before, I thought I might as well try it to get used to doing it. Everything was veneered sheet material and all the mouldings were either pine or oak. We did all the spray finishing too, My brother Ross is the best painter there is, like really great, he's just not interested though and is doing his own thing now. Fair enough!

Here's a few pictures of some of the rooms I've designed and built. No architects or interior designers were harmed in these projects:

So there we go, some work in progress shots, good fun to do and you always get that massive "WOW" when someone sees it for the first time. I've been looking at these pictures recently while working on a dining room for a small boutique hotel. It will probably go ahead next year and I'm looking forward to it. Remember if you're looking for a coffered ceiling or some panelling just gimme' a shout and we'll work something out. If you have any friends that might be into this sort of work I'd appreciate if you could share it with them. 

Thanks for taking the time to read this, I can ramble on a bit!

Over & Out.