Hotter than hot: Welding lessons for the DIYer

Welding is not for the timid.

Temperatures above 7,000 degrees — Fahrenheit? Centigrade? At that point, who cares? About a gazillion sparks shooting off the grinding tool. And then there’s the warning from our teacher not to wear synthetic fabrics because they could melt right into your skin if they catch fire.

Besides, it’s physically demanding work. And when was the last time you had to apply sunscreen to work indoors? (The welder gives off enough UV rays to burn skin.)

But my five-hour beginner’s class in welding ($160) was great fun. At the end, I had welded a steel “pillow” and gained some confidence that I could figure out a simple repair and, with help, maybe make something simple.

I learned the basics of arc welding (or MIG, metal inert gas) with five other people in Matt Jones’ cavernous Molten Metal Works studio in Echo Park. It’s the easiest kind of welding, he says, and the equipment to do it can be rented from home supply stores. This is not a class for aspiring structural welders; it’s for artists and DIY metalworkers.

'Bookshelf' by Alex Johnson holds volumes of fun design

Stacked cinder blocks and boards work just as well as most, but they’re nowhere near as fun — or as optimistic in this e-book world — as the swirling, angled, wacky shelves in Alex Johnson’s new book. “Bookshelf” (Thames & Hudson, $24.95) has more than 300 color photos of minimalist, ladder-shaped shelves, jumbled boxes, swirling towers and the occasional farm animal. (That's Estante Vaco, above, by Brazilian designer Dennys Tormen). One disorienting design built into a staircase holds 2,000 books, but many others were created without much apparent thought to storing more than a few volumes.

“It’s partly that designers like taking something small and basic and playing with it, and there’s nothing much more basic than a bookcase,” Johnson said from his home in Britain, where his three children, ages 3, 9 and 11, are all big readers.

“The truth for many readers is that their bookshelves are nearly as important to them as their books,” he said, adding that he remembers the size and shape and smell of his childhood bookcases with as much fondness as the books in them.

Nobody & Co. designer Alisee Matta, whose Bibliochaise is included in the book, said life in a small, book-filled apartment inspired her to create a leather armchair that envelopes the sitter with 16 feet of shelf space. “Sitting and living in the middle of your favorite books is a very strong feeling,” she says in “Bookshelf.”

Plug mobs: Free seedlings for school gardeners

Mud Baron was trained as a cabinetmaker and learned to economize by finding supplies no one else wanted. When he became a master gardener working to get supplies to school gardens, he figured there had to be a better way than shopping retail.

“Every industry has extra things,” he says. So he started asking growers for the “scratch-and-dent piles.”

Plug Connection in Vista had extras to donate, owner Tim Wada says. In 2006, Baron started what became “plug mobs” — events at which anyone connected with school gardens can show up and get all the seeds and plugs they can use. Community gardeners are welcome once the school gardeners are done.

Mud Baron, an evangelical force in school gardens

It’s not easy to keep pace with the youth gardening evangelist Mud Baron — in the real world or the virtual one. To keep up, you need to relentlessly advocate for schoolyard gardens full of food and flowers. You need be a constant presence on Twitter. (He has more than 24,000 followers.) You need to schlep all over Southern California to collect seeds. And you need to be willing to make people mad, to push teenagers to get dirty and to nudge companies to make donations.

A bearded, baggy-pants wearing Unitarian, Baron might quote Cicero, Lou Reed, Jonathan Swift or Wynton Marsalis to make a point. But he’s also not above poop jokes born of the manure that feeds the gardens.

Essentially unemployed — or at least without a regular paycheck — he hustles at every opportunity. When he leaves a high school garden in Pasadena, he picks a plastic pail full of radishes as a gift for a café. Another day, after working in a garden in San Pedro, he brings a bartender a big bouquet that gets set in an ice bucket by the register.

Baron, rarely without his San Diego Padres cap on his head and his pruning shears in his pocket, is a rabble rousing master gardener with a floral arranger’s touch. Or, as he likes to say, he has tattoos of Martha Stewart and Cornel West on his behind. (We didn’t check, but his girlfriend says that’s not literally true.)

The idea is that no school garden should fail for lack of stuff — so he rustles up seeds, small seedlings called plugs, worm castings, compost, bulbs. Black plastic sheets discarded on a film set become liners for mulch. Last year, he says, he raised $5 million in in-kind donations.

Walker Zanger's new tiles made from reclaimed Indonesian teak

Walker Zanger has introduced a collection of teak tiles made from wood reclaimed from construction projects in Indonesia. The collection, called AnTeak, appealed to the company because it “is always looking for tiles with an interesting story,” said Jared Becker, vice president of design and marketing.

The teak grain is visible on the tiles, which come in several stains and shapes, including herringbone, hexagon and chevron. They are meant to fit into an array of design styles, including Asian, old European and Midcentury Modern. Walker Zanger, which already sells tiles made of bamboo, is working to make the teak tiles with a resin finish so they can be used in showers, Becker said.

“The wood is taken from buildings being taken down for new construction. They’re already cured, because they’ve been exposed to the elements for 75 or 100 years,” Becker said. That gives the wood “a wonderful patina.”

A salvaged-wood revolution: Turning more fallen trees into furniture

Three men in neon-colored hard hats push the blade through a black acacia tree trunk, slicing it into three 1/2-inch-thick slabs and exposing stunning lines and swirls.

"That acacia's beautiful," said John Dominguez, the director of a 2-month-old partnership between Anaheim-based West Coast Arborists and Woodhill Firewood in Irvine, adding that the old-growth grain is something that "you'll never see" on the market today.

It takes eight minutes to cut each 11-foot-long slab because the wood is so hard, said Tom Rogers, owner of Woodhill Firewood, which takes in 600 tons a day from tree trimming and removal jobs. The acacia should yield eight to 10 slabs, he said. Each might surpass 250 pounds, and with luck they'll be sold to artisans to make tables and other pieces.

The tree, which fell in Monrovia Canyon Park in December, and a nearby deodar cedar that fell in Arcadia, are examples of how the popularity of salvaged wood furniture has produced a secondary trend: rising efforts to ensure that urban trees, including those that fall during storms, don't end up in landfills.

It's not a new idea to turn such trees into lumber, and some communities such as Lompoc have embraced it. The state has even lent equipment to those who want to try milling. But until recently, trees that fell or were removed by homeowners and cities in Southern California were mostly treated as trash -- perhaps firewood or mulch, officials say.

PHOTO GALLERY: How salvaged trees become hand-crafted furniture

Dominguez, who has been charmed by wood since playing standup bass in youth symphonies, said he would like to make more connections with furniture makers and wood artisans and see more closed-loop recycling: A tree falls and gets turned into lumber that's used in flooring in, say, a city building. "Walk into City Hall, and you're walking on street trees," he said.

Ferris Kawar, a recycling specialist in Burbank, says about 1% of what goes to the landfill is wood -- an amount he calls "obscene." Branches from downed trees become mulch, he says, but the trunks often go to the landfill.

Knitting, DJing, book binding: Learn, or teach, anything at Skillshare

Poet William Mark talks about the role of consonants and alliteration in poetry, and he uses “Leaves of Grass” to demonstrate his points. It feels like a college seminar, but the class is just $10 and takes place in the back of the cavernous downtown shop the Last Bookstore. Mark’s students signed up through Skillshare, an online listing of classes that can be anywhere. (That's Mark pictured here, left, with student Robert Cotton on a Saturday afternoon this month.)

Skillshare intends to “democratize education” by capitalizing on people’s curiosity to learn and on their passion to share what they know. The peer-to-peer approach focuses on creative classes that are not easy to find elsewhere. So don’t look for aerobics, language or yoga classes.

The students can be any age, people who want to start a business or try something altogether new, says Danya Cheskis-Gold, Skillshare’s community manager. Teachers, too, might be people who want to build their experiences toward a job.

The staff at Skillshare, which began in 2011, will help novice teachers with course descriptions, pricing decisions and other logistics. Anyone can offer a class anywhere, Cheskis-Gold says.

In Los Angeles, sites include a new Arts District club called the Hub, a place where people seeking social change get together. Nationally, Skillshare has taught thousands of students; a few months ago the total was around 6,000, Cheskis-Gold says.

The bookstore is designed to be a place with peer-to-peer activities, so Skillshare was a good fit, Mark says. Other classes there have included book binding, DJing and Introduction to Knitting and Other Lessons in Patience. Classes at the store have each cost $10; the average cost of Skillshare classes is about $20.

Cheskis-Gold teaches in New York; one of her classes is ... how to teach a class.

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Palm Springs Art Museum plans architecture and design annex

The Palm Springs Art Museum plans to create an architecture and design exhibition and study space by restoring a Midcentury Modern building by E. Stewart Williams. The 1960 glass-walled building in downtown Palm Springs, a short walk from the museum, was built in the International style to house the Santa Fe Federal Savings and Loan. In its new incarnation,the building will be called the Palm Springs Art Museum’s Edwards Harris Center for Architecture and Design.

“It’s incredibly unique," museum spokesman Bob Bogard said. "All of the walls are glass. It’s a really elegant building.”

Los Angeles architect Leo Marmol, whose Marmol + Radziner Architects will oversee the restoration of the building, called Williams "an incredibly powerful Modernist who yet had grace and sensitivity" in his designs. The museum, Marmol said this week, will be one of the few stand-alone architecture and design spaces in the country; in a time of economic uncertainty, the project is a message of hope, showing that the museum is "committed to our future by preserving our past."

Casual and bustling is just perfect for the Armistead family

Nothing is perfect in Matthew and Shelley Armistead’s kitchen — which, in their case, is just perfect. The glass-fronted cupboards have a mishmash of glasses and Champagne flutes, vintage egg cups, a Superman mug, African tea cups and Beatrix Potter oatmeal bowls from Shelley’s childhood. The counters are covered in fresh produce and dishes in progress, some of them trials for Soho House, the private club in West Hollywood where Matthew is chef and Shelley is general manager. Friends and colleagues drop in. The couple’s two little boys wander in and out. The scene is the essence of casual and cool — perfect because it’s not entirely perfect.

In the three years the Armisteads have been in Los Angeles, they have had three homes, finally settling in Mar Vista in a house with a light-filled kitchen with five windows that open onto the backyard. The yard, kitchen and adjacent dining area are the home’s heart.

PHOTO GALLERY: The Armisteads at home

“We have this big house and we never use it. We’re always in here,” says Matthew, 40, a former furniture maker who started cooking as a way to fund a skiing habit.

“Just messing around in the kitchen, that’s what I love. You can literally just do something you’ve never done before.”

Out of the Box Collective gourmet food delivery

Wednesday is food shopping day for Shelley and Matthew Armistead, but they don’t have to leave the house. Groceries come to them from farmers and small producers whose products are gathered and delivered by Out of the Box Collective.

On one recent day, the Armisteads’ family plan included salmon and pork, almonds, eggs that were pale blue and brown, three kinds of berries and olive oil. (That's Matthew, chef at Soho House in West Hollywood, unpacking a box as Shelley looks on.)

“We work so many hours, I don’t want to spend my time in Whole Foods when I can be with the kids,” says Shelley, Soho House's general manager. 

Jennifer Piette, who lives in Malibu, founded Out of the Box about a year ago. Subscribers get weekly deliveries of produce from the Santa Barbara farmers market, plus other foods from the region, a meal plan and recipes.

A box meant for a couple ($160) would include food for five meals, plus fruit and extras such as eggs and fair-trade chocolate or spices. A family box ($195) is meant for four people. Other combinations cater to vegetarians, people with allergies and those who don’t cook much. (At left, some greens on a cutting board.)

“When you have kids opening this box, they’re getting this food literacy,” Piette says. “They’re seeing a cherimoya. They’re seeing that a peach comes in summer and citrus in winter.”

Delivery areas are listed by ZIP Code.

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Photos by Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times.