Project Pew

 

The pew in its current state

We have recently taken delivery of this old pew, which came out of James' & Leo's place, well at least the chapel adjoining their house; a pretty impressive space in the early stages of renovation and alteration. 

Like all old chapel pews round here, it is constructed out of some amazing woods: mostly Yellow and Pitch Pine, which originally came back as ballast on the returning slate-carrying ships from America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

These pews were all set at an angle to better face the pulpit, as the chapel has a squarer footprint than most. I'm going to square off the end at the left in the picture, but keep the angled end as is. The plan is to fit it into our conservatory opposite the kitchen door. At nearly two metres long it is nearly a third the length of the conservatory, but as it is only about nineteen inches deep front to back, it shouldn't look out of place or too large for the space.

I've got it down in the studio at the moment, where I've got plenty of room to work on it. But it will be a bugger to manhandle up from the bottom garden - it already weighs a metaphorical ton, before any of the reinforcements and the end are fitted. I think it will have to be disassembled and then rebuilt in situ once we've got the bits back up to the top: kind of appropriate anyway, as they were built in place in the chapel originally.