While I was building the Christmas-gift clocks I figured I’d build a corkboard. I had the corks and the lumber and corkboards are super-quick, so hey, another present for someone knocked out. Awesome. There it is in the upper left of this post. It is 20” x 20” and contains 200 corks.
A couple of months ago a co-worker approached me and asked if he could “commission a work”. I thought he was razzing me but it turned out he was being legit. He showed me some ceramic tiles he had been carrying from place to place for four decades – they were from the kitchen of his and his wife’s original house – and asked me if I could make a trivet for him as a surprise for his wife.
Trivets are cake but, since the tiles were special to him, I was super nervous about taking on the task. I brought in the project as it progressed so he could “sign off” on the design decisions as I went (type of wood, border size, overall size, stain color, bevel angle, etc.). The final product is below.
I was happy with it and he was delighted as well. The tiles were the star of the show, they come just a hair above the border, and the trivet is a lot heavier than it looks. Remarkably, (for me) it was level and not “rocky”. I told him I didn’t want any money for it and I was happy to do the project.
My wife saw it while it was a work in progress and asked if she could have one. Since I had one square foot of unused tumbled tile (from the prototype phase of this project) and I have a tile cutter I made these two 8” trivets.
One of these went to the wife and one went to her sister.
After the holidays my co-worker reported that his wife was extremely happy with her trivet. He said he had to give me something, and paid me a dollar which he said had to go to my son:
An 1890-S Morgan. Nice!
The boy thought it was great and he put it in his Special Coin Book. So, while the trivets aren’t technically “coasters” I’m gonna call this a big win and add a couple of new things to the list.
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