So we uploaded our first coat rack this evening. You can find it here. When We launched our site last month, we'd already made a few for gifts. And one for our own hallway. So I was thinking it would be easy to put one or two or four together to share with you too. But I forgot just how intense the process of building these is. First, you have to get the wood. And you can't go to Home Depot for the lumber, it has to be partially damaged by insects or decayed. We call that character. We get ours from a local guy who sells it from his yard. So we had to go pick through his piles of wood in the snow for the perfect piece to make this piece out of. Then the wood has to be kept in a warm dry place for a couple of weeks to make sure it's dry and doesn't warp or anything. Then any potential weak spots have to be reinforced with one kind of epoxy, the whole things gets a coat of another epoxy, masked off and an initial pour is done with another epoxy.
Phew, we're at least a week into the preparation when I realized that even though we have a lot of pebbles we've collected, I didn't have the RIGHT pebbles. One frozen beach later, we had a couple of really beautiful fossils and a couple of red-toned rocks I knew I'd want to use.
Placing the rocks takes....a long time. I have to pick through basically a bucket of found rocks to find all the right ones. I love doing it, I really do, but I'm also a little particular. Once they are all placed to my satisfaction, we have to wait another night to make sure everything is 100% dry. Then it gets poured with
epoxy again! And then it's time to watch carefully for the next 24 hours to see if there are any air bubbles or imperfections and make sure it cures completely and correctly.
By the time we've selected the hooks themselves, I am pretty much done with it. Chris graciously takes over and does all of the precise measurements for hooks and hangers and installs those (again reinforced with epoxy). So it takes weeks to put one of these together and we finally did it!
We're super proud of this piece, it turned out beautifully. But more than that, this piece is full of experiences. From prying this particular board of a pile of lumber frozen together with ice and fall oak leaves to driving to the beach in a winter wonderland, to a couple of long nights placing rocks and trying to be patient with epoxy. this piece was a collaboration and a joy to create. Whoever buys it may sees only the finished product but will know it was created over time and with great care.
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