Eames night stands

Blair invited me to share some of my own cooking, albeit non-food cooking, because while I can hold my own in the kitchen, I am seldom as ambitious as she. In other words, cooking up modest home projects with what I can scrounge together with what I've got in terms of materials, work space, and time.

First up, our night stands. I was fortunate enough to know of a source of fiberglass Eames desk-chairs c. 1960's. I procured seven of these: one I kept in its original state, while the other six I turned into standard side chairs via removing the desk portion. This of course, took some good old fashioned elbow grease, hack-sawing my way through twelve 1/2" aluminum rods while on my knees in the kitchen. Oh for a real workspace. Someday. In any case, I capped off the stubs with some black plastic toppers, and we ended up with six chairs, two of which are the daily dinner table chairs, and the other four live stacked in the closet, being brought out when groups come over.

I used the six desk tops to turn into night stands for our bedroom. The idea is rather straight-forward: drill three holes in each plywood, Formica-covered desk, and stick some all-thread through them, securing each shelf with nuts and washers. Turns out, not all the desks are identical in shape, so one of the bottom shelves is a bit larger than all the other shelves. Basically, I just eye-balled a good spot for the holes on the three corners, and made a template so each shelf was consistent. When marked, I dragged them to a neighbor-friend's garage where I drilled the holes (did I mention I'd like a real, well-equipped work space?). After lugging them back, I assembled them. I could have used slightly larger holes, as it was a tight fit, and even required some fun filing, but I managed. Fortunately, the end of the 2' sections of all-thread from ACE were a pleasant yellow color, so I didn't mind having that exposed through the lock-nuts.

The end result is a nice, compact, functional, stylish set of tables for the bedroom. The only down-side is that there were no left-handed desks and the desk tops are not flippable, so the table on the other side of the bed has the narrow arm next to the bed rather than the larger surface like you see here. Nevertheless, I feel a bit smug when I walk through Design Within Reach (trying to keep my drool off the furniture), knowing I have not only vintage Eames chairs, but unique Eames-ian night stands (and for cheap).