Anyone worked with parawood?
 

So, I'm looking for a smallish dining table to use as a computer desk. All I want is 4 legs and a flat top, solid wood, no keyboard trays, no drawers, no nooks and crannies... Hard to find, let me tell you. :right:

(In case anyone has the perfect table in mind, I'm looking for shaker-style, 30"x48"x30". Finish can be anywhere from lightish-medium to dark.)

I have veered into the realm of unfinished furniture. I have done some wood finishing in the past (notably our bedroom set, which is still looking nice 10 years after we finished it). One thing that has struck me is the near-ubiquity of a 'new' material called parawood aka rubberwood. I have seen it denigrated as an inferior material to traditional hardwoods.

Anyone have any experience with this product? Any pointers?

My kitchen set was made of it. Looked really nice at first, but not durable at all. It got dented and scraped very easily. The chairs all got marks from people who sat in them with keys or other metal type objects in their back pockets.

Pie, if you want furniture to last more than a few years, you are better off buying good stuff and paying $ for it. Think in terms of amortizing the cost over years if you intend to keep it for years.

Cheap furniture has a much higher cost per year of service than expensive furniture. (Assuming its service life isn't ended because you grow weary of it)

It's almost garage sale season, I can find tables like that of good quality for cheep, at yard sales in the summer.

Or http://baltimore.craigslist.org/zip/

People seem to give away their furniture.

Go to a couple of antique stores. You might find a really well built table for the price of a new particle board piece of crap.

I saw a table around the size you are talking about in an antique store around here a couple weeks ago. Don't think it was a shaker style though.

Happy Monkey might have some info as well.

I don't know anything about parawood. I've primarily used cherry and walnut, finished with Danish oil and wax. My computer desk is the piece that gets the most wear and tear, and the wood has held up very well.

I would second the garage/craig/antique store sugestions, and maybe add estate sales.

I'm not keen at all on getting something second-hand. I actually need two of these tables, one for me and one for my husband. They'll be next to each other, so they need to match.

I'd rather spend a little more (or do the work myself) than get crap. There's plenty of tables that meet my operational needs down at Ikea; I'm looking for something with a little more aesthetic than that.

How about Alder? Anyone worked with that? Something like this.

Why, what happens if they don't match?

I'm not happy? Does this require justification?

Are you looking to assemble or actually build?
Alder is in the birch family and is relatively cheap, sort of durable, and is mostly a good wood for manufacturers to use. I don't know any woodworkers who would go out of their way to buy it. It is ok.

How much do you want to spend? Forget IKEA, while the stuff may look nice it is a 5 year piece at best.

If you aren't going to build it yourself and don't want to hire a local carpenter/cabinetmaker to make it and you don't want crap, then go to EJ Audi or some other Stickley type place.

Finding a woodworker to knock out a couple of simple tables without drawers shouldn't be that hard, or expensive. I bet you could get a pair for under $600. esp. if you were willing to sand and finish them, and want shaker style which is pretty simple and un-ornamented.

Dude, don't make her use the spank ray.

Imagine how disappointed I was to find out that parawood was not an erection device for wheelchair bound men.

F3, that's a great suggestion. I looked in our local yellow pages, and there are about 20 outfits listed under "cabinetmakers". I will call up a few and spec out a 48x30x30" shaker table, made from red oak. Support your local businesses!

Did you have an accident or are do you have vested interest in getting off a cripple?

Get it right. "Engaging in a mutually consensual physical relationship with a non-temporarily-able-bodied person".
Sheesh. Back to sensitivity training for you!

Sounds like a good plan.

Here's mine:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/7/9360124_5b888f9eab.jpg

Dual Shaker Table , $3485, sieves extra.

Sounds like an expensive way to get it. I would keep looking.

[slight] When I was shopping for a hope chest and couldn't find any (at any price) that I liked at the local furniture stores, my mom and I went to a localish Amish man's woodshop and had one made exactly how I wanted it. It turned out beautifully, was about the midpoint pricewise of the ones that I had seen at the stores, and should be a great piece to pass on to my daughter someday. I'll try to take a pic this weekend. [/drift]

HM, that's beautiful! Exactly what I'm looking for.

I agree with LR. Cost is not the major driving factor; I'd rather get the right pieces of furniture. Hopefully ones that can be refinished (if necessary). I'd like to plan on using it for the next 30 years, at least. (My last set of crappy Ikea desks lasted for a decade, so it's not unreasonable. Our kitchen table is a teak veneer job that is also 30+ years old.)

If you are looking at refinishing down the road in a decade or two, oak might not be the best choice, depending on if you want to change the color. Oak has large open pores and finish really gets into those pores and won't come out easily in the future. Even with a chemical stripper and nylon brush, getting the finish out of oak pores is a difficult job. Although you can use this attribute for a two toned look where the pores are a different color than the rest of the surface. Or just keep the same color and don't worry about it.

The Cellar is such a wealth of information! So glatt, what wood would you recommend?

I'd actually ask the place you deal with. Tell them what you want in the table. And what color you want it to eventually be. They might have a glut of one species that would end up being cheaper than another.

Maple is nice, cherry is too, but expensive. I'm partial to walnut, but it's a taste thing and has similar open pores. Oak is good too, but you might want to consider filling the pores before finishing it. There are several ways to do this. You can use a filler like this. Or start off with a thick layer of shellac, or just build up multiple layers of varnish or poly, sanding between each application.

I tend to think of historical Shaker furniture as being made of maple, but I'm not sure if that's actually true.

I had to chuckle at this. I don't do woodworking, but I do bbq regularly. So when the talk turns to wood, my mind wanders away from woodworking and I start thinking about what I'd cook with it.

But you're correct in either situation. Choice of wood is a matter of taste. :D

...especially if you're a termite! ;)

My husband is partial to cherry, but I prefer oak... We'll ask the woodworkers what the have and what the prices are!

No, nay, nix, do not fill the pores. That's what makes oak, um oak. It's what gives it character, without grain it might as well be Formica.
That would be like painting curly maple white, spackling a pressed tin ceiling, or doing a Leopard with Miss Clairol.
You can do from a light (natural) finish all the way to a deep mahogany red, and it will still be oak and beautiful.

One can use a contrasting color to fill oak pores which is what I usually do since I like the look of old oak where the pores have become blackened. I use the pore filler tinted black. For a writing surface, it helps if the desk doesn't have such open pores, especially if you are not a religious blotter user and write directly on the surface of the desk.

Why not see if HM will take a commission, he does very nice work from what I've seen on the cellar.

So if you work with normal wood in the normal way, do you have to work with parawood paranormally?

And for 10 points extra credit, apart from Ebony and Lignum Vitae, what other wood doesn't float?


Natalie

Natalie?

Unless she's a witch.

ironwood? the name sounds heavy anyway.

Glatt is a winner.

BTW, did you hear Grace Kelly was on the radio?



...and the dashboard, and the windshield, and the...

yea, she drowned.

The front and side of my (solid) cedar chest:

The inside. I couldn't find any marks by the craftsman though. ??

It is in our basement, and I love getting blankets out of it when we watch movies. They smell sooooooooooooo good. The quilt on the left is one I made my daughter when she was in utero. I'll post a pic of that in the quilting thread...

Ooooh Ohhh OOOH! Photos of Labrat's chest!


Hey, wait! I feel SOOOO CHEATED!