When my partner Seth and I tell people about the company we are building, they often say, “Custom woodworking – that’s an odd business for two guys from Boston…are you guys woodworkers?” Our answer is, of course, no.  We are website marketing guys.

So why are we involved in a company that is the online source for anything custom? The answer is we both LOVE custom stuff.  We are buyers of custom furniture, custom suits, custom jewelry, and other custom items.  If I could have everything in my life custom made, I would be a much happier consumer.

Why do I love custom? Well, for one, there is a value proposition to custom.  I’ve found that you can get much better quality for your money.  In addition, when you buy custom you’re buying a service, not a product.  You buy something made by someone with whom you can build a relationship, whether that someone is an individual or a company.

Mike Salguero, President of CustomMade.com

In terms of woodworking, the value of buying something custom rather than a product made in a factory overseas is apparent in the end result.  Many of our woodworkers can make you a piece that will last a lifetime, not just a few years or until you move to another home.

Here is a photo of me in my favorite custom item: a leather and sheep’s wool jacket that I had made while I was visiting my father in Montevideo, Uruguay.  I talked to the maker of this jacket, gave him my specifications, and purchased exactly what I was looking for!

I bet you have stories about things you’ve had custom made – isn’t sharing them part of the fun? You can do that here – it could be furniture, of course, but anything custom is fair game – clothing, jewelry, shoes, drapes, artwork – anything!  Go to the Comments section and “Leave A Reply” – upload a photo by clicking on the “add images to your comment by clicking here” link just below the “Submit Comment” button.  You can then copy and paste the URL for your photo! (NOTE: your photo must be online to be uploaded).

C’mon fellow Custom Made evangelists – share!

-Mike

Starting tomorrow, February 17, 2010, Fine Woodworking author and CustomMade.com subscriber, Tony O’Malley will be taking part in a 3-day building competition – the Buildoff.  He’ll compete with Gary Striegler at Fine Homebuilding to make a mudroom built-in.  (Apartment Therapy readers might remember Tony from the post on his amazing Home Library with Window Seat.  Wow.)

You can join them for a live video chat from the set tomorrow.  Check out more information about the Buildoff here: http://www.finehomebuilding.com/item/11021/a-countdown-to-the-big-buildoff

P.S. Make sure you check out Tony’s post on custom cabinetry for your flat-screen TV – he’s got some great ideas!

What is the relationship of the artisan to nature? What is the artisan’s responsibility to nature? Guest blogger John P. Rose of Custom Furniture Creations discusses the philosophy that guides his craft:

Figured 3-D Cherry

The main philosophy of Custom Furniture Creations is to create unique furniture that blends the beauty of nature with hand-craftsmanship.  As a result, we have developed a special fondness for allowing nature to show itself in all of its grandeur.

Walnut with Sap Wood

Trees are a renewable resource that nature has given us to clean our air, anchor our soils, provide food and shelter for forest animals, and in its final stage to provide us with wood to build our homes and furniture.  However, some trees are special; something in their growth has made them uniquely pleasing to our eyes.  It becomes the responsibility of a skilled artisan to allow nature to “show us its stuff.”

Factories that produce furniture reject non-standard wood as scrap to create thousands of identical tables or dressers.  Only a skilled artisan has the love of nature and the ability to coach the grandeur and uniqueness out of wood, much like a sports coach or a mentor strives to bring out the potential within a person.

3-D Walnut and Cherry

The artisan merely becomes the facilitator for the wood, selecting special grains, colors, and textures from the wood that will complement the design of the furniture and leave a pleasing impression upon the human eye.  The result is often a work of art much more valuable than the sum of the labor and materials that went into the carefully sculpted wood creation.  Would anyone deny that the value of a Picasso is much greater than the cost of the paints and the labor that went into it?

Contrasting Woods

About Custom Furniture Creations

John P. Rose of Custom Furniture Creations in Ohio responsibly harvests, saws, and dries his own wood, which goes into the very special works of art that nature has provided for us. http://www.customfurniturecreations.com/

“Now that you’ve bought that new flat-screen TV you face the problem: where am I going to put it?”  If you’re facing this dilemma, guest blogger Tony O’Malley of Tony O’Malley Custom Woodworking has some suggestions for your consideration.

“Your old TV was a chunky cube; the new flat-screen is a sleek elongated rectangle. Your old TV cabinet or armoire is suddenly a big useless box headed for the recycling center.

You might find a credenza-type stand in a furniture store, but the larger screens and more stark designs of the flat-screen TV prompt many people to conceal it or hide it away altogether.  Often the logical location for the TV calls for a customized approach.

Built-in cabinetry is one solution some people are turning to.  A very shallow wall cabinet can house a flat-screen TV because of its flat profile—just 3 or 4 inches deep in most cases.  This is a good opportunity to integrate your TV into a larger wall unit that comprises bookshelves, drawers, closed cabinets that house the related components, and other display surfaces. Surprisingly, built-in cabinetry will often consume far less floor space than that old massive corner TV armoire.

Softening the Look

Surround a 52-inch plasma TV with warm, colorful books and suddenly the big screen is not so ominous, even in a smaller room. A painted built-in, with base and crown molding carefully matched to the existing moldings, becomes part of the room. This helps make the TV less imposing.

Hiding it Away

Sometimes you just want the TV to disappear.  That’s a lot easier with flat screens, which can be hidden behind doors that either bi-fold or slide into pockets—or both as in the project shown below.

Built-in vs. Free-Standing

Built-in cabinetry is, by definition, custom made.  You can’t buy it in a store.  Instead, you’ll want to seek out a capable cabinetmaker with demonstrated experience designing, making, and installing built-in cabinetry.  So the process is more complicated than buying a TV stand from the furniture store.

Of course you can’t take a built-in with you if you move, but a carefully designed built-in will enhance the enjoyment of the room and add value to your home.  Approach your built-in along the lines of a major investment, just as you would approach other home-improvement projects.

The built-in project shown here solved a thorny corner situation. The TV is mounted on an articulating arm so it can be pulled out and angled into the room for better viewing.

Fireplace cabinetry offers another solution to the flat-screen TV dilemma. Here the TV is mounted in the shallow wall cabinet above themantle. The doors are mounted on bi-fold hinges so they fit in the space beside the cabinet.”

CustomMade.com has partnered with uShip to provide discounted shipping services for its members!   uShip is an online marketplace where you can list furniture, household items, vehicles – almost anything, and receive competitive bids from thousands of feedback-rated carriers. Listing an item in the uShip marketplace is completely FREE and there is no obligation to accept the bids you receive.

For all the details, visit our uShip page: http://blog.custommade.com/uship/

What does “eco-friendly” mean when you are commissioning custom furniture?  Guest blogger Douglas Bialor, owner of The Hat Factory Furniture Co., discusses what being green meant in the past and what it means today.

Custom Vanity with Basin

“We’ve tried to be green even before it was called ‘being green.’ Back then, if we had a choice between two glues or finishes for a project and one was less toxic, well, we just went with that one.  Who wants to work all day exposed to nasty carcinogens and fumes when you don’t have to?

Recently, we’ve begun to actively educate our clients on the benefits of going green.  We’ve developed green solutions that bring together our exceptional design and craftsmanship with the benefits of eco-friendly construction materials, techniques, and finishes.  Clarifying what it means to be eco-friendly when commissioning custom furniture and cabinets is a key component of this education.  In practice, there are two separate but related issues to consider: sustainability and health.

Sustainability means selecting materials harvested and/or manufactured in an environmentally responsible way. This means using lumber from forests managed according to Forest Stewardship Council guidelines and panels made with recycled content and renewable materials such as natural grasses and bamboo.

Creating a healthy environment in our workplace and our clients’ homes and offices involves using materials that limit the release of harmful fumes and emissions.  Low VOC finishes and formaldehyde-free adhesives play a key role here.

The Hat Factory Furniture Co., located in Peekskill, NY, is one of the premiere cabinetmakers serving clients in Westchester and New York City.  We are committed to providing our clients with exceptional, eco-friendly, custom furniture and cabinetry.”

Rockler Woodworking and Hardware is the official sponsor of the 2010 CustomMade.com Design Challenge. Celebrating its 55th anniversary as a family-run business, Rockler Woodworking and Hardware is the nation’s premier supplier of specialty hardware, tools, lumber and high-quality woodworking products.

Congratulations are in order to CustomMade.com subscribers Culin & Colella, Inc., winners of the 2010 Design Portfolio Award for Residential Furniture Built-In!

Entertainment Center - Residential Furniture Built-In Winner

Winning Project: Entertainment Center

This entertainment center features butternut solids and veneers and carved elements.  The size of this entertainment center caused several challenges including pre-assembly for fitting and installation. It took horizontal scaffolding, ladders and five men to lift the top part of the piece. The entertainment center is 12 feet wide by 13 feet tall by 26 feet deep. The proportions work for the space — the ceiling is 24 feet high.

Culin & Colella, Inc. also received an Honorable Mention in three categories: Residential Furniture Built-In, Architectural Millwork and Kitchen/Bath Cabinets.

Breakfast Bar

Honorable Mention, Residential Furniture Built-In: Breakfast Bar & Billiard Room “Parlor” Piece

This project features avodire solids, white ash burl panels and figured makore pilasters. The breakfast bar doubles as a parlor hutch for billiards.

Walnut Bar

Honorable Mention, Architectural Millwork: Walnut Bar

This bar was constructed of walnut solids and veneers, with a walnut burl countertop and walnut carvings.

Kitchen

Honorable Mention, Kitchen/Bath Cabinets: Kitchen for Residence in Jupiter, FL

This L-shaped kitchen cabinetry is constructed of poplar and MDF and finished in white Italian polyurethane and glaze with antiquing. The mahogany island features a filled and stained finish with pre-catalyzed lacquer.


About Culin & Colella, Inc.

Ray Culin and Janis Colella have spent much of their life surrounded by wood, and together bring a lifetime of experience to designing and building furniture.  Both Ray and Janis were educated primarily as furniture designers and makers. Ray studied Architecture and Furniture Design at Rhode Island School of Design, and began building cabinetry and furniture early on. Janis, having spent years studying Fine Art and Sculpture, graduated with a BFA in Furniture Design and Woodworking from SUNY Purchase, in N.Y., where she discovered working in “wood”. Today they continue to design and build exquisite residential woodworking projects, like kitchens, libraries, media cabinetry, and custom furniture, while also making bamboo Gemtables.

Culin & Colella, Inc.
632 Center Avenue
Mamaroneck, New York 10543
914 698 7727 (Official)
culincolella.com

There are two weeks left to enter the CustomMade.com 2010 Design Challenge (sponsored by Rockler Woodworking and Hardware) but already we’ve been amazed by the entries.  We can tell that a lot of thought went into the unique and creative furniture designs we’ve received so far.

Lamps, book cases, buffets, tables…we’ve even seen a pipe cabinet!  Don’t miss out on the opportunity to use Google® SketchUp to design your own piece of furniture and win the chance to have it custom made for you by a CustomMade.com woodworker using Rockler tools and supplies.

Read more about the Challenge here: http://blog.custommade.com/2010/01/design-challenge-2010/ and submit your entry by Friday, February 12, 2010 to be included.

Here’s a sneak peek at a few of the entries so far.  What will YOU make?

Wired Magazine says we’re “The New Industrial Revolution”

Wired Magazine - Feb 2010

This weekend I received my Feb 2010 Wired Magazine in the mail and was thrilled to see the cover story, “The New Industrial Revolution” written by editor-in-chief Chris Anderson.  Informative and inspiring, it portrayed custom makers and designers of all different types as drivers of the new economy.

The article focused mostly on the designers who have used the democratization of the web to band together, come up with ideas, and crowdsource designs in unique ways.  Anderson also discusses the manufacturing companies, both domestic and abroad, that are now better equipped for “small batch” (aka Custom) orders.

“[Small Batch] can broadly refer to businesses focused more on the quality of their products than the size of the market. They’d rather do something they were passionate about than go mass…Walmart, and all the compromise that comes with it, is no longer the only pathway to success.”

Whether you call it small batch, CustomMade, artisanal or something else, it’s a movement, and it’s happening now. Consumers feel it – purchasing Custom is a fulfilling experience. Makers feel it – relying for years on hit-or-miss marketing, they can now unite on websites like our own to grow the entire market.  Designers and “Garage Entrepreneurs” feel it – developing new ideas and selling them on the mass market level, an accomplishment not previously thought possible.

One surprise was that so much of Anderson’s article talked about Chinese manufacturers.  If small batch custom products are in fact the “New Industrial Revolution”, then the United States needs to make sure they’re keeping pace.  Luckily, we already have artisans across the nation handcrafting quality work, as well as innovators such as Local Motors of Wareham, MA (featured in the article) eager to lead the charge.

How can you take part in the revolution?

1)  Buy local. Find someone in your region to handcraft your designs. On our site, you can always search by location to find local artisans to support.

2)  Slow down.  Don’t rush out to buy poorly crafted products from stores that don’t actually meet your needs.  Take the time to think about what you want and purchase small batch and custom items you won’t have to toss after a year.

3) Share. Custom products always tell a great story so share those with friends.  Be an advocate for custom manufacturers online and offline.