I get quite a bit of my work from a certain website. Basically, buyers looking to have someone build them a project. Kinda like Match.com for woodworkers and clients. It works pretty well. They have a job board you can search through for these jobs, and then contact the posting party. Some things are beyond my scope – such a 30′ dining table with 16 chairs, but then again, some things are right up my alley, like cabinetry or smaller furniture.
Then there is some stuff is just awful, and I wouldn’t do it even if I could – because it’s a god-awful looking project that I wouldn’t even call furniture, let alone be something I could say I’m proud to have build (and surely not to have in my portfolio). Here’s the piece I’m referencing:
My god, what exactly is that?! In the description, it says “Simple Coffee Table” and “something for newspapers and magazines”.
How about something for the fireplace?
I don’t know who should be shot first – the guy that made this, or the guy wanting to have someone build something just like it.
I would never build this. Yes, call me snooty, if you must. But I would never have my professional name associated with this….thing.
The interesting part is, that with that amount of wood – albeit knotty pine, the box wine of the wood world – you could make a half-way decent coffee table. In fact, you can even make a decent piece of furniture out of one 2 x 4 ! You can read all about this project here, at LumberJocks.
More and more, I’m finding that woodworking is a lot like many other pursuits, such as playing a musical instrument, in that many people can do the basic stuff – such as read a plan and put a project together ( or in the case of music, read music and play the piano), but very few can actually create well – that is, create something new and nice, and do it very well. Everybody remembers the Beatles, but no one knows the “tribute” bands. And like this single 2×4 project, people can remember what this man did with just a single piece of lumber, while we forget the millions of pieces of 2x4s out there holding up walls and floors.
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