It’s a bitter irony of life: Children’s imagination is unlimited, but their capacity to realize it won’t be developed until they grow up. And over those decades, as kids become adults who learn how to use computers, drive a car, and pay rent, they lose something. Maybe creativity doesn’t die as we grow older, and one’s career can always still peak, but I think most of us would agree that the sensation of boundlessness fades as we age—that the sheer possibility of it all feels more finite.
Which is why this dresser, built by carpenter Chris Salomone but modeled precisely after a pencil sketch from his 6-year-old son, is so lovely. As both a dad and a prominent YouTuber, Salomone shares the full build process in the video above.
Long story short, he wanted to build his son’s vision, but he also wanted to build his son a stable, safe dresser. So Salomone constructed the wavy line sketch as a solid, rectangular dresser that’s more or less like any other. But then in the finishing process, he framed his son’s lines onto the dresser with a prominent black line, then sanded down the surface to undulate with the same waves as the child’s scrawl.
As a result, the piece is the 3D representation of the drawing, but it also has a charming, 2D-looking facade, as if the sketch were pulled from the paper into real life.
This isn’t the first time we’ve seen children’s sketches become real objects. Most famously, Ikea runs a yearly call for drawings from kids 12 and under, in which the company turns the artwork into limited-edition plush toys. Both projects demonstrate that sometimes, it is possible to make a child’s dreams quite literally come true.
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