Teak Shower Stool

My first commissioned project was to build a shower stool for a friend of mine. His girlfriend had the complaint that she had no where to prop her legs while shaving, and he often wished he could sit in the shower after a long run.

I built this stool from a piece of teak that I bought at Suwanee Lumber just north of Atlanta. The board was only 3/4" thick, so I had to laminate the legs using biscuits and waterproof glue.

I made a couple of mistakes in this project.

Most importantly, I cut the legs the wrong way - the grain runs horizontally as opposed to vertically, which would be ideal for supports that take 99% of their load in that direction...oops. I think the stool will be okay because it is laminated so it can't break all the way through along a pre-existing fissure.

The second mistake I made was not using acetone. I saw on "The New Yankee Workshop" that Norm used acetone before gluing teak together. He said that the natural occurring oil that makes teak ideal for humid environments, also makes it difficult for the glue to adhere. He said that whipping the wood with acetone before gluing would take care of that problem.

Maple Mantle

This mantle required very little fabrication. We bought three large chunks of maple and finished them - that was the extent of the woodwork. The difficulty was in mounting the pieces to create one long mantle to span the entire wall.




We had to bump out the middle section because of the chimney. We installed wooden dowels into the walls, and metal ones into the mortar in the chimney. Keeping the mantle level was also a challenge. It took 4 of us to lift the pieces and align the dowels in the wood before the glue dried.