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Our newest bespoke design, made for an Oregon client who loves our furniture and owns three of our pieces.  This is a small media cabinet designed to store TV, VCR, DVD, and other media components behind natural woven cane cabinet doors. The woven cane mesh or webbing in the door panels masks the appearance of the electronics, but will easily allow the IR or infra red signal from the remote control unit to pass through to the components inside the cabinet. While mocking up for this cabinet, we found that the remote would work perfectly well though this woven cane and also through metal brass or bronze chicken wire plus a layer of gingham fabric, making it unnecessary to buy an IR extender or a RF converter. Our customer chose the look of the woven cane plus had us mark discreet X patterns in white on the cane. This cabinet is made from the fast growing and plentiful Northwest native Alder wood. The new wood is hand-distressed to evoke age and an antique, worm-eaten old world antique look. Multiple coats of durable casein, or milk, paint give this cabinet a hard-wearing exterior surface that does not need to be protected from tea cups or wine glasses. As always, our furniture can be built to your specifications including custom sizes, colors, and many other options. The inspiration for this one started with a magazine picture of a similar antique cabinet which had drawers. We can substitute brass or bronze chicken wire in two sizes, and / or fabric for the door panels. For close up full resolution photos of this outstanding distressed finish please visit this link to photos on flick’r. When viewing flick’r images, be sure to click the image until the background goes black, then click “view all sizes” and “original” in the top right, for the full resolution file. The magic of this finish is in the subtle details which can only be appreciated up close.

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Size: This one 46 x 70 x 30.75 with two 10 inch leaves
(custom sizes gladly).  Contact us for shipping quote (include your zip)
Price: Starts at $3289 (no leaves) in ash // $3589 solid walnut
With leaves at this size and in ash: $3889 // $4189 solid walnut

This is a nice solid rectangular double pedestal dining table at 70 x 46 x 30.75(h), designed and built by us in solid ash.  Pullout breadboard ends accept two 10 inch wide leaves, which expand the table to 90 inches long. The table will generously seat 6 without leaves, and 8 to 10 people with the two leaves in place.

The design challenge here was to get as small a profile at the floor and yet get as much tilt resistance as possible.  Our client and designer loved the white painted pedestal table bases from the table that went to Wisconsin, but wanted a dark brunette, masculine, refined variation, and the shape was derived from first turning the white ones upside down, then working with the shape.  A solid pedestal with ash floor plate was planned, but the floor plate looked funny (like an alien hovercraft, seriously).  I thought the pedestals had the look of old lanterns, and substituting a plain steel base for the hovercraft seemed like the thing to do.   We turned to our friend and colleague Eric Sands to fabricate smaller diameter steel bases with solid centers, each weighing in at about 100 pounds and greatly adding to the much-needed counterweight.  To these we added a rusty rich patina.    Eric also built us eight leaf-arm brackets which keep the sturdy breadboard ends in place.

This has a hand planed and distressed surface.  It wears a rich, dark, neutral brown color which is really harmonious in many interior schemes and just goes with everything.  See close views below.  Individual boards in the top are slightly offset in a deliberate manner in order to add to the texture and distressed nature of the piece.  The table will be placed in a large kitchen and will be used A LOT. The finish is a durable, distressed, water, wine and food resistant “living” finish.  It is a wearable surface that will not develop rings or stains but will instead look better and better over time as a dining surface.  While we avoid putting pans directly from the stove on such a surface,  is not necessary to protect the finish with placemats or coasters for normal dining. 

The failing yellow latex paint on this cabinet needed to be completely removed and a fresh coat of red milk paint (as “bole”) and three more layers of subtly crackled and chemically aged soft greys were applied to give it a dry and chalky old antique Swedish finish.  We used a candle holder that served as color inspiration.  A white stripe adds interest and a few molecules of silver leaf add some sparkle around the glass moldings.  The way I work is this:  the client finds a portable inspiration piece to guide the finishing – could be a chair, box, drawer, or lacking this, maybe a few paint chips from the paint center.  I then make one or more finish samples in the studio and the client takes these home to view in the home’s particular lighting conditions in the room where the piece will be.  When approved I then use the finish sample to guide the finishing of the piece, and the client can come to the studio to approve and give suggestions or feedback.   Take a look at these cloooooose up pictures on Flick’r (and be sure to click “view all sizes” and then “original” to really zoom in, because the real beauty of this finish is in the fine detail.

click pictures to enlarge

Size:  46 x 96 x 30(h)

Price: $3185 (this size and options)  Contact us for all custom options including shipping quote to your location — please include your zip.

Here is another dining table designed and built for a Wisconsin client.  The form needed to be massive in order to seat a large family and to compete with a large granite topped island in the kitchen.  The finish was to be a multi layered painted crackled distressed finish that would be durable, and our clients liked natural wood and wanted to see a large percentage of the alder showing through on the top.  It was to look eroded and old and time worn.

Size: 34 x 82 x 30.5(h)
Price: $2975 (this size and options).  Contact us and include your zip for shipping quote.
NOTE:  A twin of this table is now available at Thea’s interiors in the pearl.

Details: Custom sizes and colors gladly provided.  Our customer, calling from Wisconsin, had been looking all over the place for a table in this style.  For several years she had stashed away a tiny image clipped from a magazine and was unable to find that table (or anything similar) on the market.   In addition, she found that all the reproduction pieces she encountered left her flat, having less-than-inspiring design, construction or finish details.  We wanted to nail the look and make it feel like an antique, but the magazine clipping showed us only about 3 pixels of information about the top.  Fortunately we found the book The Wild Table showing a beautiful aged wood top on its cover for inspiration.  Finish experimentation led us to use reclaimed Oregon barn wood for the top and new poplar for the base, both distressed and finished to look antique. I used a durable multi-layered crackled non-toxic milk paint finish on the base; top has our popular living finish – a cleanable, smooth, wipe-able, durable surface that will not show rings or stains.  In all cases, whether for an out of town or local client, it is essential to see a finish example in the room where it is to be placed, in that room’s lighting. Color is just incident light bouncing off a tinted surface – the majority of the effect has to do with the character of that incident light.

This is a Lane cedar chest that had been in the family for a long time.  Its weatherstripping was intact and so the scent was still strong, and the piece was well worth preserving.  On the top and sides, deep gouges, peeling veneer, a nasty failing greenish crust finish, mildew and buckling caused by water damage were the challenges here. We repaired the damage and colored the piece a rich red brown to match a bed in the same room.  Fortunately there was a small piece of the four poster bed (the top of one post) that could be transported to the studio – this is essential for matching a color.  We then gave the surface a nice glossy french polish.

After we had experienced great success with our living finish dining tables in peoples’ homes, we were ready to try out the concept in a truly heavy duty environment.  Our first experiment with this was at Le Pigeon on Burnside where we replaced two of the communal tabletops and repaired / refinished the 10 foot long walnut top.  The idea has been successful, and we have now made a banquet table for the sister restaurant Little Bird in downtown Portland.  This table is a little over 10 feet long and when in use, sits on top of existing restaurant tops.  When not in use, it hangs on the wall as decoration!  The warm natural tone was the perfect color to contrast with the complex peacock blue of the walls.  The table hangs on a sturdy frame, which itself is also designed to look decorative and take hard knocks.  On the top edge of this frame is a sturdy french cleat for hanging the heavy tabletop.

click each picture to enlarge

Price:  $1600 this size and options.  One available now.  Contact us for shipping.

Size and details:  48″ diameter, living finish, solid oak.

This table was designed to straddle contemporary and traditional and fit into an eclectic and stylish home where the husband and wife had definite and sometimes different aesthetic visions.  The wife favors the light, slightly greyed look and smooth lines of Norwegian furniture, and desired a somewhat weathered appearance but also a refined contemporary feel.  The piece is centrally located in a busy kitchen and needed to stand up to daily use by a family with children.   It has a weathery textured surface and is meant to look raw, yet it has a deeply penetrating and fully protective living finish.   Oak will turn golden brown under a penetrating oil, and we didn’t want that look, so we manipulated the colors and effects so that the oil would go deep yet the color would remain light and neutral.

I have developed my own technique for chemically aging new mirror to look antique. Close study of real antique mirror and my artistic approach to the process make my mirror look authentic. The effect is fully customizable and is available in different “levels of extremity”, so to speak, and can range from “barely speckly” to “forgotten inside a drafty barn since 1746″. As is true in all of my work, my approach is flexible to the job at hand. I invite my customers to the studio for feedback, to ensure that the result is exactly what you want. The frame is newly built by us, has an aged paint and metal leaf finish, and can also be ordered in any size / shape / color / finish / effect that you like. This particular mirror is available for sale at Thea’s in the pearl district (12th and Glisan) -  Portland, Oregon.

This wardrobe was in horrible shape.  The pictures below don’t do any kind of justice at describing all that was wrong.  Doors warped so severely that they had actually pulled the center drawer frame apart.  The drawers wouldn’t work and didn’t fit and were either stuck or falling apart.  The cabinet base was seriously inadequate and had to be completely rebuilt.  The finish was a mess, and there were several missing or damaged brass pulls.  This was a serious rebuild of a wardrobe that was so gorgeous and had so much mind-blowing hand carved detail that it was worth preserving.  Also it was a sentimental piece, bought for the couple’s wedding.   We had Doug Barr of Barr casting fabricate new pulls to match the old, and then we had to clean up the old ones and patina the new ones.  This job is one of those that proved Buck’s old maxim about building and repairing being mutually beneficial skills.  Buck did an amazing job at this – all the drawers and doors now work flawlessly and it has a beautiful buttery finish now that hides most of the damage but still shows that it’s an antique.  He got a furniture historian in for a consult to make sure he was doing it in an appropriate way.  I really doubt that there is anyone out there besides Buck who could have pulled this off.