Custom indoor furniture
The table your family will still be sitting at in 30 years.
Dining tables, benches, bookcases and the odd request nobody else would take on — designed with you, cut from real hardwood, and built to outlast the mortgage.
Commissioned, not bought
You're not picking something off a floor. You're deciding what it should be.
An indoor piece lives with your family every day, so it has to fit more than a spot in a room. It has to fit your chairs, your doorway, the height of your counters, the way your kids do homework at the table and your dog naps under it. That's the difference between furniture you buy and furniture you commission.
We start with your actual space — a photo, a tape measure, a sense of how you use the room — and build to those numbers, not a catalogue size. If your dining room is nine inches narrower than a standard table wants, the table gets nine inches narrower. If you need six inches of extra leg clearance for a wheelchair, that's what you get.
Tell me about your room
The indoor catalogue
Five ways people usually start the conversation.
None of these are fixed designs — they're starting points. Tell me which one is closest, and we'll shape it from there.
Dining tables
Straight leg, trestle or pedestal base. Sizes from a four-top to a twelve-foot farmhouse run — the edge profile and base style are yours to pick, and I'll tell you honestly which base handles which room.
Bookcases & built-ins
Floor-to-ceiling shelving, a simple window seat, a mudroom bench with cubbies. I build to your wall's actual dimensions, not a stock 84 inches, and I'll come measure if the site work needs it.
Benches & seating
Entry benches, dining benches to match a table, a simple settle by the woodstove. Built to the same joinery standard as everything else — no pocket screws holding a bench together for twenty years.
Entry & accent pieces
Console tables, coat racks, a mirror frame, a small side table that solves one specific problem in one specific corner of your house.
Say something weird
Game boards, toy chests, a memorial piece built from a loved one's furniture, a sign for the shop down the road. If you've got an odd request nobody else wants to take on, that's usually the one I say yes to.
Choosing your hardwood
Every species lives with you a little differently.
There's no wrong answer here — just trade-offs I'll walk you through before you commit to one.
Maple
Pale and tight-grained now, with a warm honey tone that deepens gently over ten or fifteen years under natural light. It's one of the hardest domestic woods I use, which makes it a workhorse for tables and benches that take daily abuse — kids' elbows, dropped keys, the occasional dog claw. Mid-range cost. I build most of my everyday dining tables and kitchen benches from maple because it shrugs off the life a family actually gives it.
Cherry
Starts a light pinkish-brown and darkens to a rich reddish amber within the first year of sun exposure — the most dramatic color change of any wood on this list, and people either love watching it happen or wish I'd warned them harder. Moderately hard, takes a hand-rubbed oil finish beautifully, and shows small mineral streaks that I think add character rather than flaw. Higher cost. My go-to for a dining table meant to be a centerpiece, not just a surface.
Oak
Bold, open grain that reads as traditional New England furniture — this is the wood people picture when they imagine "handmade." Very hard and dent-resistant, ages to a warm amber-brown, and holds up under heavy daily use better than almost anything else I stock. Mid-range cost. A strong choice for a trestle table, a farmhouse bench, or a bookcase that's going to carry real weight for decades.
Ash
Light, straight-grained, and genuinely tough — ash is what old tool handles were made from, and that same shock resistance makes it a smart pick for a table that's going to get leaned on and climbed under. It stays pale rather than darkening much with age, so it reads bright and modern in a room. Lower-to-mid cost, and currently more available than it's been in years, which keeps the price honest.
Walnut
Deep chocolate-brown heartwood with a fine, straight grain — the wood most people mean when they say they want something that "looks expensive." It's softer than oak or maple, so it takes on small dings faster, but those dings tend to read as character on a dark, oiled surface rather than damage. Highest cost of the five. I reach for walnut on statement dining tables and console pieces where the wood itself is the design.
All indoor pieces get a hand-rubbed oil finish as standard — food-safe options are available for any table surface, and every finish I use can be sanded back and refreshed in an afternoon instead of stripped and redone. Furniture built to be repaired outlives furniture built to be replaced.
How a commission actually works
Four steps from photo to finished piece.
Most builds run four to eight weeks depending on the season and the piece. A deposit holds your slot on the bench.
Send me the room
A few photos, rough measurements, and anything you're drawn to — a table you saw somewhere, a Pinterest board, a piece your grandmother had. I don't need architectural drawings, just a real sense of the space.
I sketch it and price it
You'll get a rough sketch, a wood recommendation, and a firm price before anything is cut. No surprise invoices — if the scope changes, we talk about it first.
You approve the design
Wood species, base style, edge profile, finish — once you sign off and the deposit's in, your build slot is locked and material gets ordered.
Progress photos through the build
You'll see it in the rough, after glue-up, and again once the finish goes on — not just a delivery-day surprise. Most pieces take four to eight weeks start to finish.
Wood from your own property
The old barn beam or the tree from your grandmother's yard? I can usually work with it.
People bring me lumber from a family tree that came down in a storm, a beam pulled out of a barn being torn down, boards someone's been storing in a garage for fifteen years "for the right project." There's something worth doing there, and I like being part of it.
Here's the honest version: it has to be properly dried — green or partially dried wood will warp and crack no matter how well I build with it — and completely free of nails, screws and other hardware, which can wreck a blade in seconds and are genuinely dangerous to mill around. Send me photos first and I'll tell you straight whether it'll work before you haul anything to the shop.
Ask about your own woodWhat ends up on people's tables
Our porch swing is the best thing we've bought for this house. Eric sent us photos the whole way through, and it showed up looking better than I pictured. Twenty years from now our daughter is getting that swing.
I asked for two Adirondack chairs and got a text with a real price the same day. No runaround, no upsell. They've been out through a full winter and still look great.
Describe the room. I'll tell you what I'd build.
Send a photo, a rough measurement, and whatever's bugging you about the space right now — I'll sketch back a piece that actually fits it, no obligation.