While tearing out some old shelving in the garage, I had a suprise. The wood appeared to be old-growth fir with a beautiful grain pattern. So I decided to redeploy the wood and build a nightstand out of it. There were 2 planks of 1.5″x 7.5″x 16’each. I read through a few plans I’d saved over the years and then came up with my own design. The wood had originally been used as concrete forms, and then used as garage shelving for perhaps the last 40 or 50 years, so it took a bit of work to clean them up enough to be able to mill them to rough dimensions. You can work the fir fairly easily, although it has a tendancy to splinter.

Usually one associates fir with rougher construction applications, but I was pleased with the results. I was looking for an antique, well-used look to the final piece, so I would stop milling as soon as pieces were flat and square. So there are dents, dings and burns, and even some nail holes in the final piece. The legs are joined to the side panels, the front and the back with mortise and tenon construction. and the Side panels are .75″ thick, made on the table saw, then used with a floating panel construction technique. The drawer is a simple dovetailed box attached to a false front that has the cloudlift detail. Dados in the drawer sides allow the drawer to ride on oak runners. The middle shelf is adjustable, and it rests on brass pegs. I used red oak plywood for the fixed bottom shelf for dimensional stability, and a red oak plywood panel at the rear of the piece, because I ran out of the primary wood. The final finish is a medium brown aniline dye covered by 3 coats of shellac, followed by two spray coats of a water-based polyurethane.

It was a fun project, and it felt great to be able to save this old wood from the trash pile and turn it into something useful and attractive.

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