The story of the little drawers that could

When you're making something, do you start with all the thinking and designing and drawing and then move on to the doing? Or do you start doing right away and kind of make it up as you go along? A blend of the two?

Here's how I tend to go about things. I'm going to use a specific piece as an example.

I came across a little drawer unit advertised on Freecycle. The advertiser admitted right up front that one of the drawers was jammed shut, but she thought it might be fixable. It was the fact that it was solid wood that appealed to me, so I arranged to go and collect it.

Under the wallpaper

The sorry little unit had been (badly) covered in wallpaper, but it was clearly sturdy and it had a cute shape. It had promise. I took it home and ripped the wallpaper off. What I found was what had obviously been the drawers of a desk in bygone days. It bore one of those oval shaped stamps in purple ink that appeared on the movable assets of all government departments when I was a little girl. Sadly, even though this one has been stamped more than once, none of the stamps were clear enough for me to read. The desk top having taken a different route at some point, the top of the unit was a piece of badly cut plywood.

Under the wallpaper, the unit was painted beige. And the drawers had those little wooden handles that were ubiquitous at one stage.

Exposed skeleton

I took top off and let the denuded little unit stand as it was for a while, while my subconscious mind toyed with it. Clearly, the paint had to be stripped off. If the wood underneath was good, it could be sanded and sealed and allowed to speak for itself. If not, I would repaint it.

This is going to sound really mumbo-jumbo-ish, but it's when I get hands on with the wood, that I begin to get a sense for what it should become. I'm almost inclined to say I commune with it, but that would be seriously overstating the case. I'm not into animism.

Mismatched wood

As I stripped and sanded the little unit down, it began to take shape organically. It proved to be made of a variety of woods, which I had no plans to disguise. I also opted leave just the smallest traces of the previous paint. All the drawers were in varying shades of the same colour, but with different grains. Just perfect. To make matters even better, once the wallpaper and paint had been removed, all the drawers behaved just as they were designed to do.

After sanding, with new handles

I had no plans originally to replace the drawer handles, but I could clearly picture those brass, cupped drawer handles that were on teachers' desk drawers during my early school days. I went on a hunt and wouldn't let up until I had found exactly what I was after. I had been to all the recognised DIY and hardware stores without joy. But I struck up a conversation with an elderly couple who were also looking at drawer handles in the hardware store. I told them what I was after and they assured me that they had seen exactly that at a budget store in town. I hied me there and found them exactly as described, and at a fraction of what I would have been prepared to pay!

Of course, there was still the little matter of the top. It occurred to that I still had some solid bamboo

Bamboo top

floorboards left over from when we had our lounge and hall floors done. I had already made a coffee table from some of the leftovers, but there were still a few boards knocking about. This could work. It would add yet another colour and texture to the unit. I cut them to size and attached them. Perfect.

Now...was I going to varnish, oil or wax? The feel of the wood under my hands during the sanding process had been so silky, I didn't want to lose that any more than I needed to. So I went with oil. And there you have it: the little drawer unit that could. I think it's lovely. But then I would.

Tada!

So there you have it. Some forward planning. Some subconscious stewing. Some happy accidents. Some flying by the seat of the pants. Some organic development.