Painted pine linen press
March 22, 2021 11:58 PM   Subscribe

Painted pine linen press
A personal furniture project that kept my sanity during the COVID lockdowns. I'm in an apartment, with several sheets of thick rubber and isolation pads under my work bench. I only use hand tools, I avoid any sort of mallet work and limit my work hours to the noisier parts of my neighbourhood's day. I received no complaints but it made for slow progress - picture a man quietly tunnelling his way out of prison.

I wanted something tall (7’2”) to make the best use of my limited floor space. I decided on the linen press design because it can break down to two sections for moving and the small set-back is enough to keep it from looming over the room. I’d seen some 1800s painted Scandinavian cabinets and liked that look.

Hopefully the descriptions will make sense to people without much woodworking background. Let me know if anything is really confusing.

Best wishes to all of you trying to get through COVID - at home, in retail, or in any kind of service work.
Role: Maker
posted by bonobothegreat (12 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite

Wow! This is beautiful, and I’m so impressed you made inside your apartment!
posted by ellieBOA at 12:48 AM on March 23, 2021 [1 favorite]


This is beautiful! I love the adjustable shelving, no wasted space, as simple as possible and very elegant. I think your penultimate image should lead.

I'll come back and look later as I've seen so many woodshop ideas like your simple clamping clip.
posted by unearthed at 12:42 AM on March 24, 2021


Thanks to you both. Shifting that open view image to the front is a great idea!

There's a lot more tips I could add with extra drawings and some product recommendations. I may do so over time and create a proper blog. Those mitre joint clips are very useful and come with a set of special pliers at Lee Valley.

https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/tools/hand-tools/clamps/54189-spring-clamps-and-pliers-set

If you plan to do a lot of mitre work, the Veritas shooting board fence is great because it allows for quick, tiny tweaks to get really tight joints. I HATED doing mitres with my homemade version.
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:23 AM on March 24, 2021 [2 favorites]


The adjustable shelving is brilliant. Great work on this.
posted by parmanparman at 2:13 AM on March 26, 2021


Well, that's beautiful.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:01 AM on March 26, 2021


This is amazing!
posted by latkes at 12:52 PM on March 31, 2021


This is so beautiful.
posted by later, paladudes at 6:55 PM on March 31, 2021


lovely work
posted by macrael at 10:40 PM on April 1, 2021


Nice dovetails. And dry fit, too? Noiiiiiiiice.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:49 PM on April 12, 2021


Really nice work! Those tall floating panel doors look fantastic.
posted by that's candlepin at 10:53 AM on April 13, 2021


Wow! I loved the explanations of practical uses of what seem like purely decorative details.
posted by clew at 4:23 PM on April 30, 2021 [1 favorite]


That is amazing. It would be impressive in a dedicated workshop, but an apartment!
posted by mersen at 6:33 PM on June 1, 2021


« Older Full featured, extensible enumerations for javascr...   |   A make-believe band... Newer »


You are not currently logged in. Log in or create a new account to post comments.