With rents as high as they are, you need to make the most of the space you have. Expand Furniture shows off its Compatto Rotating Office, a versatile piece of furniture that transforms a bedroom into an office. After folding its Murphy bed, it rotates to reveal a wall unit with shelves and a desk. They also make dining table and bookshelf versions.
Artist Kamber Carroll of Kamberland Creations likes his coffee served in a big cup. He also likes it served ON a big cup, so he created this coffee table that looks like a giant version of his mug. He fabricated its main form from styrofoam with a hard outer coating and painted it to look like the real deal. Each cup is hand-sculpted to order.
Cris from Get Hands Dirty is always looking for ways to make her small living space more efficient. In this project, she created a set of wooden stools that can break into parts and be stored in a custom carrying case. It served as a great opportunity to test out her Mekanika Evo-S CNC milling machine.
Miguel of Marmota Works shows how he took an acacia tree stump and turned it into an eye-catching coffee table. He sawed the stump into slices, then cut them to fit like a jigsaw puzzle. After sealing the pieces with clear epoxy, he bonded them with black epoxy, then sanded and finished the top before attaching metal legs.
If you were around in the 1970s, you might recall those compact cameras that used 110 film cartridges. Maker Wesley Treat shows us how he made a coffee table based on the popular (but grainy) film format. He built the super-size Kodacolor cartridge from wood using kerf bending techniques to make the curved sides. Also, his wooden Gonk Droid is awesome.
This unique wall-mounted birch plywood desk from Teixeira Design Studio blends modern, minimalist style with versatility. In addition to its laptop surface, it has a set of nested drawers and shelves that pivot into place, providing extra work area and storage when you need it.
Matty Benedetto of Unnecessary Inventions loves IKEA and hopes to collaborate with them someday. After the Swedish home furnishings company reached out to him, he thought it would be fun to design, prototype, and produce an office chair with a built-in pegboard so he could readily access hand tools while wheeling around his studio.
We bet you’ve never seen a chair like this. This amazing work of functional art features a back and seat made from 210 stainless steel spheres. Both the spheres and tubular steel frame have a shiny chrome finish to reflect the surrounding environment. Designed and fabricated to order by Shepherd Studio.
When pastry artist Amaury Guichon was approached by Bailey’s to build a chocolate bar, he knew right away that they were looking for something more than a Hershey’s with almonds. What Amaury built is extraordinary – a life-size cocktail bar with a realistic woodgrain base, a marble top, three barstools, and a full set of barware.
A typical cabinet might be made from 15 or 20 pieces of wood. Blacktail Studio built this incredible-looking cabinet from about 20 times that many pieces. He started with 300 walnut wood blocks, which he stacked, glued, clamped, and shaped into a unique work of functional art. It took a lot of trial and error to figure out the best way to carve and smooth it.
We all know by now that standing while working is healthier than sitting. But if you don’t have the cash for a whole new desk, check out rldh’s walnut and birch stand, which gives you a perfect standing work platform for your laptop and external keyboard on a budget. It comes in a variety of sizes and heights.
After making a computer desk with a terrarium inside, Tanner from SerpaDesign went all-out with his latest creation. He built this waterfall-edge coffee table from live-edge pine boards and incorporated a terrarium with living plants and a working waterfall. Hopefully, the epoxy and fiberglass will hold up to the moisture and plant life for a long time.
Cristiana Felgueiras of Get Hands Dirty shows off an awesome piece of furniture she designed for efficiency in a tiny apartment she’s building out. The desk has a floating design and a built-in electronic piano that slides out from underneath its work surface. She also built a matching rolling cabinet with a secret drawer.
We love the look of this custom-built table by Germany’s Marmota Works. It’s made from recycled wooden beams that were cut and sanded into curved shapes to fit together like puzzle pieces, then bathed in clear epoxy. The outer pieces have flat sides, so they form a perfect rectangle.
Tables with glass tops can be fragile and difficult to transport. But what if the glass was pre-broken? That’s what Homemade Modern did when he made this side table by mixing cracked glass with epoxy resin and pouring them into a custom silicone mold. This approach means he could crank out multiple tables if he wants.
Boise, Idaho’s Alpine Wood Co. makes extraordinary furniture from wood, metal, and resin. Among their collection is this beautiful black walnut dining table with a deep blue river of resin running through its center. It comes in sizes ranging from 48″ x 30″ to 96″ x 48″, with the larger models doubling as a ping pong table. Benches sold separately.
Seth Rogen shows off Houseplant’s retro-inspired side table in olive green. The table features stainless steel legs and a porcelain top with two storage areas and a built-in ashtray. The top comes off easily for cleaning, and it also comes in black or orange. Measures 25″ H x 11.5″ W.
While you could buy some cheap folding chairs, we prefer the modern design of Get Hands Dirty’s design, which has a clean, angular look and is something that you can build for yourself if you’ve got the right tools and lumber. The wood-shaving interlude was a nice touch.
Woodworker Frank Howarth wanted to turn a slice of a fir tree into something different than a typical coffee table. So he set out to create a giant version of a LEGO gear. After patching a crack in the wood with bacon-shaped ties, he encountered a frustrating obstacle while cutting the pattern but persevered.
In today’s work-from-home world, having a good desk is a must. You could buy one, or you could do what HomeMadeModern did and build one to your own exacting specifications. We love how Jessie incorporated walls, and sound-deadening felt to make it her own. We’d probably do corkboard for tacking up notes.
Friday’s space-saving folding desk hangs on your wall and is just 6.6″ deep when not in use. Open it up, and you’ll find cubbies for storage, a monitor arm, room for a 27″ display, and a 47.5″ x 23.4″ work surface. It’s also got a dimmable ring light, outlets, and cable management. It can also be outfitted with corkboards, a headphone hook, and a webcam mount.
If you’ve been to a science museum, you’ve probably seen those funnel-shaped tables where you can drop in a marble, and it spirals towards its center. Olivier Gomis shows us how he built three gravity well tables by cutting up pieces of walnut and maple veneer, gluing them into layers, turning them on a lathe, then sanding them to a smooth finish.
Inspired by Mosevic’s recycled denim eyeglasses, Cam from Blacktail Studio wanted to try the same with building furniture. He started with a bunch of thrift store jeans and realized he’d need a lot more denim. Using a very messy bath of epoxy, he laminated fifty sheets of the fabric. After it all dried, he planed and finished it like a sheet of plywood.