Notes made between the timber rack and the finish bay

June is not a month when we become lazy. It is the month when we become suspicious. The first real heat arrives, the workshop doors stay open longer, and boards that looked perfectly calm in April begin to announce what they have been holding back. A wide oak plank can move only a little, but a little across a dining top is enough to make a drawer line look foolish or a glass wobble at dinner.

Last June, a client visited to approve boards for a 2.8-metre table for a family flat in New Cairo. One plank had a particularly good ribbon of figure, exactly where she wanted the grain to run through the centre. We set it aside for five more days instead of milling it that afternoon. On the fourth morning, the board had lifted at one corner by just enough to prove our point. She laughed when we showed her the straightedge. We were relieved, because the alternative was discovering the same movement after the table was already in her dining room.

Resting is not magic and it is not an excuse for a vague schedule. Timber arrives, is stickered so air can pass around every face, and is checked against the workshop conditions before we machine it. We look at moisture, but we also look at the board itself: knots, end checks, the way it was sawn, and whether a long strip has been quietly twisting since it left the stack. Then we mill in stages rather than taking a thick board to final dimension in one heroic pass.

This is why a June commission can feel slower at the beginning. A client sees the timber selected and reasonably asks why it is still resting. The honest answer is that we would rather spend a week listening to the material than spend a year explaining a cup in the top. The board is not misbehaving. It is adjusting to the city it now lives in.

The finish question is often phrased as a test with one correct answer: oil or lacquer? It is not. It is a question about appetite, routine, and how much evidence of a home a client is willing to see. A film finish sits on top of the wood and gives a stronger first line of defence against spills. An oil finish lives in the surface and lets the timber feel more like timber. Both can be good. Neither will rescue a table that is used carelessly and never looked after.

In March, a couple from Heliopolis came in with a photo of their current kitchen table. It had a pale ring from a wet plant pot, a blue ink mark at one edge, and a narrow dark patch where their son had apparently made a science project. They apologised for it. We did not. The marks told us more than a mood board could. They cooked at the table, did homework there, and wanted to sand and refresh their next table themselves if the surface ever became tired. That is an oiled-table household.

For that table we used a hardwax oil system, built in thin coats and allowed proper cure time before delivery. It will not make water disappear, and hot pans still belong on a trivet. But a scratch can be cleaned, eased back with fine abrasive, and touched in locally without stripping the whole top. A film finish can be the better choice for a hard-working rental kitchen, a café table, or a client who wants the surface to stay visually uniform with minimal maintenance. The trade-off is that a deep breach in the film asks for a more careful repair.

We always make samples from the same timber as the commission. Under the workshop lights, nearly every finish sounds persuasive. Under tea, tomato, a laptop charger, and a Cairo family supper, the differences become useful. We would rather have an unglamorous conversation about coasters and re-oiling now than sell a finish as invincible. Furniture lasts longer when its promise is specific.

West-facing light is generous until it is not. At midday a room can look serene and evenly lit. By late afternoon, the same room is full of glare, long shadows, and colour that shifts by the minute. In Cairo this is not a small decorative concern. It affects whether a walnut cabinet looks deep and calm or almost red, whether a matte top reads soft or chalky, and whether a chair is inviting at five o'clock when someone actually wants to sit in it.

A client in Zamalek once sent us a clean architectural rendering for a media cabinet. The proposed finish was a cool, pale oak. When we visited the apartment at 4:30, the west wall was carrying enough reflected sun from the neighbouring building to turn the sample nearly gold. We put three offcuts on the floor, walked away for ten minutes, and came back to a roomful of different answers. The client chose a slightly smoked tone that looked modest in the morning and settled into balance by sunset.

We now ask where the windows face before promising a finish. Sometimes we ask for a phone video taken late in the day. We consider open grain, sheen, metal hardware, curtain colour, and the shadow cast by the piece itself. A glossy surface can throw a hard line across a room; a very dark stain can flatten the grain until it has no life at all. None of this means west light is a problem. It means the furniture should answer the room that exists, not the render that arrived by email.

For a west-facing room, we usually favour a finish with low to moderate sheen, sample it beside the actual window if possible, and leave enough tonal contrast between the timber and surrounding floor. The aim is not to neutralise the sun. It is to give it something worth changing across the day.