Gerhard's Potting Bench, other projects

More "furniture" projects that I've been working on lately, the first of which has been a long time coming. Back in 2011 (the "old days" when both of us were bamboo crazy) my friend-found-through-gardening Gerhard mentioned that he wanted to build a potting bench that incorporated a soapstone sink:

That sink had been sitting in his garden (taking up valuable planting space I'm sure) for a while, and he wanted to utilize it. "Hey!" I said, "I love designing furniture! I can design something that you'd be able to build!". And that's pretty much where we left it, except that once a year or so I'd say "I'm still thinking about that potting bench design..." and he'd reply "No hurry, I don't have time to build it right now!" or "No hurry, I have lots of other projects going on!"

So I didn't hurry, but I did finally get the job done.

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This is what I came up with:

Gerhard hasn't seen this version of the design yet, although he's seen a rougher iteration.

My friend and former neighbor Todd is a 3D modeler and animator (among other things) and he helped me out by doing the texturing and rendering of the 3D model I created. He's still working on it as he wants to make it look even more realistic since that's his thing, but I think this works quite nicely for my purposes.

The sink in the render is just an approximation as I need some photos of the upright sink, but I love it and now wish I had a soapstone sink laying around in my garden...

The screen panels are intended to partially hide the ugly plumbing or greywater collection bucket, but they add so much to the design. Here it is without the panels:

Boring!

Now I just need to send Gerhard the plans and he can get started building it. (BTW, I assume redwood looks something like that, much like cedar.)



The other projects are something I mentioned briefly when posting about a visit to my mom's garden: trellises.

As you know I've build copper trellises before, and have had wood/copper combo designs in my head for a while. My brother and I collaborated on building this one.

Two actually, as we made a matching pair.

You might think that the reddish cedar on red brick doesn't look great -- and I agree -- but the cedar will weather to a silvery grey color and that will be perfect!

The copper was oxidized with a Miracle Gro solution and will just get prettier as it mellows over time. (I posted about this probably about the same time in 2011 that Gerhard and I discussed the bench project...)

I've got several variations of this design in my head and I suppose I should build a few this summer, but where am I going to put more trellises? Maybe I should just have Todd render them...

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