Leave Request

Thank you! Your request is on the bench

Your message has been noted successfully. I read every request personally and reply within two working days — usually in the evening, when the garage door is closed and the last coat of finish is drying.

Back to Home How to Get There
01

Request received

Your details are stored securely and used only to answer your enquiry — never shared, never added to any mailing list.

02

Personal reply

I'll write back by email or call you — whichever you prefer. Photos of your space are always welcome in the reply.

03

Time to build

We'll agree on a consultation, course seat or custom plan — and your project gets its first pencil line.

While you wait: five lessons my first stool taught me

Since you have a few minutes, let me tell you about the stool. It stands in the corner of my garage to this day — oak legs, pine seat, and a gentle but undeniable wobble. It was the first thing I ever built, in 2016, and it remains the most instructive object I own. Here are the five lessons it drilled into me, the same ones I pass to every beginner who walks into a course.

Lesson one: wood moves. I cut all four legs to identical lengths on a Saturday and assembled them on a Sunday — by which time the pine seat had taken on enough moisture to cup slightly, and my perfect geometry was history. Wood is not a static material; it expands and contracts with the weather. Now I let timber acclimatise in the garage for at least a week before cutting anything to final size.

Garage rule: buy your timber a week early, stack it with spacers between the boards, and let it get used to your space. Your joints will thank you for years.

Lesson two: measure from one face, always

My four legs were each measured from whichever edge happened to be nearest — and each edge had its own idea of where zero was. The accumulated error was barely a millimetre per leg, which is exactly enough for a wobble. Now every measurement on a project references the same face and the same edge, marked with a pencil squiggle the moment the board enters the shop. Boring habit, transformative results.

Lessons three to five: sharp, slow, and proud

Third: a dull tool is a dangerous and discouraging tool. My borrowed saw was blunt, so I forced it — and forced cuts wander. Sharpening is not an advanced skill; it is day-one maintenance. Fourth: glue-up is a race you cannot win in a panic. Dry-fit everything first, lay out your clamps in advance, and only then open the bottle. And fifth — the lesson I treasure most: a wobbly stool you built yourself teaches you more than a flawless one from a shop. Keep your first project forever. Mine still stands in the corner, reminding me where the wobble started.

That's the stool's whole syllabus: respect movement, measure from one face, keep tools sharp, dry-fit before glue, and stay proud of imperfect first attempts. I look forward to hearing about yours.

— Floris Brouwer, Amstelveen