Are You Building It In Your Apartment?

Nope, that would be Mashugga. As they say on Fear Factor…”Don’t Try this at Home.” I built the piece at St. John’s Woodworking, 68 34th Street in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn. Trees do grow in Brooklyn just not in Sunset Park between 2nd and 4th avenues. Sunset Park is totally industrial. Which was good because the piece is big and the process messy.

This armoire is, 90” High x 36.5” Wide x 22.5” Deep. When you want to dry fit a cabinet like this to see if your pieces are working together you need space and lots of it.

When I say the process is messy I mean Messy. It’s made out of 60 Board feet of raw hard maple, maple veneer plywood and various moldings. It is finished with 3 coats of lacquer that give off fumes that Nancy Reagan would just say no to. All the raw lumber had to be joined, planed, ripped, cross-cut, sanded (all woodworking synonyms for creating sawdust) and glued. Then it all had to be sprayed with finish carrying Surgeon General warnings. If you have lived through a home renovation project while living in your house you understand. If you have not, dump 60 gallons of sawdust in your living room, pour some noxious chemicals over the top and spread it all around with a leaf blower. You are starting to get the picture of messy.

St. John's 20,000 square feet of space offered just enough room for tools, construction space and mess making.