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BESPOKE ORDERS
Not every space is the same, So why can't the item intended for it be designed to fit?
I love a challenge, and these customers have certainly provided me with the chance to get creative. The majority are one off pieces, most of them attempted during lockdown when, let's face it, there was some more time to pass!
If you've got a space or perhaps a function in mind and you just can't quite put your finger on the right piece of furniture to fill it, why not get in touch? Maybe you've seen something on Pinterest but don't know if it can be bought anywhere? Whatever it is, drop me a line and let's see what we can design together.
the desk that's not a desk
The Brief: 'I need a desk! And it needs to fit these exact dimensions.'
The Response: 'No, we don't need a desk... we need a door.
When a customer asks for a custom made desk for a wonky bay window... in a rented property... which is likely to be a temporary location, we change the brief.
The Solution: Repurpose. This project didn’t need a whole new piece of furniture. It needed a temporary yet quirky solution. We found a door that matched the wooden panelling effect on the wardrobes in the room, and instead of spending time and materials building a whole new made to measure desk that may not be suitable for the next house, we cut it to fit the whole of the space in the bay window, and simply laid it on top of the existing desk. Boom.
One additional piece of wood; instant provision of space, and still has the same storage features from the original desk beneath. How’s that for a 60 second makeover?
Ok so it wasn’t quite 60 seconds. Working in a remote location made this pretty tricky, so once we identified the walls weren’t straight we used a newspaper template to find the space needed. The door was cut to (more or less) the right shape, painted to match the other furniture, with clear resin filling in the channels of the wood paneling to make as level a work space as possible.
Keeping with the door theme, a letter box was added for access for wires and plugs. Because why the hell not?
The finished item solves the problem, and has had much use since being delivered. But it’s definitely a wonky piece! Lots of test and learn on this one, lots of new techniques, not all of them working as planned despite the prior testing. But hey, it’s certainly a one of a kind!
Heart Heroes
Something on brand to brighten the office space!
Inspired by the larger cable reel mirrors and keen to add another WonkyDonk piece to her collection, Kelly came to me for a mirror for her office. But given her office is used to run a children's medical charity, it could only be shaped as one thing - a heart!
Heart Heroes supports children aged 0-16 living with heart disease, as well as their families. You can find out more about the work Kelly and her team do to help support children living with congenital heart disease and heart problems and see how you can help #GiveHope to their families by checking out the website.
'Can you make it bombproof?'
"Hi Jo, how would you feel about doing a slightly bigger project than you normally do? Not massive, but fairly big... I want a desk. And I want it bombproof.."
I'm not really sure what Eddie anticipated happening during the pandemic when he sent this brief to me at the start of lockdown. But we went with it. Especially as the technical spec that came along side it was pretty impressive. (And not an order requirement, I hasten to add!!)
This was a fab brief to work on. We knew that we wanted to use some different materials for this. After a lot of searching online, we found a building in Bristol that was being demolished by hand. We were able to salvage some of the floorboards from the building which was most recently a Printer's Press.
But they'd also found a goods vehicle tax disc from 1960. After a little research and a lot of help from Bristol community groups on Facebook, I found that it was most likely from the vehicle of a Servis washing machine van, the company occupying the building from the mid 50's. A copy of this tax disc is set into the desk as a resin coaster, with the real version kept safe in a presentation frame together with a summary of the building's history. Underneath the top shelf on the side desk, the address of the property had been penciled onto the wood, so this has now been burned in as a permanent reminder.
Everything else has been built to the client's spec: the shelf heights to fit the bass amp and PC tower, the cable management systems running under the desk at the back (still being adjusted) and the top shelf on the desk for the monitors. He was like a kid on Christmas morning whilst I was there assembling it!
Who said working from home had to be boring?
the 'pack it away' desk
'I've got a different project for you....' - Not the opening lines of a typical brief!
With everyone now needing to adapt our home setups to make way for office work, it's easy for the lines between work and comfort to blur. After all, we want to work from home, not live in an office.
Not wanting to introduce a permanent desk space, Emily's request was for, essentially, a desk that could be assembled when needed, and hidden away when it was time to chill out. We designed a 3 part system for easy use at her sofa:
1) A base on wheels that tucks under the sofa
2) a functional storage crate that sits against the wall
3) A top tray, which slots behind the sofa.
Put all 3 together, and you create a mobile desk space with enough room for a laptop, notebook, and most importantly, a decent cuppa to get you through the day.
The Media Unit
'So many TV boxes and wires, I need somewhere to hide it all away!'
This idea was based on the corner bookcase unit, but adapted to fit a flat wall. Zoe wanted something neat and organised to store all of her media related items - the TV box, router, DVD player, along with the various DVDs and books.
This unit, waxed in Liberon Dark Oak to match her existing WonkyDonk coffee table, had various additional features to ensure everything fitted as required.
The bottom shelf and the backing column were both cut to fit around the skirting board so the whole unit fits flush against the wall. The column at the back of the middle shelf was flattened to allow for the various boxes to sit fully onto the shelf. And holes were added across the back to allow for the wires to feed through. The space at the back of the unit provides an area for the all the cables and extension leads to be tucked away out of site.
Standing at 1 metre tall, 1 metre wide, and 50cm total depth, it's a tall piece that holds everything in one place, with the TV then hanging on the wall above it. A complete media station!
IT'S A FAMILY THING
Matching bedsides for all different shaped rooms
Function is where it's at with this one. Carrie needed bedside tables for the rooms in her house, and over a few months, we slowly added to the collection room by room.
Each set was made based on the requirements of that area - including the width of wall, height of bed and size of the items that needed to sit inside them.
Won't find that in Ikea, will you!
