June

I recently bought a car to get from A to B. It is a Mitsubishi Diamante 30M. It is almost black, with a luxury interior and a 199kw engine. It is not the car I would want to buy, however it fitted into my price range, and everything works, so it appeared to be a logical choice.

The big draw-back is that it is a huge car and it is not fuel efficient, though it does have a high technology engine and a 5 speed automatic, so it tries to be as efficient as possible. The possitives outweigh the negatives, like the 17 inch wheels, sunroof, 7 speaker CD stereo, traction control, wood grain trim, and that it has the most powerfull of all the Diamante engines. It should be a good car to get me going places.

June

I wanted to display this month a sample of the buildings that I have cut out and assembled from paper. The orange buildings are from the Pop-up book series that I produced in 2007, and the grey toned buildings are from the build your own New York and build your own Chicargo websites. This is a fun and involving exercise when I have down time to create miniature buildings from printed paper, and it is also very cheap.

May

This month I decided to include a hanging light fitting that I constructed from spare parts almost 5 years ago. It is matched with a table lamp that sits upon the refurbished dining table in the previous post.

The painted finish is a beige pearl, with silver and white highlights that appears to attract flies in summer. The soft, frosted glass shades allow for a diffused light that reflects from the ceiling into the room. The bulbs are Eco-bulbs with a maximum wattage of 18 watts and they easily fit into this hanging light fitting as the glass shades are wide enough for larger bulbs.

April

A project that I have been working on for the past 3 years. This is a fireside chair, finished in worn beige paint, with cream canvas upholstery.

Originally this was a mess, with previous restoration and recovering attempts creating more problems by previous owners. So when I was presented with this chair by my sister, I tried to avoid wasting time on reupholstering it. But now, after stripping the chair back to the frame, I rebuilt it and used new feature foam instead of the spring base and full foamed back. The canvas gives the chair an informal nature and has feature stitching to match the leather lounge suite that it sits next to.

April

This simple, antiquated dining set was given an updated new look. For the past 15 years the old Oak dining table has been in storage awaited the top to be reconstructed. In March I rebuilt the top, and refinished it in a hard wearing and much more contemporary white pearl semi-gloss finish. There are accent beige strips in legs to highlight the colum style carving and provide a transition into the colour of the chairs, which are a stronger beige colour.

The chairs are more of a worn beige finish to provide a false aged look similar to that of chairs available at faux antique stores in Auckland. They have been transformed from the 1980, dark brown finish and are now more lighter looking in appearance to hide the physical weight of each chair. They upholstery is a shiny cream/beige polyester fabric that reflects light like the semi-gloss finish of the table.

The inspiration came from Marie Antoinette and Louis 16 furniture, with the pale painted colours of latter period Petit Triannon chairs and tables showing what can be done with more ornate, old style forms.

April

This is a continuation of the "Retro, Almost 80s, Arts and Crafts, Contemporary" themed furniture. The transition from CAD to realised 3D was easy due to the simple nature of this furniture, like the ottoman.

The hard-edged ubilquitous box frame works well with the hall table/sofa table function of this piece of furniture. The feature chrome legs are cut at a 45 degree angle to provide stability and adjustability, while implying a continuation up through the void space in the sides to the top chrome supports. The basic materials used are easy to convert, with the chrome tubing being recycled from other defunct furniture, and the pine wood can be recut or used again for something new.

March

I have now finished the ottoman, with the newly painted black finished wood. However, I am thinking about new upholstery, as this colour no longer is appealing. The current trends for white or pale colours and bold patterns have changed my opinion in regards to colours.

The black frame blends with other interior items, such as my 'new' black metal dining table, that utilise minimal resources to produce a strong and supportive frame.