Serena's Barajas Coved Credenza Progress Photos

by Andrew DePalma March 01, 2020

Our hope in sharing these types of photos is to give you some idea of the work that goes into making your piece and the obsession with quality that we have in each phase of the building process. As much as we would love to take pictures of everything that goes into your piece of furniture, there is a lot that we don't have time to capture but we sincerely hope you enjoy what we have put together for you here.

A lot of time and attention is taken to take a board that is rough milled (3rd photo down) which is splintered and not straight and turn it into a smooth and square piece of lumber that we can build with. If we do this in our shop we ensure that they are perfect and can be glued together right after milling before the moisture in the air begins to make the wood warp.

Notice how the boards below are only partially smooth. When we refer to boards that are "rough" milled we are talking about boards that look like these

The Machine Below is a jointer. It gives the board a flat face and a flat edge to reference for the next two steps of the milling process

Here the wood is being trimmed parallel with the edge that was just created on the jointer

This Machine is called a planer. It creates uses the smooth and flat face created by the jointer as a reference to create a parallel face on the opposite side of the board

Once you have gone through that process...you are now ready to start using the wood to build. Below is a stack of maple that was milled up for this project. We place these spacers in between each piece as it allows air to pass around each piece of wood evenly so that it does not warp before pieces are glued together.

Here we are in the process of gluing the individual wood pieces together to create a wood panel for the case of the credenza

How we stay organized....

Taking the glued wood panel and cutting it down to size and creating the mitered bevel.

Here we are cutting holes for the joinery which are floating mortise and tenon joints

Sanding everything to be smooth and ready to receive finish on the inside of the case.

Spraying the clear coats on the case before we start gluing everything together

spray room set up for finishing maple panel

Once the lacquer was completed on the inside...we moved over to assembling the case. Step one is to glue in all of the floating tenons known in our industry as dominos. This helps secure the miter joint (the bevel that is cut on a 45 degree angle).

Once that was complete. We then move to glueing up the case. This is a really rewarding but also stressful process. You are on a clock with the glue drying and you want to make sure everything is perfectly square which can be difficult with large cabinets like this that are almost 8 feet in length.

alternate view of glue up of maple credenza

Next up was making the doors. We sadly were incredibly busy while we were making these and missed the opportunity to photograph how we do this. They are made on a router table by hand. They take a lot of careful planning and math and are easily our most labor intense and difficult door. But seeing the coves all lined up in the end is totally worth it!

cutting coved credenza doors on the table saw

coved credenza doors in process of completion

Next it was time to test fit the legs. These legs are turned on the lathe.

detail of dado joint on credenza and lathe turned leg

From here, it was time to start spraying the outside of the cabinet and doors. The doors in particular take a lot of prep. Everything has to be sanded by hand....no power tools involved or it ruins the profile we worked so hard to create. Each time you spray a coat of white, (and there are about 7 of them) you have to sand again.

credenza being prepped for white lacquer

The last steps are to build drawer boxes, start doing final assembly of everything, build the shipping crate, wrap everything up and send it off!

Andrew DePalma

Author

Andrew is the Owner of Open Door Furniture. He is passionate about building pieces of furniture that people love to see every day and can be enjoyed for generations.

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About

Who We Are

Open Door Furniture is located in San Diego, California. All furniture is handmade by us. We began this company to make great furniture, and we consider it a privilege to provide furniture for your home. Our homes are places of vitality, celebration, and serenity. We want everything you receive to be something that enhances your space, and something that you absolutely love.

Philosophy

We select the best materials for each piece. Solid hardwood is used for our cases, legs, table tops and doors. We figured that if harvested wood can last for hundreds of years, we would just stick with nature and use good old fashion wood for our most important surfaces.

Process

All boards are inspected and laid out in several ways to ensure we find grain patterns that are visually appealing and cohesive. We then use time tested methods of construction to account for seasonal changes in the wood. This combined process ensures your furniture will remain strong and beautiful for generations.