Building Furniture, Frying Fish

Most of the furniture in our apartment (and most of the Apartment itself) was built, designed, and/or remodeled by us (mostly Taiei and David, the two Stanford engineers who originally found and set up the apartment).

So with that, Taiei decided to design and build a TV stand for our apartment. Fortunately for me, I got a chance to help out and see (and document!) some of the process. It was a lot of fun getting into the mix and experiencing the satisfaction of having helped produce a finished piece.

Here is Taiei at the schematics:

Two of the design team members offered to help as well. Here is Taiei providing some direction:

Made of solid sheets of metal, the stand had to be welded together piece by piece. Fortunately, we had a master welder helping us:

We then used electric wire brushes to smooth out the surfaces (Taiei had previously wire-brushed all the medal to polish it):

Unfortunately we had to deal with flying metal. You can see one of the metal fibers that shot into my shorts, and another that grazed my arm:

After polishing with the wire brush and wiping down all the surfaces with paint thinner, we applied urethane to prevent the metal from rusting:

We were excited as the piece neared the finish line:

We also had enough leftover material to make a separate box that we may mount in the kitchen:

There is a cool pattern that emerged from brushing the metal:

In addition to experimenting at the workshop, we also had a chance to experiment in the kitchen. We bought a fish from a local market and attempted to filet it (Taiei was banking on his Japanese genetics; I was referencing my cookbook, How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman):

We also bought some prawns (again, Taiei took the lead on prep):

We’ve been getting some fresh organic vegetables delivered to us from Shan State up in the north of the country. They are incredible. Here is a picture of the beats:

Here are some of the final dishes (we decided to prepare the fish two ways: 1) with rosemary, and 2) battered. The second picture below shows the former):

Finally, I wanted to mention that I had a chance to meet up with colleagues last weekend. We went outside of the city to a friend’s house. It was nice being able to spend time with friends in a tranquil environment.