I had the somewhat misguided idea to show up for the Canada's Greatest Handyman Challenge a while back when it was in Halifax; and while I made it through to the second stage, I crashed and burned miserably. The lesson I learned was that I need the time to think an idea through and work out the technical challenges on my own timetable - stick a clock on me and a camera in my face and its a different story!!
This piece is about the project I built to get into the show, the only criteria was to build something portable from a single sheet of plywood. So me being me grabbed the challenge and used it as an opportuntity to do something very special. While plywood is not normally a fine material, I decided to use some cherry plywood I had in the shop, with the objective of making it not look like it was made from plywood.
The front carcase corners are mitred to hide the plywood edge - no edge banding allowed. Even the drawer sides are resawn from the same plywood to stay true to the rules of the contest. The top was a bit of a challenge, so to hide the edges, I mitred the three facing edges and turned it into itself to hide the edge. I was was very pleased with this and apparently so were the judges - enough said on that!
Once the sting of the experience passed I decided I wanted to use as much of this project as I could to avoid wasting all that work and material. This piece was to get a new drawer, drawer front, door front and top from solid cherry. I kept the design simple and was very pleased with the final outcome.
the design now has a decidedly shaker appearance and will serve very nicely as a nightstand in my No. 2 son's recently vacated bedroom.
Even though my TV days are over, I got to meet Mike Holmes, which was really my objective all along!!!!
