The SketchUp model of the table is finished. There a copy of the file here in case anyone wants to have a look at it. I’ve also uploaded a few screen shots to the gallery here and made a little animation which fades between a few of the different display modes. The animation is a little more than 1mb so nsf56k or something.
Author: Eric
Table Finished
The end table is finished. The travertine block from Travertine Stone Products (or possibly Webb & Reed, Inc. according to the business card I collected today with my stone) looks great in the table. The koi pull from Bright and Thorpe via the Hardware Hut is fantastic. The glass from Anchor Ventana fits perfectly. Thank you to all my wonderful suppliers and to everyone who encouraged me and listened patiently to my complaining and worrying and thanks to Bill for finding TSP for me and to Heather for helping me get exactly what I wanted in the way of a rock. Bill took some pictures of it today for me though clearly the lighting in the house is still problematic for photography even if you have a fancy camera and I don’t really know what I’m doing around the color and light balance portions of the photo editing software.
Here’s a big picture that links to the gallery.
Fail
Yeah, so, apparently my stone tablet is not here yet. I guess people traditionally call you when your stuff is ready and I would have known this if I’d paid attention in school instead of smoking all that crack. I will now wait patiently for the call to come and collect the piece.
Blueprints
Though I used to mess about with POVRay back in the day I actually know precious little about drafting/modeling software. This project is coming to a close but I will want to build a second one of these tables in the future. I decided that having an actual schematic with measurements in an electronic format for the table would be a useful thing to have so I don’t have to keep hunting around for the piece of copier paper that originally I drew it on. Google pointed me at their own solution for this which is called SketchUp. It’s decent and the time from installation to being able to use it isn’t bad. The built in instructions are pretty good and have little animations to show you what it is you’re supposed to be doing with the tool you have selected. I’ve modeled the four side pieces of the top so far. Ultimately I think I’ll model the whole thing and then lay the pieces out in cutting diagram form. Maybe there’s even a useful way to upload it here and let everyone play along. Tomorrow is rock day!
Hope springs eternal
The extra special Mr. Bill told me that there was a company called “Travertine Stone Products” on Rutland and Metric that might fit my custom stone supply needs. I called them yesterday and they said they thought they could help me so I went down there at lunch today. The woman who helped me was patient and informative and friendly and after I decided what specific kind of travertine I wanted and described the desired dimensions she said they’d get back to me with a quote. The quote was forthcoming about an hour later and it was for a price less than I had decided I was willing to pay and the estimated delivery date would be Wednesday next week which was faster than I’d expected. If the stone actually comes in and is anything like the correct size and color I will promote these people to the auspicious rank of Big Damned Heroes. With any luck the next post here will be pictures of a finished table. Cross your fingers.
Maybe not the hall of fame then
I’m 0/3 for rocks now. I took a long lunch Wednesday while I was blissfully unaware my area at work was experiencing a localized disaster. I drove the 45 minutes down to the Architectural Tile and Stone place because the previous day I called them and mentioned what kind and size of stone I needed and they said they would probably be able to do that but I would need to come down and browse the “remnant yard”. When I got there I was helped by someone other than who I had talked to on the phone and this person spent the entire time walking down to the yard explaining in a very round about way that what I wanted was going to be prohibitively expensive and even then probably wasn’t worth their time to deal with anyway. When we finally got there I was treated to the remnants. I guess they are the remnants of where someone wanted a whole building carved out of marble or whatever because there wasn’t a piece there that was smaller than my dinner table of any kind of stone. So 45 minutes down there, 5 minutes walking around getting the anti-sell and 45 minutes back for nothing. Does anyone have maybe a big picture of a rock? I could put it in the table instead and it would be ironic. Ha ha. ha. yeah.
Then we scrapped a bunch of stuff at work because an automation computer got hit by a fucking cosmic ray or something and I’ve been pretty busy since.
It is done
I have, for the third and hopefully final time, quit WoW. I’ve removed myself from the raiding guild that I had joined and have requested Blizzard deactivate my account. The last month has been a strange and difficult one. Raiding is much like having a job. There are twenty hours a week that are raid time and there is a significant portion of time necessary to prepare for the raid time. A common way to afford the expense of raiding is to do daily quests which reward you money when you complete them. The job parallel is even less subtle there. It has become increasingly hard to balance work, social life and the video game. It was consuming all of my personal time at home most of the week. I am looking forward to being able to row again and to pursue the new hobby (lord help me, more on that later). Plus someone has to take down the Christmas tree. Hopefully my friends in the game will not think too badly of me.
I mentioned the new hobby. After New Year’s I had a dinner party at my house. This marks the first major non-family gathering in over four years, the prior being the actual house warming party. I cooked dinner for everyone and was able to get some use out of the new dining table I’d purchased. All in all it worked out well. I was a little disappointed in the okra and the bread I’d made. The okra I’m willing to chalk up to weird food, don’t care, won’t fix. The bread is another issue entirely though. Bread is deceptively simple. A baguette has only four ingredients: flour, water, yeast, salt. That’s it. The rest is chemistry. I managed to make a dry, dense, pale loaf which everyone said tasted fine but I thought was weak. I don’t know why but the bread falls into the same weird little niche in my brain that the woodworking does. I may not have to make everything myself but I ought to be able to demonstrate the ability. So, I bought a few books and I’ve started trying to get better.
The first book is The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. I’ve enjoyed reading the introductory part due to the discussion of the science involved. The author, Peter Reinhart, mentions several times in this section a bread he calls “pain à l’ancienne” and talks about how awesome it is. I tried making it and it worked and I only ruined half of it. Yay me. I took two of the three baguettes that were not burned halfway through to games night at Dan’s house and everyone seemed to think it was good. I ate the third one myself. I did forget to take pictures though.
Saturday night I started the dough for a beer bread out of the second book, The Bread Bible by Rose Beranbaum. It has a few more ingredients in it and I ended up needing to add more beer to it than the recipe called for in order to get the consistency in the dough I wanted but after I baked it today it was wonderful. I took some pictures which are in the “House and Yard” gallery in the images section of this place. There’s a link to one here. 
I’m sure I’ll have more to write about as I try more of the recipes in the books but I’ve had a pretty good start and it has been taking up much less time than the WoWs. Amazing.
Rocks are hard
I’m sure I have mentioned the “rock” that I want for my table in here before. The idea is that there is to be a thin slab of limestone or travertine underneath the latticework in the top. The problem is that no one wants to sell me this rock. I’ve been to two different Home Depot locations because they claim to sell exactly what it is that I’m looking for. The first location was too helpful for my own good and told me that I didn’t actually want to buy a box of tiles from them. What I actually wanted to do was spend four hours on the telephone with local flooring sellers (apparently HD doesn’t qualify) trying to convince them that I should be allowed to buy a sample tile from them. The second Home Depot was much more not-helpful and actually managed to place an order for one box of 24″x24″ unfilled, honed Travertine floor tiles for me for the low, low price of $139 including tax. They said it would be in in 7 to 10 days. They said they would call me when it came in.
So, two weeks after I ordered it I’m starting to wonder where my rocks are. Since I was meeting Whitney at the greek food for dinner (Zorbas = nummy) and the HD was right across the parking lot I figured I’d wander down there and see what was the hold up. I found the guy who had placed the order for me and talked with him for a little and eventually we find out that my order had been canceled because the supplier said that rocks have been discontinued and that no one had bothered to call me to let me know that there are no more rocks. This puts my record at 0/2. I’ve been told that you only have to get a hit one in three times to make it into the hall of fame. I’ve also been told that there are a lot of flooring vendors in the Metic/Rundberg area and that I might be able to find someone that still has some rocks in stock. We’ll see. I might need to start thinking about alternatives to rocks if this keeps up.
Oh, I also had a dinner party. It went pretty well considering that I’ve never made dinner for nine people before. Bill took some pictures and put them on his Flickr page. Alex made the bestest cake ever and I’m thieving a link to the picture Bill took for my stupid blog.
Construction complete!
The construction work on the table is complete! I took some pictures today but they’re a little dark. I need to figure out a good way to photograph this thing for when I get the last two pieces. I ordered the drawer pull from the hardware hut who have an enormous selection of pulls and knobs and other goodies. It was a little expensive but it’s the one that stuck in my head. It fits the general design of the table and it’s very unique. Plus it’s organic and fluid looking on a table which is geometric so I think it’ll stand out and look good.
The stone is elusive. This could be considered irony because I can’t dig three inches down in my yard without pulling up a big limestone boulder. What I’m looking for is a piece of limestone or travertine that is 22½” x 22½” x somewhere between ¼” and ½” thick. The first thing that I thought of was floor tile. Natural stone tile comes in many sizes and materials and they have a decent catalog down at the Home Depot so I went down there. They did indeed have 24″x24″ travertine tiles (unfilled so you get the nice porous texture). However you have to order them and you have to order a box which is five tiles and $130. I think this might be worth $130 to me and then I’ll have a tile for the next table so I went to the sales lady and asked her what I needed to do to order a box. 
That was the beginning of the end. She asked what it was for and I told her (oops) and she said let’s go talk to this other lady. The other lady said I was better off calling around to local flooring suppliers (I guess HD doesn’t think they are a flooring supplier) and asking if I can buy a sample. I am really not interested in calling around for four hours trying to convince some local floorshop franchise owner that he should sell me one tile. This is why I went to the hardware store in the first place. Anyway, after having a nice long chat with the two ladies I ended up leaving the Depot without a rock or an order for a rock. Mom said she would write the guy who is making the headstone for my grandparents’ graves and see if he could make me something like what I want. The internet has been very unhelpful in this respect as well. Searching for what I want usually leads me to quarries in Australia. While I’m certain the Aussies have fine, high quality stone and stone craftsmen it’s on pretty much the opposite side of the world from where I am.
Even though there is no stone to be had I am still declaring victory. Once I get the pull in I’ll affix it and start loading the drawer up with CDs and DVDs and maybe reclaim some horizontal surface in the house. Huzzah!
Yay pictures!
It appears I’m terrible at the blogging thing. It’s for the best really. Anyway, there are pictures of the table in its almost complete state. The legs and sides are not actually permanently affixed though the legs are on there tight enough that they might as well be. Remaining tasks are gluing and finishing the lattice top, installing the drawer rails and acquiring the stone block, glass top and a drawer pull. That’s single digits! End of the year here I come!
