Study hall

Jim Fortune believes in desks. He thinks every kid should have a place in their room where they can sit down and do their homework or use their microscope or deface surfaces with the point of a compass. This desk he built for our friends' daughter is one of my favorites.

Maybe because I have no daughters, and will never have a room in my house that looks like this:

Seriously. How cute is that??

Back in the day

Jim Fortune has been building cool stuff for a really long time. We are going to dig into the archive a little today. This oak map table is a beautiful thing he built for our dear friend Norman in 1994(ish).

Maps were an important part of Jim and Norman's lives at that point because they were forever taking their bikes and kayaks into remote locations and, y'all, there was no Google maps yet.

Here's a picture of it with one of its elegant drawers extended:

And here is a picture of it under construction in Jim's old workshop. Which looks like it was purple? No, he says his workshop was not purple. It was just the light.

But what's in it for me?

When he has time, Jim Fortune builds things for his family. We like it when he does that. We moved into our house in 2007, and Jim immediately pronounced the mantel hideous. "Totally hideous," he said. I shrugged. "I guess," I said. "It looks OK to me."

Here it what it looked like:

Not great, sure. But I couldn't really tell what was so hideous about it. Jim grabbed some of his favorite implements of destruction and ripped it right out. Like so:

Then it really WAS hideous. And it stayed that way for quite some time. But Jim worked on it now and then and, eventually, it looked like this:

OK, so then I truly understood why Jim thought the old mantel was hideous. The old mantel WAS hideous because this is what Jim Fortune had in his head when he looked at the old mantel. This mantel is incredibly beautiful. And I get to look at it every day.

Thanks, dear.

Hey, let's watch TV

Lots of people have cabinets with TVs sitting on them. Or dressers with TVs sitting on them. Or tables with TVs sitting on them. Jim Fortune thinks TVs need their own furniture. He is right about this. Here is a lovely and practical TV cabinet/entertainment center thing he built:

One very cool thing about this lovely cabinet is that it has a friend just on the other side of this archway:

Because Jim Fortune likes symmetry a lot. Another cool thing is that the TV can swivel out from the wall:

Because it has this super-cool, heavy-duty hinge thing behind it that Jim went out and found. Because Jim likes to find things that can make cool things even cooler:

He also put lots of groovy drawers in this entertainment center thing:

Just so you can appreciate how truly rad this project is, here is how this nice family was watching TV before Jim Fortune showed up and tricked out this place:

Um, no. Not on Jim Fortune's watch.

Breakfast is served

This pretty little mahogany breakfast bar is in the master bedroom of the same house where Jim built the cool tub cabinet. (Jim works for a lot lot lot of people who want him to come back and build more stuff.)

The coolest thing about this pretty little mahogany breakfast bar is the hidden fridge that Jim incorporated into the right cabinet. He attached the fridge door to the cabinet door to make the thing maximally efficient and streamlined. Like so:

Because, you see, Jim likes for things to be maximally efficient and streamlined. He would not put in a cabinet that required you to open a door before you opened yet another door. That would offend his artistic sensibilities.

To the Batcave!

The only thing cooler than a whole wall of gorgeous floor-to-ceiling bookshelves is a whole wall of gorgeous floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with a secret, hidden door:

Now you see it....

Now you don't.

The only thing even cooler than that is whole wall of gorgeous floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with a secret, hidden door that leads to a wine cellar. People, it's a secret door to a Batcave FULL OF WINE. 

Maybe Jim Fortune's niftiest project ever.

Here are some pictures of the progress:

And here is the spectacular finished room:

Did I mention it's a BATCAVE FULL OF WINE? Gah. So rad.

You know what that bathtub needs?

It needs a place for a great big TV. And it needs a beautiful cabinet that goes all the way to the ceiling. Jim Fortune likes for cabinets to go all the way to the ceiling. Otherwise there is wasted space, and we all know how he feels about wasted space.

Behold, a place to soak and watch TV. Life is good.

Here is what it looked like when it was in progress:

Also, here are some fancy panels Jim built for the front of the tub. They are removable so a person can easily access all the tub guts inside: