The design for the face frame of this banquette was quite straightforward. Frame and raised panel construction, with some of the joints being mitered and some of them off angled, but what mattered is how they lined up with the rest of the cabinetry in the room.
The face frame material was maple which is solid, hardwood that holds its shape well with small pieces, it doesn’t ding or mar easily, and takes paint well.
To start construction we needed a pattern. First to layout the left and right dimensions of the triangles and rectangles to figure out what the space was we were left with for the center three rectangles. This process gave us our pattern. All of the face frame material was 1.5″ wide except for the base which was 3.5″ wide. Once those shapes were defined and the face frame material was clamped into place we could figure out the measurements of the raised panels. We used 3/4 material for these, cut the shapes, and ran them through the router table for the raised panels. We did that for all four shapes and finally for the three center panels.
Once all the miters were biscuit-ed and everything had a final sanding we took it all apart and started the glue up. Since everything was somehow fixed together we had to do it in one shot, we couldn’t really do sub-assemblies. The glue up probably took about two hours too get every joint to sit the way we wanted it too and we used up all the clamps we had in the shop!
Once the glue dried it was off too the paint room. It was sprayed with coats of alkyd primer and sanded in between coats. The final color was a semigloss that matched the rest of the cabinetry in the room.
For the seat back we made a sectional curved ribbing system.The cushions are removable and there is storage underneath. The upholstery was done locally.
