So, what to do when your presented with a week off? You could spend time catching up on the InterWebs, you could try and reply to all those emails asking you to buy Viagra or rescue some Nigerian Prince from the global credit crunch… or you could do something rewarding and totally offline. I chose the latter (something I’m doing more and more these days when I can get away with it )

Yup, nothing Ikea about this puppy - not a single allen key was harmed making this coffee table! Unfortunately I didn’t have the presence of mind to take shots as I was building it, so you’ll just have to take my word.

Materials
The top is actually an offcut from a solid-core fire rated maple door. Very heavy, but has an excellent grain. I (with some help from my step father Roger), had to repair one end of the offcut, filling it with a spare piece of maple trimming - because the internal cavety of the door is filled with particle board which looks butt ugly!

The shelf is another spare piece of MDF that Rog had lying around, with the rest of the table made out of pine (the legs were bought from Bunnings for 20 bucks each). Because of the design, each leg needed to have mortiose joints to accomodate the shelf, and rebates cut at the top for the tabletop brackets.

The bracket was attached to the top using liquid nails, and allowed to set. Then the legs were arranged, and the shelf supports carefully inserted into their mortises, and again everything was set with liquid nails - legs to brackets and top, shelf supports to mortoise joints. As everything was setting, the legs were then nailed to the bracket and top using a nail gun. The shelf was added last, much like a puzzle piece. It isn’t fixed to the supports, but is rather a snug fitting piece.

It still needs to be stained, but I’m just waiting for the timber colours to go off, but we are considering something dark with a hint of red. Maybe a Jarrah or similar.

Tools

• Nail gun
• Plane
• Drop saw
• Panel hacksaw
• Clamps
• Liquid Nails
• Triton workbench
• Chisel

Cost

• Time -Approx 12 hours (including beer-stops)
• Materials - Approx $50 plus offcuts

Oh, and for those interested, the wonderful fruit bowl shown on the top of the coffee table was given as a wedding present by the folks at Redant, and is by Italian designers Alessi.

OK, so I’ve been a little slack of late (try the last 6 months!!) posting anything not related to my personal life… and indeed it’s something i’ll try and remedy, but in the mean time, here’s a link to some photos of my big day (can you believe it’s nearly 6 weeks ago?!). This is by no means a complete set of photos, and if anyone out there has more and would like to share them with me, please drop me a line.

October 6, 2007. Daniel & Ailin’s Wedding Day

Footnote, For those interested in the technology, I’ve used the awesomely simple Simple Viewer to handle the preview - I would have made my own, but time is a premium at the moment. If you plan on using it yourself, the only thing to remember is to not have too many photos in the one gallery. At least in the free version it will try and load them all up into memory.

That is all.

Hey all, well we have been in NZ now for 4 days, and we are nearly completely relaxed!

We spent the first night in New Zealand in the Langham Hotel in Auckland - swanky to say the least. Bath robes were the order of the day, and later in the evening we headed out to High St for a beatiful dinner at Vivace. Prices were more expensive than we’d anticipated, but my lamb shanks were the envy of everyone! They practically melted in your mouth. Delicious!

We spent a third of the second day driving to Paihia, located in the Bay of Islands, along the top north east coast of the north island. The drive was at times windy and sub-tropical, but Ailin is a fantastic driver and we arrived (after a few detours) to our resort ready to relax.

And you know you are on holidays when the biggest decision of each day is what time you will head down to the restaurant for breakfast, whether lunch will include one wine or two, and where to have dinner

Today (thursday… we think) we went to a Glow Worm cave in Waiomio, just a half hour drive south of Paihia, which is home to about 12,000 tiny bright spots of light. At times they were so close you could touch them, although this of course is strictly forbidden We also went to the famouse Kawakawa toilet block designed by Friedensreich Hundertwasser. A very creative loo… it moved Ailin in very special ways!!!

Anyway, tomorrow is our spa treatment and then on Saturday we will head a bit further north to discover something else… who knows what, but it will be fun finding out!!

Photos to come when we get home.

Ailin & Dan

(ps, the Global Gossip here isn’t using our designs yet - at least not all of them!!)

More pictures coming shortly!