Philosophy

A Commitment to Excellence is one of our company values, so our one of our goals is to craft your project as close to perfect as our creator will allow.  During that process, we place a tremendous focus on the material we use: Wood. We understand that in order for us to make beautiful things from wood, a mature tree must fall, and we don’t take that event lightly.

We do our best to design to make the most efficient use of common sized timbers and sheet goods. Our Morris chair designs are a great example of our commitment. Lumber is typically available in lengths of eight to sixteen feet long, in two foot long increments. So we intentionally designed our Morris chairs with six 23 inch long structural components, this way all of the major rails can be cut from a single twelve foot long board, leaving very little wood remnants.

For our traditional cabinetry and millwork, we’ve embraced modern “nesting & optimizing software” which allows us to layout and cut numerous frame “stiles and rails” from a single board, leaving very little “waste”.  Most other shops would just throw these small “Scrap” remnants away, factoring “waste” into the cost of the piece, but we set them into a “Remnants Cart” to be used in other parts of the project, or future projects.

Any scraps or cut-offs from this point are placed into  bins which we’ll pull from for a variety of uses such as verifying joinery set ups or making design and finish samples, or for using in the unseen structural areas of a project.  All of this sorting and handling increases labor, but we feel our clients appreciate our commitment to the environment, and our respect to the source of our materials.

When pieces become too small, or contain too many natural checks and knots to be able to use within a project, those pieces don’t end up in a landfill.  Our team members take them and enjoy them one last time as a campfire with their families, or even to warm their homes in woodstoves.

Even the saw dust and wood shavings created while crafting our work doesn’t go to waste. They are collected and made available, at no charge, to local farmers to use for their plants, poultry,  and livestock.  If you see bags of sawdust outside our shop, they are free for the taking!  We are so glad you can help us make the most of the wood we use.

Our respect doesn’t end with eliminating waste though. Our designs must stand the test of time. We’ll make “Trendy” if that’s what you really want, but we prefer to make “Timeless”.  It’s better to spend money once on something that will provide value for life.  And while styles change, our  design integrity will endure, as we make everything to last at least as long as it would take for a seedling planted today, to reach maturity, and replenish the forests the wood for your project came from.

 

We mentioned at the start that Commitment to Excellence is one of our company values.  For those interested, our five core values are:  Commitment to Excellence;  Commitment to Customer Enthusiasm;  Continuous Improvement; Trust and Respect for the individual;  and Teamwork.   We don’t always get them all 100% right, 100% of the time…  We’re human… But these are the values we hold close, and strive to live up to, and we’re always working to be in alignment with them.

 

“There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little cheaper”

-John Ruskin