Project: Pie Safe/Armoire

I really enjoy woodworking. I’ve taken an evening class at a local college off and on for the last couple of years. It’s a great class; students can work on whatever they want, the shop has professional grade tools and machinery, and the instructor’s great. I like the fact that I can go to class once a week, work on my project with all of the tools there, and then leave all of my stuff at the shop and come home. I don’t have to drag stuff back and forth or find room in my garage for a bunch of tools.

The projects I’ve made at the class so far (in order) are a coffee table, a large CD shelf, a headboard, and a crib. I’ll take some pictures of them and do a seperate post sometime. The crib was a close one: I finished it when I was about 5 months pregnant. E. seems to enjoy it, though.

I kind of wanted to take the class one more time. N. was very supportive of the idea and so I signed up again. The class is on Wednesdays and tonight is the first class to work in the shop. I think the class runs for 10 weeks. Anyway, our house has slowly filled up with furniture and I wasn’t sure what would be the best piece of furniture to make. I decided on an armoire/pie safe to go in what will be my office/sewing room. I’m going to use it to store yarn, fabric, and other supplies. I figure that it could also be used in a guest room to store linens or even a tv, so it should be fairly useful.

I bought plans for this pie safe online. I am not a huge fan of country style in general, and I want to change it around quite a bit. For instance, I’m going to make solid doors instead of using the tin panels and I’m going to put the drawers at the bottom. I think it will end up looking like a smaller sized armoire. But looking at these plans helped me get an idea of how it will go together.

Earlier this week, I went down to the lumberyard and bought 15 board feet of walnut. I am such a sucker for walnut (it’s what I made the crib out of) and the only way I can afford any walnut furniture is to make it myself.


I’m going to try and take my camera to class every week, so check back in to see my progress!

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