There is a corner of our sun room with just a little space between two windows where a stand for a plant or statue could go, so I made this antique-style piece to fit right in there. The pedestal stand is made from cherry to match the table we have in the same room. Now cherry usually starts out quite pale in colour, but it can darken over time to a much richer red-brown, primarily due to UV exposure from the sun. In fact, you don't want to have a new cherry piece in the sun with something on the surface since the covered part will remain light while the rest of it darkens. We have newish cherry hardwood flooring at our front entrance and it is noticeably lighter in colour under the carpet we have there. I guess when we replace the carpet, we'll need to make sure it's the same size or a bit bigger - but I digress.
My thought with this pedestal was to accelerate the darkening so it started out life with the "good" colour already. There are various chemical means to do this, but it turns out that if you just leave it in the sun for a while, it will darken nicely. This one was outside for 3 or 4 sunny days.
The pedestal ended up being a bit more involved one might expect. All in all it has about 89 different pieces including 20 or so for assembly and alignment, so
fabricating them all took a bit of time. Rather than glueing the whole assembly together, there is a 5/16 bolt with a wing nut on the bottom that ties together the top, middle and bottom sections.
| Material: | Cherry |
| Construction: | Multi-piece assembly |
| Finish: | 3 coats Miniwax Wipe-on Poly, clear Satin |
| Size: | 11" x 11" x 36" |
| Done: | July 18, 2014 |
