Shortly before we all went into isolation, my dad asked me to make him something to put his multiple remotes in that could sit on his end table. Now that I’ve made it, I guess he’s going to have to be satisfied with looking at photos of it for the time being!
I liked @ElsieH’s idea of putting a tray in front of her bathroom organizer, and stole it for this so he’ll have a place for his keys, pens, and other small things that end up on the table as well.
I learned some things doing this – primary among them that marquetry is not really my thing! I’m still planning to fill in a couple of missing chunks, if I can make it work.
Materials: PG walnut plywood, PG walnut, cherry, and maple veneers, and mystery white wood veneer from a Woodcraft sample pack @timjedwards and I split between us.
That is beautiful! Wow! It makes me not want to post my goofy piece of glass. it’s like I’m hanging a stick man drawing up next to the Mona Lisa. Great job!
I still have a soup can with blue paper glued to it and some crayon colored stick figures drawn on it. One of my daughters made that as a pencil holder for me about 38 years ago. You just gotta love anything your kids make for you haha.
The pieces just don’t fit. It’s like there’s a whole different set of kerf rules, or something. Like, there’s side-to-side kerf and up-and-down kerf, and they are not the same.
I flip-fit the white veneer, thinking that would help (couldn’t do that on the 3M-backed PG stuff), but it didn’t. And the back side showed scorch marks even with masking, so I ended up using it un-flipped, which meant it wasn’t long enough to go all the way to the edges on one side. (The side that will face Mom’s chair, since the end table is between them, and if anyone will notice, it will be her, with her meticulous ways!)
I ended up just madly pounding and mashing things into place and then sanding like crazy, which didn’t really help as much as I needed it to, so I used an Exacto in some places, which left uneven edges.
And then when I lacquered it (to make up for sanding all the finish off the PG), the white just drank up the lacquer and refused to get shiny, while the rest got shinier and shinier and started looking TOO shiny.
Also, after I took the photos I realized I cut one of the mountain pieces in the wrong color and never noticed, through all of my prototyping and re-cutting and pounding and mashing. Argh.
I love stories like this… It reminds me that even the most talented people can have the same troubles I run into (except I seem to have them on every project ha ha), and then I feel a bit better about having multiple prototypes that didn’t work for every single thing I have made so far :).
Sorry, but I had to laugh at this whole description of your process …I’ve done similar SO many times I can’t even count. I sort of got a mental image in my mind of you frantically trying to make this perfect…which I’m sure has happened to many of us. It still looks wonderful and no one but yourself would know any differently.
You are making a serious impact on the beauty of their new surroundings. I sure hope you get to visit them sooner rather than later. There are so many folks that won’t understand why no one comes to visit them all of a sudden. I worry about our vulnerable people in group living arrangements who are suddenly quite isolated. Happily your parents have each other.
Their facility has been super proactive, which I really appreciate, but the 'rents are definitely going kind of stir crazy.
The facility has set up a system for sending stuff to folks – they put shelves outside the main entrance that you can place things on, and their staff will come out and sanitize things and then take them to the recipients. So I’m sending over a care package via my Hubs today with some games they like, a pot of scallions from the garden (Mom was complaining that she could make ramen but it wouldn’t taste right without them), some cookies Gkid made, and the remote holder, etc. Hopefully it will brighten their day a little!
I’m still planning to fill in a couple of missing chunks, if I can make it work.
it’s like I’m hanging a stick man drawing up next to the Mona Lisa. Great job!
…I’ve done similar SO many times I can’t even count. I sort of got a mental image in my mind of you frantically trying to make this perfect…which I’m sure has happened to many of us. It still looks wonderful and no one but yourself would know any differently. 
