Monday 28 November 2011

New(ish) Coffee Table

The first piece of furniture that Mr Briggs and I bought together was a Victorian scrub top kitchen table. The legs weren't really equal and there was a huge bow in the top of it but we loved it. And it was while eating lunch at this table that Mr Briggs proposed to me. So when we decided to redo our kitchen and realised that our table wouldn't go with the modern new look we had a dilemma. With a baby on the way we also needed a bigger table as our original one only sat 4 and we anticipate many guests and a growing brood over the next few years! So we found a beautiful (new) oak table for our kitchen with no funny angles or wobbles.
And then, we made our lovely old table into a coffee table!! We did feel a bit bad sawing the legs off an antique piece of furniture but we knew we would never again need a small kitchen table and couldn't bare to part with such a sentimental piece.


The above photos show me using a marking gauge to score a line in the legs where we wanted to saw them off. This meant we had an even line all around to follow, so that we would not (supposedly) saw in wonky lines!
Line left by the marking gauge

Next, I started off the sawing.
When sawing you should saw down your line vertically on the side you can see then start sawing horizontally. This is because if you have sawn evenly down the line, when you start sawing horizontally your saw SHOULD be locked into position from the vertical line and therefore saw straight all the way down. Hope that makes sense to anyone attempting this!
Mr Briggs finished the sawing off for me when my arms got tired!
I then sandpaper the bottoms of the legs while Mr Briggs carried on sawing and the dog kept a close eye on our work.
And then we ended up with a perfect coffee table, just high enough for Henny to rest her weary head on after all that work.

Friday 4 November 2011

Cushions for sale!

I made a few Harris Tweed cushions last week with ribbon trim, and now they are in a REAL SHOP! How exciting! You can see these comfy cushions in John A W Briggs of Stonehaven (yes we are related!). He is actually a Persian rug specialist but has kindly offered to see how some of my creations sell - the tweed tub chair is up there too. We will be going up there with some more cushions, and possibly some dining chairs, in a couple of weeks so I will post some photos of the shop then. For now here are the latest cushions.