I Built a Harvey Ellis Dresser and it Almost Killed Me

October 26, 2018

Design

...fitting drawers, finishing surfaces). Late 19th and 20th century furniture making involves not just one task all day but a mix of responsibilities as well as aesthetic decisions such as deciding which way to run the grain. The Ikea dresser is made on a post-Henry Ford assembly line where workers either monitor machines and/or do the same repetitive task all day. This makes for a much cheaper product but an unhappy worker. I made many mistakes buil...

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Read Bungalow Magazine and The Craftsman Online

Mr. Homegrown

July 3, 2017

Design

4 Comments

...and less Apollonian than The Craftsman. What both publications have in common is an expectation that the reader is not just a consumer but potentially someone capable of taking up a chisel or sewing needle and making something. This DIY ethos was, of course, part of the anti-industrial agenda of the Arts and Crafts movement. One can hope that this spirit will catch on again in our disposable age. Save...

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A Better Garage Organizational System

Mr. Homegrown

January 14, 2019

Design, Domesticus, Tidying up

11 Comments

...anges to the workshop I made in order to make it more useful for furniture making such as being sure that I could access my workbench from all sides, as well as improvements to the dust collection system. I can detail these changes in a future post but I’m more interested in showing that a well organized workshop can benefit any activity from sewing to gardening. Taking the time to plan a workspace makes work go much easier. Aesthetics are importa...

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America’s Worst Remodeling Disaster?

Mr. Homegrown

June 21, 2017

Design

8 Comments

...should have to prove their worth, and that’s a high bar. But, perhaps, I’m making the same mistake. Only time will tell. Sources Biography of Greene and Greene, An Enlightened Client. Post-remodeling Dunn residence photos: https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/13030/kt538nd8wj/ “Outside In: The Architecture of Smith and Williams” Edited by Jocelyn Gibbs, Debi Howell-Ardila, Anthony Denzer, Lilian Pfaff, and Alan Hess. “This Pasadena House . . .” Sunset...

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It’s safe to comment again

Mrs. Homegrown

October 12, 2015

Miscellaneous

5 Comments

...service. Our intrepid webmaster put out the fire a couple of days back by making it hard to comment We’ve had no spam at all as a result. That is good. But no one is happy with the draconian commenting protocols. So we’re trying something new. Now, commenting is back to our usual system, but we’re closing down comments on older posts. We have a library of 2,522 posts on Root Simple as of today–crazy, huh?– and that’s a whole lot of territory for...

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