Bespoke Driftwood Furniture, Storytelling Chairs and Compost Toilets

A Bog Standard Compost Toilet goes to Nannerth Fawr Farm, Rhayader

We’ve just come back from delivering another Bog Standard compost toilet for a campsite in Rhayader, Mid Wales. Usually the toilets arrive on a pallet, but because this campsite is only an hour’s drive away we decided to make a day of it. Alison and Andre Gallagher are setting up a wild camping area on their farm and ordered one of our compost toilets for use in their beautiful field. Nannerth Farm offers a whole range of tourist accommodation, from holiday cottages, to wild camping to an original gypsy wagon trailer. Our bow top toilet couldn’t have gone to a better home!

Rustic Oak Driftwood Bed

It’s been a long time since the last post, busy busy busy, and yes New Years and Christmas! Here is the latest oak driftwood bed for a local couple Alma and John. They have just collected it and are thrilled with it.

“You read my mind, it’s exactly what I wanted”

See more rustic oak beds here.

Compost toilet delivery to Racquety Lodge Campsite

We are pleased to have just returned from Hay-on-Wye where we have delivered this compost toilet to the lovely owners of Racquety Lodge. Thank you for showing us around your lovely farm and for ordering another of our compost toilets.

‘We love our Free Range Loo. In fact visitors are very attracted to it! They long to mount the steps and sit in splendid isolation contemplating their next move…. well the loo works really well and is a pleasure to have in the garden. A worthwhile investment.’

Ros and Geoff Garratt, Racquets Farm, Hay-on-Wye, Powys.

www.racquetyfarm.co.uk

Driftwood collecting for making driftwood beds.

Always a good thing to stock up on driftwood while it is still lovely to go outside….can anybody tell me if I found a coconut in Wales…?

thanks to Giles for bringing Catrina his boat to sail back some of this lovely driftwood.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Latest Driftwood Bed

Just a quick one showing off the latest driftwood bed we have completed.

See more driftwood beds here

New Gypsy Caravan Inspired Compost Toilet

This compost toilet is so fresh off the workshop floor it still smells of cedar wood. I’m so happy to finally design a toilet that makes pooing fashionable.

Thanks for Ash, Franta, Ben and Ossian for all your help. Click here to see more about this compost toilet.

Driftwood Storytelling Chair

Good-bye to this lovely storytelling chair going all the way to Bristol. Here is the quote from Amanda

“The storytelling chair is superb. It was well worth the wait.

You have made a brilliant job of it and I will enjoy it in the years to come.”

More storytelling chairs here

Oak Storytellers Bench for Outdoor School Playground

Here are some photos of a Storytellers Bench we made for Croft Church of England Primary School. It is one of the biggest we’ve made which is the main reason why it never got photographed.

Click here for more outdoor storytelling furniture

Driftwood Bed for Simbad the Sailor or Robinson Crusoe

Here is the driftwood bed created to go with the driftwood storytelling chair. Now named “The Robinson Crusoe bed”….Please edit out the “behind the scenes” parts in your mind…

More driftwood furniture here

Good-bye Slate Dining Room Table and Chairs

We are happy to bid farewell to this dining room table set bound for it’s new home in Essex….Bon-Voyage

Follow link for more slate dining room tables.

New Arrival

Ok if you have not received your furniture this week then here is my excuse….A new baby girl, my greatest work so far!!! Still no name yet but we still have 6 weeks to go.

Thanks for all the lovely messages and I promise to get back to the furniture soon.

Love from Paul

Furniture for Film

We’ve just finished building this solid driftwood chair for a film being made in Malta about Sinbad the Sailor.

The look is ‘fresh from the sea’, retaining all the character and charm of the driftwood that was collected from the very shores where these pictures were taken.

Driftwood is such a wonderful resource to build with, as it involves lots of sailing on my part to hunt it out …!

Driftwood-storytelling-chair Driftwood-chair

Click here for more driftwood storytelling chairs.

Il était une fois… (Once upon a time…)

Our first ‘Chaise de Conte’ has been delivered to a French school in the Ariège. The headmaster of the school in the mountains of the south of France found our storytelling chair using google and got in touch. Well, luckily my wife speaks good French, so she was able to understand what a Chaise de Conte means and we were able to send their story tellers chair off over the channel to be enjoyed by our first group of French children. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a new relationship with French schools. I like the sound of it: Vive La Chaise de Conte!

Outdoor Slate Dining Table Set

Here’s the latest garden furniture set we built in time for a 2 year old’s birthday party, where it was greatly enjoyed by young and old. A new feature to this set are the wooden stools for each end of the table, which were specially commissioned to complement the long benches,with optional detachable slate seats.

A version of this table can also be made with a hole in the centre for a parasol – essential in the glorious weather we’re enjoying at the moment!

See the full gallery on Posterous

Wooden Wedding Arch for Lucy and Roland

Our dear friends Lucy and Roland just got married at their home in the south of France, and I had the privilege of making their wooden wedding arch for them to walk through as newly married man and wife. It was a beautiful ceremony with all their family and friends present to celebrate with them, and the sun shined down after many days of unexpected rain!

This is a new style of wedding arch to add to my portfolio, as each one I make is unique, using materials available locally. Lucy and Roland had just finished laying a wooden floor in what was to become the giant wedding reception room, and there was a big pile of douglas fir off cuts left over, which proved to be perfect for making lots of individual shapes – hearts, flowers and stars – which I then wove together to form the arch. Douglas fir is great because it has an attractive peachy colour and will last a long time outside. The arch will remain in Lucy and Roland’s garden long after their wedding day, where they plan to grow beautiful jasmine plants up each side.

Congratulations Mr and Mrs Mirouze!

Latest Driftwood Furniture

Here are some pictures of our latest driftwood furniture, just sent out to happy customers: A giant story telling chair that has gone to Abracadabra Day Nursery in West Sussex; and a double driftwood bed sent to a happy lady in Norfolk.

The giant storytelling chair is one of the chunkiest yet – they just seem to get bigger and stronger all the time!

Look out for the double storytelling bench that is going out soon. It will take four people to lift that one!!

children's story time chair driftwood chair reading chair closeup of storytelling driftwood chair rustic bed rustic willow bed

Yew driftwood bed for the Pen-y-Bont Hotel

Another driftwood bed, another happy customer. We’ve just finished this bed that is going to the owners of the lovely Pen-Y-bont Hotel which has the most majestic location at the Tal-y-llyn lake. Made from yew, sycamore, oak, holly, ash and chestnut. This is only the headboard, the tailboard, slats and runners did not make it into the photo-shoot, but do come with the bed.

“Wow, what a bed, I mean it’s magical, quite majestic.” Love & Best Wishes from Brian & Angela Pen-y-Bont Hotel

See the full gallery on Posterous

Summer Storytelling Chairs

storytelling chair

Storytelling chairs are the most popular items of furniture when the sun is shinning and the weather is sweet. Here are the latest works to leave the farm in the week that we shall dub the storytelling week.

Here are more of our storytelling chairs

summer storytime chair storytelling chair het vertellen van verhalen stoel

Sentry box for National Trust, Cliveden Estate,

We’ve just come back from delivering a brand new sentry box to the National Trust Cliveden Estate in Buckinghamshire.

The National Trust commissioned the sentry box as a feature for their new maze which is opening to the public on the 8th April. The sentry box is at the entrance to the new maze, which has been built with 1,100 yew trees. We were allowed a sneak preview of the maze and had fun trying to find our way out again!

We built the sentry box using traditional oak timber frame techniques, with attractive wooden arches, mortise and tenon joints, cedar shingles for the roof, and an arched oak stable door. The spiral filial on the roof is visible from a long way away and attracts visitors to the maze the moment they enter Cliveden’s beautiful walled garden.

National Trust Project Coordinator Claire Primett said of their new sentry box, “It’s so beautiful! Much better than we could have ever imagined.”

Claire contacted us to build the sentry box after having seen our compost toilets on the Free Range Designs web site to ask if we could adapt our designs to meet their requirements for a sentry box. It is true, however, that a structure like this would actually make a rather stunning oak compost toilet! Perhaps they will come back to ask for some timber frame compost toilets to match their new sentry box…

Here are some pictures of the sentry box, from early construction in the workshop in Wales to the box’s final resting place next to the new maze on Cliveden Estate.

New Rustic Heart Garden Bench

Fresh off the press: this rustic oak garden bench. Made from reclaimed fence posts and sturdy oak planks, this bench is made to last a lifetime in your garden.