We moved to south-west France in March and our 18th century house has plenty of room for furniture so I started with a worktable for our kitchen.
You can read about it here. It will live in the middle of our kitchen and make up for the lack of work surfaces. We’ll be replacing the rest of the kitchen in due course and naturally we’ll be designing and building it ourselves.
A couple of bits I made during lock-down with just the few leftovers I’d kept from the move.
The toilet roll holder was based on something similar we saw at gîte we stayed at. The round posts are bits of old curtain pole.
The knife block is a mixture of walnut, chestnut and cherry. The slots are made specifically for the knives in daily use in our kitchen and of course the mezzaluna.
You might recall this rather odd cabinet I made at furniture making school last year (seems so long ago).
It didn’t really fit anywhere in our old house but looks right at home in France where there is a bit more space. I finished the inside with shelves and a couple of little drawers and it now serves as the drinks cabinet.
And finally we bought this beast from the refuse recycling centre. A snip at 75Euros, its made of cherry and is 120cm high, 150cm long and 70cm deep and weighs about a ton.
Hopefully you can see the corner joints on the doors which are mitred mortise and tenons.
I made a little book holder from some leftover cherry to go on top.
The through tenons were quite neat but i made a mess of the walnut wedges so they all ended up different widths. Never mind, next time I’ll get them right.
Baylis Handmade 