Logos

Thanks to my brother Daniel, we have a new name and logos to go with it. Here they are:

They look great. Thanks, Daniel. 

Also, I haven't forgotten about posting the coffee table mentioned in my last post. Hopefully I'll finish tonight and have a post up about it tomorrow.

In Progress...

I'm working on a few coffee tables right now. One's a birthday gift, so I'm not gonna post any pictures of it until after it has been received. I'll post updates on the other one soon though.

The Great Raymond Furniture Reclamation

So here's the story behind this Clampett-esque truckload of old wood: My dad, his brother and two sisters own a rental house in Raymond that they inherited from their father. Behind the house is a storage shed where my grandfather stored anything he could find (he was a keeper-of-all-things, so I'm told). Thank goodness for that, in this case. There were all kinds of awesome pieces that could be reclaimed into coffee tables, bookshelves, tables, etc. I struck a deal with my dad to give the family 10% of profits earned on anything made from the Raymond wood. We hauled our load back and unloaded it into the driveway.

After sitting in a shed for ~40 years, this stuff was pretty nasty so I spent the rest of the day washing off all the dirt, cobwebs and general grime. Wetting the wood also gives me a general sense of what it will look like after polyurethane or another water sealer is applied. Water sealers always tend to richen and brighten the wood, so this lets me know if staining is needed or not. All of this wood is beautiful and I'm excited to start thinking about ways to give them a new lease on life. All in all I came away with:

2 fireplace mantles,

7 doors, 6 windows, some pieces of siding, a huge heart-pine beam, 2 heart pine columns, 20 balusters, and a few random pieces of wood.

Email me if you're interested in any of these pieces. Otherwise, I'm just gonna start building things on my own and put them up for sale.

Follow-Up: Hutch/No-Name Piece

Here's the piece I made for Rivers all done up. Right now it's in the foyer at the Uithoven's until Rivers moves somewhere with more room. I think they did a great job decorating it and really like the way it turned out. Just a quick follow-up post. New post coming in a little while.

The Process

I thought I'd give y'all an idea of how the process of ordering a piece from me would work:

1. You contact me and give me a general idea of what you want.
2. I draw up a few ideas and send them to you:

A typical sketch would include dimensions, etc.

3. You pick what you like best or we can mix and match, make small changes, big changes, whatever.

4. I go to Lowes with an itemized list of materials and find an estimated cost of materials.

5. I send you a final proof and estimated final cost based on material cost.

6. If you approve of the estimated cost, I start working on it and send you updates:

7. I finish the product and either ship or deliver it to you:

No Idea What to Call This

This is probably the creation I'm most proud of so far. I have no idea what to call it: a hutch? a cabinet? Anyway, it was for my girlfriend's birthday, so it's not for sale obviously, but just like any other post, I can reproduce it.

Est. Price: Not sure

Coffee Tables

These are a couple coffee tables I've done. They aren't for sale because they're currently sitting in my living room. I can definitely make more though if anyone's interested.

Est. Price: $250-ish

Est Price: $250-ish

Est. Price: $200-ish

Est. Price: $200-ish

Well, Here Goes Nothing...

So hopefully this blog will be a temporary thing. It's free; so if this furniture business thing goes down in flames, I'm not out $40 with a useless davidluter.com. If you haven't heard I'm starting up a custom furniture and restoration business. I don't have a name yet (my graphic designer brother is doing something in his free time), so we'll temporarily call this endeavor, "Keeping it on the DL..." I'll post a few things I've done and as I finish other things I'll post them too. If anyone wants me to build something from scratch or has a piece for me to restore, shoot me an email at: davidluter14@gmail.com.