This was made for my Mother and Stepfather in 2017. All of the steel was deteriorating remnant and the wood was fir, probably my favorite type for it’s durability and simplicity. I designed and fabricated the entire project, which is always a good time for me. The stools provided a fair amount of volume, but plug away and you get there. They didn’t really ask for it, as much as I imposed the project on them. They had spent a decent amount of money on a large table and chairs not that long ago, but as with many things, its durability was questionable. This set, however, I can say is extremely durable. It is heavy, but the table disassembles down to the leg and the stools are heavy but manageable, I think they feel nice. My parents love the set, which in the end is the most important thing.
This was so much fun to build, I would have done it for free. The funny part of this story is that I built this while working as a machinist and QA inspector. My boss at the time had recently returned from a trip to Japan in 2012, and wanted a tea house. The most challenging part of the project is that I had to build it off sight (less the shingles) in a bay of our building, and in between machining and inspection jobs. It took almost exactly a year, with two long breaks from the work due to a couple large machining projects I had to take care of. My boss knew I was well equipped for this project. I had five years as a structural and finish carpenter and a college degree in Building Construction/ Construction Management before I took the job with him, the bursting of the housing bubble in 2007 effectively ending my professional carpentry career.
I was very fortunate to have been trained by some great carpenters and generally intelligent guys. A good amount of the work we had done for the last two years of my working as a carpenter was large member, exposed joinery structures. One of the major restrictions I put on myself for this project was there was to be very limited visible fasteners and definitely no metal brackets. All the post and beam structural joints are lapped and mortise and tenon.
My boss had purchased plans on the web, but upon receipt, they made me wish I had just drawn them myself. That is basically what I did on AutoCAD, using the intent of the design as the base. As a carpenter, having plans that help you to accurately visualize and plan a job are key. There was actually a very interesting flow of work, using a CAD system so close to the building of a wood structure that I had never experienced before.
Given the stated issues of the job, namely building it off sight, illuminated a challenge. Moving the 20’ structure approximately 200 yards, from inside to outside and over the opening of a 16’ gate. So, I build the post and beam structure as one unit and the roof as one unit. The post and beam structure was pretty straight forward. The roof section on the other hand required more thought. A design feature of the tea house was that the inner ring of structural beams was higher than the outer ring and the roof rafters and hips had bearing directly on the beams. So I built a temporary structure which replicated the plan and elevation layouts of the beams. This worked very well as I was able to build the roof while standing on the ground and I situated the roof site right next to the post and beam site for convenient construction. The decorative ridge has a structural wood core wrapped in copper. I brazed all the joints together and attached the assembly to the roof structure
Footings were poured by an outside contractor and moving day arrived. We had a large 10 ton forklift that got both sub structures out to the site. We contracted a crane to place both structures, I was pretty happy with how they both fit each other in respective planes. The next bit of work was to shingle. This was fairly straight forward apart from the tricky bits where the faces met at the ridge area. I knew many eyes would be falling on the tea house so it was important to me that everything was well executed.
The next bits were the deck and the doors. The deck had to be lift off panels with no visible fasteners. At first it seemed easy, but as I got going it proved to be a challenge. The doors were a work all in their own right. They were made from patinaed aluminum that was bolted together and frosted polycarbonate panels sandwiched between decorative aluminum panels. We were a machine shop so the machining and waterjet work was routine. The doors had to slide open so I made wheels recessed into the door frames and milled grooves on the deck panels, adding to the deck panel challenges. The last interesting parts were the door handles and puzzle locks which can be seen in the upper corners of the doors. They will only come off if you are very nice.
