Fence Appeal

...the slats and the central pressure treated 4×4 posts are covered in cedar making them bigger and more attractive. The trellising at the top creates a kind of filtered view of neighboring vegetation while the lower panels obscure stuff you don’t want to see. Alas, nothing is simple at our funky property and I had to interrupt the fence twice to accommodate two trees that straddle the fence line. I also had to deal with a slight slope and a month i...

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Lehigh Valley Workshop’s Infinite Subversion

...t I’m more likely to hate-watch a live edge table YouTube video of someone making something that I will never make on principle (I really hate live edge slab tables). Recently in my Instagram feed, a woodworker appeared who does not ever mention his real name but goes by “Lehigh Valley Workshop” (I’ll call him LVW). LVW attempts, via self-reflexivity to subvert and comment on alienation directly. His work transgresses all of YouTube’s woodworking...

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A William Morris Pilgrimage

...ointed with. A few blocks down this prosaic road is the Canterbury trail. Speaking of which, since we’re Episcopalians, we made a side trip to Canterbury Cathedral, the mother church of Anglicans. During our trip we discovered a hack of sorts which was to visit churches while services were going on. I highly recommend this. There’s a service or evensong going on every single day in most towns. We dropped into evensong services at St. Paul’s, Westm...

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I Spent 11 Months Building an Uncomfortable Couch

...houses, somehow just need to get built. Such was the case when he proposed making two reproductions of the obscure Gustav Stickley Divan #165, one for his house and one for ours. The couch dates from the summer of 1900, when Stickley employed, at great expense, the architect Henry W. Wilkerson to design a line he called “The New Furniture.” Wilkerson is probably best known as the architect of one of New York City’s few Arts and Crafts style apartm...

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