What my dear husband gets up to . . .

You may well wonder what my other half gets up to whilst I am busy writing on here - though admittedly sometimes he is sleeping when I'm blog writing!

He is very clever with wood, and sometimes we buy furniture from auction which has seen better days and he restores it. Sometimes he starts from scratch. His workshop is now what was my mum's kitchen. He is slowly tidying it as you could not MOVE down there for the mess.

This is the old Welsh Mule chest which he has recently been working on. We believe it's locally-made (Carmarthenshire) from the design of the frieze on the bottom. He is just waiting to get the right handles on it now. We got it quite cheaply as there is a lot of woodworm damage to the lid. We don't want to replace it with a lid which isn't of an age with the piece, so he has treated the worm, stained the areas, and unless you are tall, you wouldn't notice the damage anyway! It is staying with us, rather than being sold, so we can live with it.

Here's one he made earlier. This big plank of wood came with us from Dorset over 20 years ago. It was from a tree felled in a parkland arboretum, so may be an American tree as we don't recognize the wood - it has a wonderful grain at the far end.

It goes nearly black in places. I think he edged it with oak.

A side view - as you can see it is a trestle table in a Medieval style - he based it on one he saw in a film on Robin Hood as a child (he has an excellent memory!) Forgive the mess in the Inglenook behind. He has tidied some of it away now. Our son has already spoken for this and my husband is now making a matching bench.


Another project of his - a cut-down hoop back chair which he is restoring. He is making the bow from the top off an old bentwood chair.