Instant Furniture

Furniture that's quick and easy to build out of stuff you find on your island.

I'll be adding to this collection as time goes on.

There are also a few furniture tricks scattered among my Fifty Handy Tricks

Furniture that interests me is usually what Wade Tarzia would call Nomad Furniture

These chairs are found all over Africa, at least wherever tourists go.
They're really comfortable, look great, and last forever.
This one is unusually small for the type, but is plenty comfortable.

As you can see from the drawing (picture 4) both boards are 12" wide and 3 feet long.
The slot is 11" from the bottom of the backboard.
The narrow part of the seat board is 4.25" wide.

For more details of construction, check out Jesse's Plank Chair

Very comfortable.
Perfect for warm and cold environments, nice on the skin, just breatheable enough.
This box had some wadded paper packing materials in it that gave it just the right amount of cushioning. I lounged in this chair in utter comfort and watched five episodes of "Battlestar Galactica" with the Instructables gang.

Notice my comfy stylish hat and scarf made from an airline blanket.

If you crush the box the right way you get nice armrests also.
Here's how quick it is to custom-fit it to your body:

Great nomadic furniture, your books are already packed for your next move.
The only problem is they may slump over time and collapse.

A friend of mine has his walls lined with these, and each time I see them they're leaning just a little more. I haven't heard from him in a while, perhaps he's trapped under a pile of books.

Here's one way to keep your milk crate shelves from slumping.

These chunks of aluminum extrusion press-fit over two adjacent crates.
They keep the structure rigid.

I cut these from longer extrusions I bought at a scrapyard.
At the end of the shelf you could use these to clamp the milkcrates to a vertical sideboard for extra structure. If you worry about earthquakes you could anchor that to the wall.

Actually, milk crates seem to slump a lot less than they used to.
Maybe it's time to return yours and borrow some new ones.

The supports appear to be ladders from a set of bunkbeds.
They're hinged to the horizontal back boards.
The shelves rest on the rungs of the ladders and can be lifted off.
The shelves are shaped a bit like antique Hawaiian surfboards.
The whole unit is lightweight and surprisingly solid.
It folds instantly for transport.

Believe it or not, one of our neighbors orphaned this fine unit at the curb, along with the usual dead vacuum cleaners and crts.

These were the long stock racks at Emeryville Squidlabs, built by the previous tenant.

The construction method should be obvious from these photos.
Each of the brackets consists of a diagonally-sectioned box structure.
These very simple plywood brackets are held together with drywall screws.
Very strong, very quick to build. The large protruding vertical bolts kept the pipes, boards, and other long things stored on them from toppling off sideways.

These photos were taken with the shelves partly disassembled.

These are the stock shelves by the garage door at Emeryville Squidlabs.

Look carefully. This is a very strong set of shelves made without any rabbets or mortises.
The whole thing can be made very quickly with repeated square cuts.

The vertical boards are 3/4" plywood with 3/4" square plywood cheekpieces sandwiched against them.
The ends of the 2"X10" shelves are inserted in the gaps between these square cheekpieces.
The 1"X2" end caps on the verticals keep the shelves constrained horizontally and stiffen the verticals further. The top of this shelving unit supports a storage loft.

It's very comfortable and has a nice flexible feeling to it.
It's held together with four threaded rods with nuts and washers on the ends.

Seen at New Hope Village near Guatemala City.

According to the photo albums in the dining room, someone built this chair early during the construction of the project from scrapwood.

Here's a slick bench that was already at Squidlabs when we moved in at Emeryville.
It's comfortable to sit on and is easy to make.

The pictures tell it all.

You could hinge the seat and use the area inside it for storage.
You could also turn it on its side and use the ribs for shelves.

I'll be adding more instant furnishings as time goes on.
In the meantime, see more instant furniture, sawhorses etc. among the Fifty Handy Tricks

We've all seen Shaker "ladder-back" chairs, but howabout monastery convertible ladder chairs?

It looks like a normal but fancy chair, but it turns into a fancy but normal-looking stepladder, which...

Arwen got this from the maker who claimed it to be a copy of a chair found in an ancient monastery somewhere.