|
POSTED ON: 11-02-2014
behind the scenes of the upcoming SHORT FILM about
me by the EMMY AWARD winning
Once Films (www.oncefilms.com)
for their
SAINT Louis Spotlight Series (www.stlouisspotlight.com)
. the short film premiers NOVEMBER 6 at URBAN
CHESTNUT BREWING CO. BIER HALL in THE GROVE. only a
few tickets left. please RSVP by clicking
here if you
would like to attend.
for sneak peek of the film, click
here.
 |
PHOTO CREDIT: ONCE FILMS |
_____________________________________________
POSTED ON: 10-28-2014
i'm extremely honored to have been selected to be
the feature in a short film titled "MWANZI",
for the highly anticipated
SAINT Louis Spotlight Series (www.stlouisspotlight.com)
by
Once Films (www.oncefilms.com).
the film premieres
NovEMBER 6 at
Urban Chestnut Brewing Co. in THE GROVE.
please RSVP by clicking
here if you
would like to attend and while tickets last.
below is a sneak peek of what's to come. see you
there for complimentary UCBC beer and a chance to
win a limited edition movie poster created by
BOXING CLEVER (www.boxing-clever.com).
_____________________________________________
POSTED ON: 08-23-2014
the extensive project for THE SIDE PROJECT CELLAR
(www.sideprojectbrewing.com)
opening at 7373 Marietta Avenue in downtown
Maplewood, MO by owner and brewer CORY KING is
complete.
i was hired to design, make and install all of the
CAFE TABLES (BEY CAFÉ TABLES from my FeRRUM™
furniture line), a 10-foot-long, bar height
COMMUNITY TABLE, over 40-feet worth of custom
BANQUETTE SEATING, a couple WINDOW BENCHES, and
their 40-foot-long BAR TOP.
for play-by-play fabrication and installation photos
of the entire project, click
here.
 |
PHOTO: pictured
with THE SIDE PROJECT CELLAR owner and brewer CORY KING. |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 08-22-2014
hot off the presses. check out this incredible
feature article
—
and an epic photograph, titled "Maker Man", in the
Fall 2014 issue titled "Made in St. Louis" by ST.
LOUIS AT HOME (stlmag.com/home)
magazine, hitting stands this weekend in a special
section of the magazine called "Personal Space" on
page 72. big shout out to writer William Powell and
photographer Kevin A. Roberts for their superb work
on this piece.
click on the following link to read the article
online @
stlmag.com/home/maker-man.
you can also download the feature article in .pdf
format by clicking
here. also worth
noting is a special mention by editor Christy
Marshall in her "From the Editor" page. click
here to read it.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-29-2014
the extensive project for THE WHEELHOUSE
(DOWNTOWN)
- largest commercial project i've had to date
since i starting the company back in 2005,
is
complete.
i was tasked with designing and making all of the
bar's twenty-eight (28) BEY CAFE TABLES from
my semi-custom FeRRUM™ furniture line (www.ferrumfurniture.com)
at both table and bar height, forty-six (46) BEY
BAR CHAIRS from my semi-custom FeRRUM™ furniture
line, thirty-eight (38) BEY STOOLS from my
semi-custom FeRRUM™ furniture line, a
80-FOOT-LONG LIVE EDGE WALNUT BAR TOP at the
Dining Area Bar, fabricating and installing a
special MILL FINISHED STAINLESS STEEL TOP and
CLADDING the front of it with natural WALNUT BOARDS
on the Server Counter section at the Dining Area
Bar, fabricating and installing the special MILL
FINISHED STAINLESS STEEL TOP for their 70 SF
ISLAND at the Dining Area Bar, and fabricating
and installing the special MILL FINISHED STAINLESS
STEEL TOP for their entire 36-FOOT-LONG FRONT BAR
and 32-FOOT-LONG BACK BAR TOP at the
Nightclub Area Bar. plus, i also clad the entire
facade of the FRONT BAR in the Nightclub Area Bar
with natural WALNUT BOARDS.
finally, the custom fabrication of three (3)
large COMMUNITY TABLES. the tables are bar
height, 42-inches-wide and 10-feet-long, all made
out of sustainable harvested, FSC-certified western
cedar, to add a nice subtle pop to all the beautiful
natural walnut pieces while tying into the very
similar color pallet found in the 100-year-old,
aged, original 18x18 douglas fir columns in the
space.
all the wood for the table tops, chairs, stools and
bar top are made out of ST. LOUIS HARVESTED, MILLED
and KILN DRIED WALNUT and RECLAIMED WOOD from the
ST. LOUIS AREA. the BAR TOP is epic, with it's
beautiful, authentic, 1-1/2" thick live edge, and
all the steel for the tables, stools and bar chairs
are made out of recycled, US made steel.
for play-by-play fabrication and installation photos
of the entire project, click
here.
 |
_____________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-29-2014
pleased to announce that i’ve been commissioned to
fabricate custom furniture and build the bar for the
upcoming new St. Louis location of the CAMBRIDGE
INNOVATION CENTER (CIC) (stl.cic.us)
- the largest managed-office facilities and services
firm for entrepreneurs and their startup companies
in the world, at 4240 Duncan Ave. in the Cortex
District.
more specifically, the furniture and bar will be
fabricated and installed in CIC ST. LOUIS’ very own
in-house café called VENTURE CAFÉ (www.vencaf.org),
a not-for-profit, public-purpose sister organization
of CIC.
i'm working closely with with Sidi Gomes, Director
of Architecture and Design at CIC on the project.
see photo.
the task will be to build their 20-foot-long BAR and
BAR TOP, twelve (12) BEY BAR TABLES, two (2) BEY
TABLES and four (4) BEY BENCHES from my FeRRUM™ (www.ferrumfurniture.com)
semi-custom furniture line. plus, the fabrication
and installation of twenty (20) linear feet worth of
custom BANQUETTES.
as per you-know-how-we-do, this project focuses on a
combination of eco-friendly raw materials and
practices, quality craftsmanship, and healthy,
low-VOC topcoat finishes to produce a unique look
and feel for our client. stay tuned for project
photos and video.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-24-2014
after what might go down as the longest and most
physically challenging delivery day in Mwanzi CO.
history: over 120 furniture pieces delivered up and
around stairs and down sidewalks, etc., etc., to
both THE WHEELHOUSE (downtown) and the
GRAPESEED restaurant project, Alex and i
conquered it like we do every challenge: with style.
stay tuned for day two - and maybe day three, of
delivery of the remainder furniture pieces.
for play-by-play fabrication and installation photos
of the project for WHEELHOUSE in process, click
here. for
play-by-play fabrication and installation photos of
the project for GRAPESEED in process, click
here.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-13-2014
installing the 1-1/2” thick, FRONT BAR TOPS, hand
made out of 100-year-old yellow pine and douglas fir
joists reclaimed from the rehab at
Grapeseed
(www.grapeseedstl.com)
and joists from another rehab project on South
Grande in South City (St. Louis). the tops are
currently drying (that's why it looks cloudy) after
receiving the first of three onsite topcoats, making
the total coats of low-VOC, water-based, heavy-duty
satin finish, six (6). because i very often use
and/or asked to use very unconventional and unique
woods to make custom countertops, it requires lots
of time to both fabricate in the studio and to
install on site. can’t just whip it up in the
studio, plop them in, and be out. installation on
site can take 5-8 hours to work out and with, all
the challenges that individual spaces - and the wood
itself, will always pose. the front bar spans
roughly twenty-five (25) linear feet - with a
lift-up countertop door to allow staff access behind
the bar. the front bar covers a very functioning 24
inches of depth. still have to glue-up and install
the BACK BAR TOPS, making over 40-feet of BAR TOPS
in total, plus CLADDING THE FACADE of the front bar
and building a 16-foot-long SHELVING UNIT at the
back bar for wine bottles and glasses, for part of
the extensive project for GRAPESEED restaurant. stay
tuned.
for play-by-play fabrication photos of the entire
project in process click
here.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-12-2014
the 80-foot-long, 1-1/2" thick, STL-harvested and
milled LIVE EDGE WALNUT BAR for THE WHEELHOUSE (www.wheelhousestl.com)
project is being fabricated section by section. part
of the process involves debarking the the tops by
hand to reveal the light walnut sapwood. since this
is a live edge bar top with authentic walnut live
edge, to make it a functional bar, i will need to do
several onsite modifications - several hours, to the
edges that meet so that the lived edge looks
continues around the entire bar, and looks natural.
after the sections are ready to remove from the
clamps —
and there will probably be eleven (11) sections,
they will receive several hours of sanding, then
applying five (5) heavy coats of low-VOC,
water-based, heavy-duty, satin topcoats, following
by two more coats on site, after all the tweaking
and onsite sanding is finished. this massive,
wrap-around, live edge bar top will range from 23”
to 27" deep as you go around. there’s also and end
that will have a water-fall side, so the bar top
will live edge down the side and touch the floor.
pretty special stuff here folks. when it's all said
and done, this will be the biggest, and only
authentic live edge bar top in St. Louis, MO, and
one of the biggest bars - period, in the area. stay
tuned!
for play-by-play fabrication photos of the entire
project in process click
here.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-12-2014
pleased to announce that i've have been commissioned
to fabricate and install custom furniture and
fixtures at the highly anticipated THE SIDE
PROJECT CELLAR (www.sideprojectbrewing.com),
a craft beer brewing company opening soon at 7373
Marietta Avenue in downtown Maplewood by brewer Cory
King, currently head brewer at Perennial Artisan
Ales.
we’ve been tasked with fabricating all of the CAFE
TABLES (our BEY CAFÉ TABLES from our FeRRUM™ (www.ferrumfurniture.com)
furniture line), a 10-foot-long, bar height
COMMUNITY TABLE, over 40-feet worth of custom
BANQUETTE SEATING, a couple WINDOW BENCHES, and
their 40-foot-long BAR TOP.
as per you-know-how-we-do, this project focuses on a
combination of eco-friendly raw materials and
practices, quality craftsmanship, and healthy,
low-VOC topcoat finishes to produce a unique look
and feel for our client. stay tuned.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-03-2014
pleased to announce that i've been commissioned to
fabricate the bar and custom furniture for the
highly anticipated THE OLD BAKERY BEER COMPANY
(www.oldbakerybeer.com)
located in a 13,000 sf space of a historic bakery
building at 400 Landmarks Blvd. in Alton, IL, by
husband and wife Lauren Pattan and James Rogalsky,
on track to open Winter 2014.
we’ve been tasked with fabricating and installing
their 50-foot-long BAR TOP in the tasting room out
of 2-1/2” thick, 100-year-old, douglas fir joists
reclaimed from a one-room schoolhouse in
Collinsville, IL. work on the bar also includes
CLADDING the front facade with various reclaimed
woods salvaged from the building.
plus, we’ve been asked to fabricate six (6)
9-foot-long x 4-feet-wide COMMUNITY TABLES with big
ole legs and custom wood stain treatments, and
twenty-eight (28) BEY CAFE TABLES from our FeRRUM™ (www.ferrumfurniture.com)
semi-custom furniture line at table and
bar height, with some custom wood stain treatments.
as per you-know-how-we-do, this project focuses on a
combination of eco-friendly raw materials and
practices, quality craftsmanship, and healthy,
low-VOC topcoat finishes to produce a unique look
and feel for our client.
for play-by-play fabrication photos of the entire
project in process click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 06-18-2014
it's with great honor we announce that Mwanzi Co.
has been commissioned to design and fabricate a
custom casework piece for
The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts (www.pulitzerarts.org),
designed by internationally renowned Japanese
architect, Tadao Ando and located in St. Louis'
Grand Center district at 3716 Washington Boulevard.
it was founded as a cultural organization by
donations from former St. Louis Post-Dispatch
publisher Joseph Pulitzer and his family, for whom
it was named and of which its founder and current
chairman is none other than art icon Emily Rauh
Pulitzer. ever heard of The Pulitzer Prize?
we’ve been tasked with designing and fabricating a
custom, minimalist, JOCKEY BOX COVER for their
jockey box. for those unfamiliar with a jockey box,
it’s a an insulated container, containing ice and
water, as well as a long coil of hollow tubing, used
to cool beverages being served on tap in temporary
locations – it looks like a cooler but with beer tap
handles on it. the fact that there are numerous
companies around the country that specialize in and
only make this kind of product makes that fact that
we were asked to do it even more special for us.
the JOCKEY BOX COVER will be made out of quarter
sawn, wormy white oak, milled in St. Louis from a
tree feld from a residential property in the Bogey
Hills area of St. Charles, MO due to the bottom of
the tree rotting and posing a threat of falling.
to see a photograph of the
boards click
here. the piece
will be finished with a low-VOC, water-based,
heavy-duty, satin topcoat finish, so stay tuned.
as per you-know-how-we-do, this project focuses on a
combination of sustainably harvested wood, quality
craftsmanship, and healthy, low-VOC topcoat finishes
to produce a unique look and feel for our client.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 06-27-2014
the
Riverfront Times just announced "THE 10
MOST BEAUTIFUL BARS IN ST. LOUIS" and we had the
honor of designing, fabricating and installing two
of them on the list: THE LIBERTINE (pictured
below) and OLIO. for
The
Libertine, we did the entire front bar
(framed it out, built the tops and front facade),
and for Olio,
we did the floating shelves at the back bar. if you
have not been to either of these award winning
restaurants ... what are you waiting for.
for play-by-play fabrication photos of our project
for THE LIBERTINE, click
here.. for
play-by-play fabrication photos of our project for
OLIO, click
here.
read the entire Riverfront Times article written by
Sara Graham (@SaraSunshineSTL) online
here.
 |
photo credit:
Robbie Travis, The Riverfront Times |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 06-02-2014
a custom, 48” wide x 108” long, TRESTLE TABLE for
the TOURVILLE RESIDENCE in St. Louis, MO.
hand made out of repurposed, Missouri-harvested and
milled walnut and cherry hardwood flooring, and
rapidly renewable, scs-certified bamboo panels for
the table top. the base is hand made out of
recycled, US-made blackened steel. this unique
dining table features a wood trestle made out of
repurposed cherry and walnut wood flooring with
exposed tongues and grooves, and a table top made
out of repurposed, end grain, walnut and cherry wood
flooring with exposed tongues and grooves on the
bottom side of the 1-3/4" thick table top that wraps
around flush, a recessed, 3/4" hardwood plywood core
for added stability. finished with a low-VOC,
water-based, heavy-duty, satin topcoat. completed
May 2014.
for more completion photos of this table click
here. for
play-by-play fabrication photos of this project
click
here
photo credit:
www.demondmeek.com
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 06-02-2014
we are pleased to announce that we have been
commissioned to fabricate custom furniture for the
upcoming second location of KOOKY CANUCK (www.kookycanuck.com)
restaurant in downtown Memphis, TN, a very popular
restaurant and bar featured in an episode of "Man v.
Food" on the Travel Channel, a regular spot for
celebrities visiting the area, and famous for its
4LB "Kookamonga" hamburger.
we've been tasked to design and fabricate all of the
restaurant's twenty-two (22) custom TABLE TOPS. the
table tops will be 1-3/4" thick, measure 30" x 30",
and hand made out of a hand selected mixture of
natural, reclaimed and repurposed woods — including
wood repurposed from old vintage furniture, and from
over nine (9) wood species (oak, ash, pine, maple,
douglas fir, sycamore, sassafras, birch, american
elm, and more).
as per you-know-how-we-do, this project focuses on a
carefully crafted combination of
environmentally-friendly sourced woods and healthy,
low-VOC topcoat finishes to produce a unique look
and feel for our client. stay tuned for project
process photos.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 05-30-2014
custom TABLES for
Red Door
Grill Woodfire Kitchen & Bar (www.reddoorgrill.com)
in Leawood, KS, a neighborhood restaurant featuring
cuisine rooted in wood-fired grilling techniques,
and offers an extensive wine list created under
consultation of Doug Frost, one of only three people
in the world to hold both Master Sommelier and
Master of Wine titles.
we were tasked to fabricate several 3” thick, custom
tables with a rich ebony stain color, but with
noticeable wood grain through the rich stain and a
beautiful, durable topcoat finish. the tops were
fabricated out of sustainably harvested, FSC-certified
Red Oak, and local, Saint Louis harvested and milled
Red Oak. finished with a low-VOC, water-based,
heavy-duty, satin topcoat.
for completion photos of this table click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 05-30-2014
053014 / with
THE WHEELHOUSE (www.wheelhousestl.com)
co-owner STEPHEN SAVAGE at their soon-to-open
downtown location going over a few final details on
our extensive project for them. for play-by-play
fabrication photos of the entire project in process
click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 05-29-2014
052414 /
fabrication / outside the back entrance to
the studio and standing next to several 14-foot-long
x 12-inches-wide x 7/8-inches-thick, 100-year-old,
RECLAIMED DOUGLAS FIR BOARDS salvaged from an old
mansion recently demolished in Old North St. Louis.
these boards will find brand new life as the tops on
the 30-FOOT-LONG stretch of custom WINDOW BAR TABLES
at GRAPESEED. stay tuned.
for play-by-play fabrication photos of the entire
project in process click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 05-29-2014
we had the honor of being commissioned for the
second time to fabricate more furniture for the
second location of URBAN CHESTNUT BREWING COMPANY
(www.urbanchestnut.com),
which opened in January 2014 in The Grove at 4465
Manchester Avenue. the new location is in a whopping
75,000 square foot building — the former Renard
Paper Company facility, making UCBC the area’s
biggest craft brewery.
we were tasked two fabricate ten (10) more BEY
STOOLS from our FeRRUM™ (www.ferrumfurniture.com)
furniture line, using the same local, ST. LOUIS
HARVESTED ASH milled from a recovered ash tree
uprooted by severe winds generated from a tornado
that hit St. Charles, MO in June 2013, and recycled
blackened steel, for another area in the space. this
second order brings the total order to 40 BEY
STOOLS. the seats are custom stained with a low-VOC,
water-based, wood stain and several feature unique
live edge details.
for more photos of this completed Project #02 click
here. for photos of
the completed Project #01 click
here.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 05-29-2014
custom, high character/rustic, 102x42, DINING TABLE
for the CROUPPEN RESIDENCE in St. Louis, MO.
hand made out of local, saint louis-harvested and
milled natural walnut. the table features a 7/8"
thick top that's notched out using both modern and
traditional woodworking hand tools to wrap around
its 4"x4" legs, and making them visible from the top
of the table and flush with the height of the table
top. the table also features a combination of rough
sanding, wire brushing and hand scrapping techniques
to elevate the degree of high character in the wood.
finished with a low-VOC, water-based, heavy-duty,
satin topcoat. completed May 2014. #handmade
for play-by-play fabrication photos of this project
click
here.
for completion photos of this table click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 05-07-2014
just came across this on
ALIVE
Magazine (www.alivemag.com).
it apparently posted back in February and mentioned
me in an article titled "5 St. Louis Furniture
Artisans You Should Know". how cool is that. #WOW.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 05-07-2014
@ MILL / 050714 / like
a kid in a candy store. kickin' it with one of the
five (5) carts of freshly milled WALNUT milled from
the seven (7) STL-HARVESTED WALNUT LOGS we had
milled for the extensive
The Wheelhouse project - largest commercial
project we've ever had. the thicker 2" slabs are
already drying in the kiln, but the rest of this
wood is plain sliced at 4/4 thick and there is much
much more of it, so it all goes into the kiln today.
once all the wood has dried properly, it will be
used to make a 60FT-LONG LIVE EDGE BAR TOP - Saint
Louis' only authentic live edge bar top in a
restaurant or bar space, all their BEY BAR TABLES
and all their BEY CHAIRS, BEY BAR CHAIRS, and BEY
STOOLS from our FeRRUM™ (www.ferrumfurniture.com)
furniture line. stay tuned.
for play-by-play fabrication photos of the entire
project in process click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 04-30-2014
043014 /
fabrication / one of the 50-linear-feet worth
of custom, hand made BANQUETTES for part of the
extensive project for GRAPESEED restaurant in
SOHA, now ready for its first coat of low-VOC,
water-based, satin topcoat finish, then it's gray
colored upholstered seat. i've teamed up with the
talented Rashad Hamilton (instagram: @mrrashadh) to
take care of the upholstery work. stay tuned..
for play-by-play fabrication photos of the entire
project in process click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 04-28-2014
fifteen (15) semi-custom Bey Lounge Tables for
THE RED BROOM in Miami, FL., a new lounge and
bar scheduled to open in July 2014. the Bey Lounge
Table is one of our new furniture offerings from our
FeRRUM™ (www.ferrumfurniture.com)
furniture line for 2014. it stands 17" high with a
custom 1-1/2" thick top that measures 24" x 24".
hand made out of recycled blackened steel and
repurposed, 100-year-old, Nutting® warehouse cart
maple and pine deck boards. finished with a low-VOC,
water-based, heavy-duty, satin topcoat.
for more photos of this completed table, click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 04-26-2014
a custom, high character, 64" high x 79" wide x 96"
long, KING SIZE BED for the BURGESS RESIDENCE.
hand made out of ST. LOUIS HARVESTED PINE and
various REPURPOSED WOODS, including 100-year-old
boards milled from DOUGLAS FIR beams that once lay
suspended in the old Checkerdome Arena, and some gym
floor planks that we removed from the ST. LOUIS
COLLEGE OF PHARMACY in March and scheduled for
demolition this Spring. the bed features a bookcase
headboard and footboard storage area. finished with
a low-VOC, water-based, heavy-duty, satin topcoat.
completed April 2014.
for more photos of this completed table, click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 04-24-2014
custom, high character, 64"X40" DINING TABLE hand
made out of SAINT LOUIS harvested and milled,
natural WALNUT with splayed and angled legs for the
GARRETT RESIDENCE in SAINT LOUIS. finished
with a low-VOC, water-based, heavy-duty, satin
topcoat. completed April 2014.
for more photos of this completed table, click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 04-22-2014
custom, 60"x15"x16", AMERICAN ELM SLAB COFFEE TABLE
for the FORD RESIDENCE in SAINT LOUIS, MO.
features an original design, perpendicular
triangular feet arrangement made out of local SAINT
LOUIS-harvested AMERICAN ELM and WHITE OAK, and a
1-1/4" thick, SAINT LOUIS-harvested AMERICAN ELM
SLAB, glorified by naturally outdoor weathered
patina that formed on the slab while it sat on
sticks outdoors for over one year. finished with a
low-VOC, water-based, heavy-duty, satin topcoat.
completed April 2014.
for more photos of this completed table, click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 04-08-2014
we are very pleased to announce that we have been
commissioned to fabricate custom furniture and
fixtures for the new and upcoming 10,000 square foot
DOWNTOWN St. Louis location of THE WHEELHOUSE
(wheelhousestl.com),
a high energy sports bar and night club opening this
summer in the Cupples 8 Building at 1000 Spruce
Street by owners Stephen Savage, Jared
Ater and Lou Groff.
we've been tasked to
design and fabricate all of the bar's twenty-eight
(28) BEY CAFE TABLES from our semi-custom
FeRRUM™ furniture line (ferrumfurniture.com)
at both table and bar height, forty-six (46) BEY BAR
CHAIRS from our semi-custom FeRRUM™ furniture line,
thirty-eight (38) BEY STOOLS from our semi-custom
FeRRUM™ furniture line, two (2) bar height COMMUNITY
TABLES, and a 60-FOOT-LONG LIVE EDGE BAR TOP at the
main bar. all the wood for the table tops, chairs,
stools and bar top will be made out of local, ST.
LOUIS harvested, milled and kiln dried WALNUT. the
BAR TOP will be epic with it's beautiful,
authentic, 1-1/2" thick live edge -- we're also
installing the BAR TOP. all the steel for the
tables, stools and bar chairs will be made out of
recycled, US made steel.
as per you-know-how-we-do, this project focuses on a
carefully crafted combination of locally harvested,
woods, handmade metal and wood craftsmanship, and
healthy, low-VOC topcoat finishes to produce a
unique look and feel for our client. stay tuned for
project process photos and video here, as well as on
our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram social media
pages.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 04-02-2014
a custom, 48"X108", X-TRESTLE LIVE EDGE DINING
TABLE made out of local, SAINT LOUIS harvested
and milled SYCAMORE and FSC-certified PINE for the
SILVA RESIDENCE in St. Louis, MO. it features a
classic x-trestle base with a top-half rounded over
solid wood trestle. the table is hand treated with a
dual, custom brown-wash and gray-wash stain
combination to create intricate, rust-like
highlights. finished with a low-VOC, water-based,
heavy-duty, satin topcoat. completed April 2014.
for more photos of this completed table, click on
the following link:
http://on.fb.me/1k1j1wd
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 03-31-2014
033114 / dining table
(shown below)
ready for final touch sanding then first of
five coats of low-VOC, water-based, heavy-duty,
satin topcoat finish.
a custom 96"x38" DINING TABLE, 78"x24" BENCH,
76"x36" COFFEE TABLE, a 24" TREE TRUNK ROUND SIDE
TABLE, and a semi-custom BEY DESK from our FeRRUM™
furniture line (ferrumfurniture.com)
for the OWENS RESIDENCE in St. Louis, MO. the TABLE
and BENCH are high character wood, made out of STL-white
oak, STL-sassafras, 100-year-old reclaimed douglas
fir and FSC-certified cedar, and features a 7/8"
thick top and seat that are notched out to wrap
around their massive 6"X6" legs, making them visible
from the top of the table and bench, and flush with
the height of the table and bench top.
.
for play-by-play fabrication photos of this project
click here:
http://on.fb.me/1gVBLO2
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 03-03-2014
030314 / day
one / stage one of our projects for the
St. Louis College of Pharmacy is in full
swing. first stage is REMOVAL of all 8800 SF of this
GYM FLOOR and loading it up into a trailer. certain
sections will need to be keep separated for when it
comes time for us to repurpose the floor in the 4000
SF ART INSTALLATION on the wall and CUSTOM FURNITURE
portion of the project for the upcoming 213,000 SF
Academic
Building. today we removed just over 1,400
SF, so we're cranking and already ahead of schedule.
stay tuned.
fore complete details on this exciting project click
here
to go to the blog post.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 03-02-2014
it is with great honor we announce that we have been
commissioned to create a 4,000 SF ART INSTALLATION
and CUSTOM FURNITURE out of repurposed wood in the
upcoming 213,000 SF state-of-the-art Academic
Building of the ST. LOUIS COLLEGE OF PHARMACY
(
www.stlcop.edu ),
the fourth-oldest and 10th largest college of
pharmacy in America. the first stage of this entire
$100 million construction designed by international
design firm
Cannon Design, begins with the work that we
will start March 3. this new Academic Building is
designed to address, strengthen and make evident to
the regional, national and international community
that STLCOP is assertively embarking on a new era.
Stage One of
this massive project involves removing all of the
gymnasium’s 8800 SF of solid maple hardwood flooring
in the Student Center and putting it into storage
for several months while demolition of the Student
Center — to make way for the construction of the new
Academic Building, is taking place.
Stage Two
involves de-nailing and cleaning up and prepping all
of the floor planks in our STUDIO for
re-installation. except this time, these 7/8” thick
x 2-1/4” wide x random length flooring planks will
be re-installed by hand, as an ART INSTALLATION on
both sides of the epic, 13-foot high wall that runs
the entire length of the Corridor, Circulation Desk,
and the Wall Above the Circulation Desk, creating a
one-of-a-kind feature in the space that will not
only be visible within the space, but from outside
through the extensive facade of glass exterior wall,
as far away as S. Taylor Avenue and Parkview Pl.
the installation process and techniques will be
intricate at the least, and will include several
layers of cladding along the entire expanse of this
wall in a horizontal pattern, to create a beautiful
sense of depth and structure along both linear and
curvilinear areas of the wall. furthermore, certain
key sections of the gym floor — like the school’s
Eutectic logo for example, will be recreated in the
installation, but this time, in several layers of
gladding to create depth and 3D dimension. we’ve got
several cool things planned for this installation
with the aim to knock your socks off through an
intensive amount of attention paid to detail. every
single board will serve a purpose on this wall and
will not be there by accident.
Stage Three will
include building custom tables for various areas in
the building using a mixture of local, St.
Louis-harvested wood and the repurposed Gymnasium
Floor Planks that we’re removing.
this project will be a purposeful, eco-conscious
expression of art with wood. stay tuned for project
process photos.
finally, Cannon Design created an amazing animation
of what the building will look like. you’ll be able
to see where the ART INSTALLATION will be and its
massive scale. so, in the video, pretty much
everything you see in the visualization that’s a
sort-of a yellowish color is the repurposed gym
floor in the ART INSTALLATION and the TABLES. some
of the things that will be different from the video
is how the boards are shown laid vertically in the
ART INSTALLATION. the boards will actually be laid
horizontally and will have depth, natural color
variation, plus various color elements created from
the lines painted in the gym floor. it’s an
incredible video with a soaring musical score. check
it out below.
_____________________________________________
POSTED ON: 02-27-2014
022714 / cutting the 2" thick x 27"
deep x 100" long top made out of STL-harvested and
milled walnut boards to final length with a circular
saw for the residential project in PARK EAST
TOWERS. the end result will be a custom bar
that's 27" deep x 100" long x 42" high. it will look
like an upside down letter "U" at elevation view.
installing it as well. the entire project involves
building a CUSTOM BAR out of solid STL-harvested
walnut with solid 2" wood waterfall slab legs and a
custom STORAGE UNIT underneath. plus, a LIVE EDGE
WALNUT COUNTERTOP for the entertainment center, and
a LIVE EDGE WALNUT FLOATING SHELF in the bathroom.
stay tuned.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 02-26-2014
022614 / three of the 22 custom,
1-1/2" thick CAFE TABLES for
Saffron Indian Cuisine (www.saffronstl.com)
drying and soon ready for their screen printed logo
on the table top. following that will be an
application of a very thick, high gloss, plant-based
epoxy topcoat.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 02-21-2014
a special fabrication of
stainless steel BEY BENCHES and a BEY TABLE from our
FeRRUM™ (www.ferrumfurniture.com)
furniture line using a 12-inch wide x 8-inch thick x
18-foot long Douglas Fir beam taken down and
repurposed from the
Wall residence in Olivette, MO during their
home renovation. we picked up the beam and brought
it to the mill to plain slice it into 1” thick rough
boards. we used those boards to make the table top
and bench seats, and sealed it with a heavy duty,
low-VOC, satin, water-based topcoat finish. in a
rather difficult application from a fabrication
standpoint - when you consider the clean,
utilitarian design of our FeRRUM™ furniture line and
that the table top and seats are made from several
glue-up boards, their BEY TABLE top and BEY BENCH
seats feature a "true-edge" from the rough sawn
beam’s authentic, irregular wood edge. plus, we
welded the bases for the BEY BENCHES and BEY TABLE
by hand out of US stainless tube steel and polished
the welded seams to perfection. completed February
2014.
for play-by-play fabrication photos of this very
special FeRRUM™ furniture project, click on the
following link to our Facebook project photo
gallery:
http://on.fb.me/1ddNXXA
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 02-21-2014
pulling another 2" thick
slab off of the KEYS RESIDENCE red oak log
that we got from their backyard in Webster Groves.
the boards will go into the kiln for a couple
months. when the wood is ready we'll use it to make
them custom BENCHES, a HEADBOARD, a PORCH SWING, a
TREE TRUNK COFFEE TABLE, and some WALL TREATMENTS.
to see play-by-play photos of us picking up the logs
from their home, and milling the logs click
here:
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 02-19-2014
six (6) semi-custom BEY
CAFE TABLES from our FeRRUM™ (
www.ferrumfurniture.com
) furniture line made out of repurposed pallet wood
and recycled raw steel, and the three custom 24” –
30” diameter TREE TRUNK COFFEE TABLES made out of
locally harvested (St. Louis, MO) walnut and ash
trees uprooted by severe winds generated from the
tornado that hit St. Charles, MO in June 2013,
repurposed pallet wood and FSC-certified douglas fir
in their new home at SEEDZ CAFE (
www.seedzcafe.com
).
side note: there are tiny spots on one of the walnut
tree trunk rounds. those were created from holes
made into the tree by woodpeckers. this is a walnut
tree, and so it's very sweet bark. insects climb
into the holes wanting to eat the sweet bark, and
when they get in there, the woodpecker comes back
and eats them all. the locations of the spots
(pecks) show this tree was visited by woodpeckers
for over 200 years and sometimes every year, and
sometimes not for 20 years or more. who knows, those
woodpeckers might have been from the same family,
passing on the location of this cool tree to the
next generations. all of this history/life now lives
on in those tables.
for more photos of these furniture pieces we
designed and built for
Seedz Café,
click on the following link to go to our project
gallery page on Facebook:
http://on.fb.me/1fUmI2W
 |
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 02-18-2014
bringing in a bunch more
wood that i got from the demo currently going on at
our upcoming project for GRAPESEED restaurant
(
www.grapeseedstl.com
). we're repurposing this wood to make a lot of
their furniture and fixtures. to recap: framing out
and fabricating their entire BAR and BACK BAR,
building all their custom TABLES (Bey
Cafe Tables from our FeRRUM™ furniture
line (
www.ferrumfurniture.com
), BANQUETTES, WINDOW BAR, SERVER STATION and
building a FAUX WOOD BEAM. they're shooting for a
late-April open date. stay tuned.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 02-17-2014
021114 / walk through meeting with
architect, designer and athletic director at a local
college for what could be the most demanding and
largest scope commercial project we've ever had.
stay tuned.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 02-17-2014
nine (9) semi-custom
BEY CAFE TABLES from our FeRRUM™
furniture line (www.ferrumfurniture.com)
made out of a mixture of repurposed pine and silver
maple shipping pallet wood, FSC-certified cedar, FSC-certified
douglas fir and recycled raw steel. these beautiful
tables will grace the highly anticipated JILLY'S
ICE CREAM BAR, the new venture from Food Network
"Cupcake Wars" winner and Saint Louis fixture
Jilly's Cupcake Bar & Cafe (www.jillyscupcakebar.com),
scheduled to open at 608 N. McKnight in University
City this winter. the tables were treated with
custom stain colors to work with the vibrant colors
at Jilly's and sealed with a low-VOC, water-based,
clear satin finish.
for play-by-play fabrication photos of this table
and the rest of the project, click on the following
link to go to our project gallery page on Facebook:
http://on.fb.me/19p5Ddv
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 02-17-2014
two custom, 11-foot x
3-foot DINING TABLES made out of treated, FSC-certified
Douglas Fir, featuring solid, 6"x6" solid wood legs,
for the BENSON RESIDENCE in Kansas City, MO.
finished with a heavy duty, low-VOC, satin,
water-based topcoat. when both tables are placed
side-by-side in their dining room space it will sit
up to 30 people. completed February 2014.
for more photos of this table,
click
here to visit
our project gallery page on Facebook.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 02-05-2014
020514 / cross-cutting 6x6x8 Douglas
Fir boards on the table saw into massive 6x6 legs
for two custom, high character DINING TABLES for a
residential client (BENSON RESIDENCE) in Kansas
City. these tables are going to be monsters:
11-FEET-LONG x 3-FEET-WIDE with very clean, modern
lines and zero overhang on the 7/8" top, so those
legs are going to be in beast mode. stay tuned!
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 02-01-2014
welding and
polishing —
and more polishing, parts for the base of an order
of two (2) semi-custom BEY BENCHES and one
BEY TABLE from our FeRRUM™ (
www.ferrumfurniture.com
) furniture line in stainless steel. the
wood seats and table top will be made out of 1"
thick boards that we will mill out of 9-foot x
12-inch x 8-foot long Douglas Fir beams reclaimed
from the Wall's Residence in Olivette. stay tuned
for pictures and video of the milling process.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 01-30-2014
013014 / connecting
all the 30x48 tops to the bases of the custom BEY
CAFE TABLES from our FeRRUM™ (www.ferrumfurniture.com)
furniture line for JILLY'S ICE CREAM BAR.
Justin just told me that he now knows where the
color inspiration came from: my shoes. he's fired!
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 01-30-2014
we were commissioned to
design and fabricate custom furniture for THE
COUNTRY CLUB BAR & GRILL (www.countryclubbarandgrill.com)
located at 288 Lamp and Lantern Village in Town &
Country, after owner Jon Cain felt it was time for
some fresh upgrades to the space. so, we were tasked
to design and fabricate custom TRESTLE TABLES in
several sizes and heights: table and bar height.
after a visit to the studio, Jon was instantly drawn
to the arsenal of 100-year-old Nutting® warehouse
cart wood disassembled from carts that were acquired
from the now defunct Elgin Paper Mill in Chicago and
now sit in the studio. we made the tables almost
completely out of the 1-1/2" Nutting® warehouse cart
maple boards - with the exception of a couple parts
made out of 100-year-old joists reclaimed form an
old commercial building in downtown St. Louis, and
utilized traditional mortise and tenon joinery to
connect the trestle to the legs and the legs to the
feet of the base with this extremely old wood. the
tables are finished with a low-VOC, satin,
water-based topcoat finish.
for more photos of this table click
here.
 |
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 01-21-2014
we had the high honor of
being commissioned to fabricate custom furniture for
the highly anticipated, second location of URBAN
CHESTNUT BREWING COMPANY (
www.urbanchestnut.com
) in The Grove, located at 4465 Manchester Avenue.
it's a whopping 75,000 square foot building — the
former Renard Paper Company facility, making UCBC
the area’s biggest craft brewery. the building
renovation will result in a bottling line, staff
offices, retail space, a kitchen and bar area, and
seating for about 150 people. windows will look out
on to Manchester Avenue.
the project will seek LEED CERTIFICATION for energy
efficiency, water conservation and other sustainable
endeavors including the furniture and feature wall
that we will produce.
so, we were tasked to fabricate thirty (30) custom
BEY STOOLS from our FeRRUM™ (
www.ferrumfurniture.com
) furniture line for their 50-foot-long bar —
probably the largest bar ever built in St. Louis.
the stools are hand made out of recycled raw steel
for the frame and local St. Louis harvested wood for
the seats. we used very important for the seats. the
wood was milled locally from a recovered ASH tree
that lay on the side of a street, uprooted by severe
winds generated from the tornado that hit St.
Charles, MO in June 2013. several of the seats
feature unique live edge profiles.
for more photos of UCBC's custom Bey Stools from our
FeRRUM™ furniture line click
here.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 01-18-2014
JILLY'S
TABLE /
a custom 8-foot-long x 3-foot-wide COMMUNITY TABLE
made out of solid white oak harvested and milled
locally in St. Louis, MO for the highly anticipated
JILLY'S ICE CREAM BAR, the new venture from
Food Network "Cupcake Wars" winner and Saint Louis
fixture Jilly's Cupcake Bar & Cafe (
www.jillyscupcakebar.com
), scheduled to open at 608 N. McKnight in
University City this winter. the table was treated
with a custom stain color and a secondary accent
color to work with the vibrant colors at Jilly's and
sealed with a low-VOC, clear satin finish.
for more photos of this table click
here.
for play-by-play fabrication photos of this
entire project click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 01-15-2014
WEEK 3 /
phase two of the custom steel + wood hybrid
TRESTLE TABLE fabrication is in full swing. one
ends is laid out and connected, so the rest is all
about filling in this massive puzzle one strip at a
time, keeping it as tight and level as possible to
minimize the amount of sanding that has to be done
next. plus, all the tiny gaps where the tongue and
groove of the floor boards meet will have to be
filled before sanding. stay tuned.
for more photos of this project click
here
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 01-14-2014
two of fourteen, 42"L x 12"D x 4"H FLOATING
SHELVES for a downtown saint louis loft
residence, made out of local, solid, STL-harvested
natural walnut ready for the low-VOC water-based
topcoat finish.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 01-13-2014
WEEK 3 / work has begun
on phase two of this custom steel + wood hybrid
TRESTLE TABLE. on deck, making the 108"x48"
table top out of repurposed,
Missouri-harvested and milled, natural walnut
and cherry hardwood flooring. the tongues and
grooves of the flooring boards will be left exposed
on the bottom sides and you will be able to see the
T&G's of the floor boards connect to each other on
the surface. the table top will be fabricated with
the floor boards laid down vertically on its end
grain. plus, we're adding some random strips of
caramelized bamboo plywood into the mix. this top
will required over 400 cuts on the table saw. stay
tuned. to view play-by-play fabrication photos of
this cool project in our Facebook gallery click
here.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 01-12-2014
just purchased a book titled,
made in
the usa: the rise and retreat of american
manufacturing, and it got me thinking
about a few things. by now most people realize that
vast amounts of finished products are not made in
this country. in fact, you will be very hard pressed
to find anything in your home, including what your
home is made out of, that was made in this country.
as a cabinet and furniture maker operating a small
business i can’t help but notice that a very high
percentage of my clients are very well off
financially. i didn’t put up a sign that reads “rich
people only”, it just happened on its own, despite
the constantly growing amount of furniture and
casework being made outside of this country. i’ve
had people ask me if i’m worried about the big box
stores and their potential threat to my business and
other local makers. i tell them, “it’s actually the
opposite.” the big box stores actually help us
small, local makers/manufacturers. you see, our
clients don’t want a piece of furniture that
everybody else has, and the more these same big box
store pieces of furniture are circulated to the
masses, the more turned on they are to companies
like mine. plus, they’re looking for a $3000-$5000
dollar quality custom dining table, and would not be
caught dead buying a piece there, and the rich
continue to get richer while the poor continue to
get poorer.
so it’s good for our companies. but for our larger
local and national economy, non-american made
furniture and casework sucks. the problem is far
greater than what any of us local makers can even
begin to change. the real battle is for the average
american with very little disposable income and just
needs a damn table to eat off of, or a damn chair to
sit on, or a damn bed to sleep on at night, or a
damn wood floor to walk on - at a very low price
because their employer doesn’t pay very much, so
screw all that made in america shit!
so where do they have to go? they go to the big
business box store - the corner pusher for foreign
companies that have shareholders to pay. it’s a
vicious cycle that ironically, ends up hurting the
same people that buy these products when they’re own
jobs have been lost to foreign companies because it
can't compete. and we’re all guilty of it. it’s so
much easier and quicker to just pull up to box and
pull away with an entire living room set packaged in
cardboard boxes in the back of your car.
i don’t have the answers – i’m just a little
furniture maker with a small business, but perhaps
this issue deserves at least some deep thought on
the part of all of us.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 01-11-2014
we are pleased and humbled to announce that we have
been commissioned to fabricate custom TRESTLE TABLES
for THE RITZ-CARLTON, ST. LOUIS located at
100 Carondelet Plaza in Clayton, and part of a
global five-star luxury hotel brand that operates 84
luxury hotels and resorts in major cities and
resorts in 26 countries worldwide.
we've been tasked to design and fabricate a couple
bar height TRESTLE TABLES to complement the current
look of the space. the tables will be handmade out
of solid, locally-harvested wood. as per
you-know-how-we-do, this project focuses on a
carefully crafted combination of locally harvested
woods and healthy, low-VOC topcoat finishes to
produce a unique look and feel for our client. stay
tuned for project process photos.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 01-10-2014
week
FOUR / co-owner
DAVID WOLFE of URBAN CHESTNUT BREWING COMPANY
stopped in the studio today to check out the
progress on his 30 custom BEY STOOLS from our FeRRUM™
furniture line (
www.ferrumfurniture.com
)
—
he loved them! the Bey Stools are 90% finished and
delivery will be this month. the bar is over 50FT
LONG and we're honored to have our Bey Stools line
the largest bar ever built in ST. LOUIS! stay tuned!
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 01-01-2014
on hiatus until Jan 10th. will be checking emails
periodically at info@mwanzi.com. cheers!
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 01-01-2014
we designed and fabricated a few custom tables for
STONETOWN RESTAURANT (
www.stonetownusa.com
), a southern fusion restaurant in Cleveland, OH. we
fabricated 12 custom PEDESTAL TABLES that would fit
in with the restaurant's existing aesthetic. the
tables were fabricated with two color pallets. half
of the tables were stained with a low-VOC,
water-based deep chocolate stain and the other half
a low-VOC, water-based white-wash stain.
the tables were made out of STL-harvested PINE with
a rustic and traditional base construction, with
both circular and square tops. everything was
finished with a low-VOC, water-based, satin topcoat.
completed December 2013.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 12-31-2013
LOOKING BACK @ 2013. what another incredible year it
has been for Mwanzi as we shifted our focus
towards fabrication. thanks to you: our clients and
supporters, we have seen a fifth straight year of
profit growth. yet, that's not what i'm humbled by
most. i'm humbled most by the fact this great city
seems to have accepted this little company as one of
it's own.
on almost a weekly basis i hear from people how
happy they are that Mwanzi is here doing what it
does or how they wished they heard about us before.
certainly the early years were very difficult
—
as most companies experience, so to see how far this
company has come is reason to celebrate tonight.
i want to thank my talented behind the scenes
support crew of craftsmen: Etienne, Justin, Craig
and Vince, for helping me make this year another
successful one and for helping me make you the
highest paid crew of craftsmen in the city
—
as it should be. we did it our way. started from the
bottom now we're here! thank you to all of our
clients that decided to give a company with an
unusual name your trust, your dreams, and your
vision. we hope we made you proud. we could not do
what we do without you. period! thank you!
2014 is already shaping up to be another fun and
successful year. lets go seize it!
Sincerely,
Jermain Todd
Owner + Craftsman
Mwanzi
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 12-30-2013
week two of fabrication of our GREENHAUS
CABINETS® in our popular "chocolate" stain from
the MOD collection for a kitchen renovation at a
Saint Louis residence. these cabinets feature the
Blum® Servo-Drive drawer upgrades, which silently
and automatically open and close with a simple tap
of the drawer face with your fingers. for more
information our our cabinetry line visit our website
at
www.greenhauscabinets.com
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 12-28-2013
a custom CHILDREN'S BED for a client in St.
Louis made completely out of solid, FSC-certified
CEDAR, assembled and ready for sanding, then clear
satin, zero-VOC topcoat finish.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 12-26-2013
a custom, modern new home construction in St. Louis
outfitted with LEED Platinum features including our
very own semi-custom, locally made,
Greenhaus
Cabinets® (
www.greenhauscabinets.com
) from the MOD collection in natural birch for the
kitchen and master bathroom. we also supplied 2,000
square feet of rapidly renewable and scs-certified,
carmelized/strand bamboo flooring from Teragren®
(
www.teragren.com )
on the main and second floor, and supplied
greenguard® certified quartz countertops from
CaesarStone® (
www.caesarstoneus.com
) in the kitchen and master bathroom.
for more photos of this project visit our website at
www.mwanzi.com and
click on "feature project".
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 12-24-2013
we were commissioned to fabricate custom CAFÉ TABLES
for new vegetarian café + juice bar opening at 6344
South Rosebury in Clayton called SEEDZ CAFÉ (www.seedzcafe.com).
owners Cara Schloss and Montgomery Gralnick combine
their experience: he a former preparer of food for
celebrity actors on movie sets in California and she
a manager of the whole body department at Whole
Foods, to open a cafe that will offer raw, vegan and
vegetarian food items, as well as juices and
"infused elixirs" — among other things.
we were tasked to design and fabricate all of the
café's tables — which will include our very own
FeRRUM™ (www.ferrumfurniture.com)
hand made, “xBASE” vol.02 steel base, as well as
applying a subtle custom stain treatment on a
mixture of various repurposed, reclaimed and local
STL-harvested woods for the 1-1/2" wood tops.
for more completion photos of these cafe tables,
click
here to visit
our Facebook gallery.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 12-23-2013
week three
/ the project for URBAN CHESTNUT BREWING CO.
(
www.urbanchestnut.com
) is in full swing. part of the project for their
new 75,000 square foot facility in The Grove STL
includes fabricating thirty (30) custom BEY STOOLS
from our FeRRUM™ furniture line (
www.ferrumfurniture.com
) with a raw steel base and rustic wood top with
custom wood stain. the bases are now FINISHED! next
up is their wood seats. the seats will be made out
of solid, 7/8" locally harvested ASH. the ash was
milled from a tree uprooted by severe winds
generated from a tornado that hit St. Charles, MO in
June 2013. the tornado reportedly left more than 100
homes uninhabitable. the tree fell over the backyard
fence of a home and onto the side of Upper Bottom
Road near the Missouri River. it will now live on in
this furniture built for UCBC. #craftbeer #stl
#maker #handmade #furniture #woodworking #steelworking
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 12-22-2013
the final 24x30
repurposed wood CAFE TABLE top for SEEDZ CAFE
(
www.seedzcafe.com
) ready for the custom gray-wash stain. every
table will be unique and one-of-a-kind. however, i
thought it would be best in this particular space to
create a subtle sense of uniformity by applying the
gray-wash stain, which will also tie nicely with our
gray, raw steel xBASE from our FeRRUM™ furniture (
www.ferrumfurniture.com
) line (not shown here) and the natural concrete
floor that will be in the space.
this specific table top is slightly different from
all the other table tops though. i used lighter
boards in certain sections of the boarder. it's
actually Hard Maple that i "extracted" from
100-year-old
Nutting® warehouse carts and you can see the
holes where the 3/4" bolts ran through it. i also
incorporated some end grain patterns from an old
Douglas Fir beam i salvaged from a demo in Benton
Park and placed it in the center. the other thing
is, i named this table. it's the first commercial
furniture I've ever named. it's called SHEILIA. i
named it after the song playing in this video and
blasting in my studio on repeat the entire time I
made this top. the song had me. "... Sheilia, we'll
die alone together." like most of this wood, it was
left alone to die in abandoned buildings and
warehouse carts not used in years. the song is by
one of my favorite indie solo artists,
Atlas Sound.
so there it is. hopefully when you sit at this table
you'll understand.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 12-21-2013
we we're commissioned to fabricate custom furniture
for THE WELL JUICE BAR (
www.thewellasu.com
), a new juice bar opening next year within the new
expansion of the Sun Devil Fitness Complex at
Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ.
we made all of the juice bar's CAFE TABLES, which
included 10 table height and three bar height
tables, made out of rapidly renewable, SCS-certified
(certified indoor air quality) Teragren® bamboo
panels with a plywood substrate for added stability
and finished with a low-VOC, water-based, satin
topcoat.
the cafe tables at table height are all 30x30 and
24x24 at bar height, with solid 3/4” thick, 3-layer
cross-band solid BAMBOO tops, with and additional
3/4" thick hardwood plywood substrate underneath for
extra support, and positioned on our own FeRRUM™ (
www.ferrumfurniture.com
) mighty raw steel "xBASE" v.01. completed December
2013.
for more completion photos of these cafe tables,
click
here to visit
our Facebook gallery
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 12-20-2013
at the home of ex-NHL player and ST. LOUIS BLUES
forward BLAKE DUNLOP delivering the custom,
60" long x 15" deep, rustic/character BENCH we made
for him out of a single 3-1/2" thick beam that was
made from a 1000-yr-old cedar tree and reclaimed
from the old CHECKERDOME ARENA
—
the original home of the ST. LOUIS BLUES, where he
played from 1979-1984.
for more completion and fabrication photos of this
special bench click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 12-18-2013
i recently sat down at the studio and did a very
in-depth interview with
St. Louis Curator
(
www.stlcurator.com ).
i think you'll find it pretty interesting to read
and one that provides a great degree of backdrop on
what i do today. click
here to read
the feature.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 12-17-2013
as previously posted on
11-20-13,
we were approached by a national product rep company
to get our custom FeRRUM™
CAFE TABLES into restaurants, cafés, bars,
hotels and hospitals across the midwest and other
parts of the country. apparently we've created a
little bit of demand.
today it is with great pleasure that i announce we
have decided to sign on with the talented and
experienced team at HOSPITALITY FURNISHINGS CO.
(
hospitalityfurnish.com
) to represent us to their architect, interior
designer, and dealer clients in these various
industries.
and there's more ...
after being courted for several months, we've
decided to discontinue the task of selling our cafe
tables and furniture direct to new clients in the
restaurant and hospitality industry in favor of
handing over those duties to the highly trained,
reputable and well established team at FORD HOTEL
SUPPLY CO. (
fordstl.com ). Ford
is affectively our first and only official dealer in
the St. Louis and Kansas City area fulfilling an
area of furniture offerings they never had in their
vendor arsenal before. as our official dealer, they
will have several of our furniture pieces (cafe
tables, community tables, benches, etc.) and samples
on display for their clients to see in their
showrooms. plus, Ford will be able to book
appointments for their clients to visit our STUDIO
to answer any specific questions they may have and
see first hand where and how their furniture will be
made.
it humbles me greatly to make these two
announcements today, capping off another extremely
successful and exciting year. never did i think in a
million years when i started making furniture only a
few years ago that i would have a major product rep
company and a well established dealer ask if they
could represent and sell the furniture i make to
their list of clients. cheers!
for information on our current commercial furniture
offerings please visit our FeRRUM™ furniture
line website at
www.ferrumfurniture.com.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 12-16-2013
a custom, 60" long x 15" deep, rustic/character
BENCH hand made entirely out of a single 3-1/2"
thick beam that was made from a
1000-yr-old
cedar tree and reclaimed from the old
CHECKERDOME ARENA - the original home of our
beloved ST. LOUIS BLUES, after it was
demolished on February 27, 1999. this is a very
special furniture piece because we were commissioned
to make it for former ST. LOUIS BLUES player
BLAKE DUNLOP who played forward in the arena
from 1979-1984. finished with a low-VOC,
water-based, satin topcoat. completed December 2013.
to view more photos of this extra special bench in
our Facebook gallery, click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 12-12-2013
our all steel HAYA SERIES from our FeRRUM™
furniture line is named after the great Haya people
of Tanzania in East Africa, who were known for their
metal work and invented a type of furnace they used
to make carbon steel at 3,276 °F nearly 2000 years
ago.
utilitarian in its simplistic design, the HAYA
BAR TABLE is hand-welded entirely out of raw
steel, clear coated with a protective sealer, and
aimed at the RESTAURANT &
HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY. anonymous enough in
its design to work with most any barstool. it can be
ordered as a single piece or in two easy to assemble
pieces: top + base. for indoor use only. hand made
in St. Louis, MO out of US steel. for more photos
and information visit
www.ferrumfurniture.com.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 12-11-2013
we are very
pleased to announce that we have been commissioned
to fabricate custom CAFE TABLES for a new vegetarian
café + juice bar opening at 6344 South Rosebury in
Clayton called SEEDZ CAFE (
www.seedzcafe.com
). owners Cara Schloss and
Montgomery Gralnick combine their experience: he
a former preparer of food for celebrity actors on
movie sets in California and she a manager of the
whole body department at Whole Foods, to open a cafe
that will offer raw, vegan and vegetarian food
items, as well as juices and "infused elixirs" —
among other things.
we've been tasked to design and fabricate all of the
café's tables — which will include our very own
FeRRUM™
(
www.ferrumfurniture.com
) hand made, “xBASE” vol.02 steel base, as well
as applying a subtle custom stain treatment on a
mixture of various repurposed, reclaimed and local
saint louis-harvested woods for the 1-1/2" wood
tops.
as per you-know-how-we-do, this project focuses on a
carefully crafted combination of locally harvested,
repurposed and reclaimed woods, handmade metal and
wood craftsmanship, and healthy, low-VOC topcoat
finishes to produce a unique look and feel for our
client. stay tuned for project process photos.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 12-10-2013
a custom
8-foot-long, rustic DINING TABLE for a
residential client in ST. LOUIS made out ST. LOUIS
HARVESTED, solid WHITE OAK. finished with a low-voc,
water-based, satin topcoat. completed December 2013.
to view more photos of this cool table in our
Facebook gallery click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 12-07-2013
currently into
week two of fabrication of one of the most
interesting tables we've ever made. it's a
9-foot-long, hybrid TRESTLE DINING TABLE made
out of repurposed, solid Missouri-harvested
walnut
and cherry
hardwood flooring, with a handmade raw steel
base for a residential client in Saint Louis. this
unique dining table features a wood trestle made out
of repurposed wood flooring with exposed tongues and
grooves, and the top made out of repurposed flooring
with exposed tongues on the bottom side of the
2-1/2" thick table top. to view play-by-play
fabrication photos of this cool project in our
Facebook gallery click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 12-01-2013
a renovated
two-story duplex with original long leaf pine wood
flooring. we were commissioned to fabricate all the
wood and steel parts for the home’s CUSTOM
STAIRWELL, fabricate and supply our Greenhaus
Cabinets® —
www.greenhauscabinets.com,
from the MOD and LUX collections for the kitchen and
master bathroom, supply and install RECLAIMED
BARNWOOD CLADDING and TRIM on the kitchen
island back facade and countertop backsplash.
completed november 2013.
to view more photos of this cool project in our
Facebook gallery click
here. or, go to
the main page of this website and click on "feature
project".
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 11-27-2013
LA SEGUNA PARTE
arrived in
Madrid and this city is exceptionally great.
there is simply no street, alley, corner, area in it
that's not worth being in. my head hearts from the
amazing visual overload of magnificent buildings,
bustling streets, cafes everywhere, and very
fashionable people. yes it was great to not have to
see a single pair of khaki pants or shorts. i have a
thing against khakis, but i digress. another thing i
enjoyed was not seeing a single cardboard tea cup or
coffee cup inside or outside. no, you sit down and
enjoy your tea or coffee in a proper porcelain or
glass cup. the people treated me very well. they
were very polite, and you can tell that they
appreciate it when you make an effort to speak in
spanish instead of just blurting out words in
english. the streets were so clean. despite how
terrible the economy in ESPAÑA is right now,
you would never know it in
Madrid
or
Málaga.
i must have walked down a hundred different streets
and on each street is row after row of shops and
cafes, and i only remember seeing four unoccupied
retail spaces. they support the local businesses and
don't need major marketing campaigns to encourage
people to do it — they just do it.
Madrid
is a world class city and i look forward to
visiting again in the near future.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 11-25-2013
PRIMERA PARTE
having a blast in beautiful ESPAÑA. retooling
and re-inspiring in one of the most beautiful
countries i've ever been to. i've been in
Málaga mainly, which is in the southern part
of the country, and even took a short drive south
down the Mediterranean coast and crossed the border
into
Gibraltar to check out the famous Rock of
Gibraltar and the rich Moorish history there. will
soon head north into the heart of the country and
take in the energy of
Madrid.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 11-21-2013
we will be on
pause from november 21 until december 2. cheers!
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 11-20-2013
we've been
approached by and will soon sign an exclusive deal
with a national product rep company to get our
custom
cafe
table tops + FeRRUM™ steel
xBASES (
www.ferrumfurniture.com
) into restaurants, cafés, bars and hotels all
across the country. apparently we've created a
little bit of demand. stay tuned for the official
announcement.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 11-18-2013
we are very
pleased to announce that we have been commissioned
to fabricate custom furniture and build the entire
bar and back bar for a new restaurant opening in
SOHA by chef and restaurateur Ben Anderson
called GRAPESEED. the restaurant is scheduled
to open in the first quarter of 2014. it will be
located at 5400 Nottingham Avenue and features the
talents of executive Chef Jonathan Olson.
we've been tasked to design and fabricate all of the
restaurant’s TABLES - featuring our FeRRUM™ (www.ferrumfurniture.com)
steel “xBASE”, a 26-foot stretch of BANQUETTE
seating, an 18-foot-long stretch of WINDOW BAR, a
custom SERVER STATION, and the entire build-out of
their 27-foot-long BAR and 12-foot-long BACK BAR
with a custom floating shelf system fabricated out
of steel and wood.
this project will also feature the use of ancient
wood beams harvested from trees that date 1,000
years old and used to build the old Checkerdome
Arena in St. Louis – the original home of the
St. Louis Blues, that stood from 1929-1999
across I-64 from Forest Park. folks, there’s
reclaimed wood, then there’s this ancient stuff.
we’re stoked to have the opportunity to more the
likely be the first craftsmen to build furniture out
of this wood for a commercial space in St. Louis.
as per you-know-how-we-do, this entire project
focuses on a carefully crafted combination of
locally harvested, repurposed and reclaimed woods,
handmade metal and wood craftsmanship, and healthy,
low-VOC topcoat finishes to produce a unique look
and feel for our client.
stay tuned for project process photos.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 11-15-2013
a custom,
9-foot-long x 4-foot-wide,
live edge
DINING TABLE for a residential client in ST.
LOUIS. hand made with a raw steel trapezoid base and
ST. LOUIS-harvested PECAN wood top fabricated out of
four boards to simulate a single large slab, treated
with a custom darkening wood stain base coat and a
gray-wash stain topcoat. finished with a low-VOC,
clear satin topcoat finish. completed November 2013.
to view more photos of this table in our Facebook
gallery click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 11-13-2013
week three and
fabrication on the BAR HEIGHT ISLAND TABLE
has begun. the two inch thick, STL-HARVESTED natural
WALNUT top is glued up and cut and ripped to final
size with a circular saw and at the cabinet saw, and
the 2-1/4" x 2-1/4" solid WALNUT legs are getting a
simple and clean eased edge at the router table.
next up is sanding, joinery, spraying, then
assembly. this table only has two legs. the other
end will rest on a kitchen island half wall. stay
tuned.
to view play-by-play photos of the entire
fabrication click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 11-11-2013
we were
commissioned to design and fabricate several custom
32x32 CAFE TABLES for the new Grand Center
location of Saint Louis fixture, 88.1 KDHX (
www.kdhx.org ).
they are moving out of their old building on
Magnolia Avenue to the old Creepy Crawl space at
3524 Washington Avenue after launching a $4 million
capital campaign.
the first floor will house a cafe, a bar, and a
performance venue. the second floor will be used for
production, including a studio for an HD2 channel,
as well as one for recording live in-studio
performances. the top two floors will be used for
administrative and office space. KDHX partnered with
Lawrence Group to design the cafe, bar and
performance venue.
they were going to purchase tables from a custom
furniture outfit in California until Sandy Chiu
(pictured below) at Lawrence Group said, 'hey Mwanzi
can do that'. we sure can - and better! right here
in the Saint Louis. Co-Executive Director of KDHX,
Beverly Hacker was very pleased to know that we
would be doing the tables after admiring our work
for some time and purchasing our Greenhaus
Cabinets® (
www.greenhauscabinets.com
) for her home two years ago.
the cafe tables are made out of a mixture of
repurposed shipping pallet wood and brand new wood
harvested locally in St. Louis, with numerous wood
color treatments and application techniques to yield
it's one-of-a-kind look and feel. the bases for the
cafe tables are our very own locally hand crafted
steel "xBASE vol.02" from our FeRRUM™
furniture line (
www.ferrumfurniture.com
).
the table tops went through eight painstaking
revisions to finally create the look and feel i felt
best represented KDHX. i wanted each table to be
edgy, gritty, rebellious, visually independent from
each other — yet cohesive as a collective, and
display lots of visual depth. the tables are made
with the following wood species: pine, red oak,
white oak, walnut, sycamore, and silver maple.
nothing, in any of the tables is there by accident
and i hope you enjoy your experience using them at
KDHX.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 11-04-2013
i thoroughly
enjoy when we have a project that involves making
furniture and/or cabinets out of wood from a tree(s)
harvested from the property of the client. it simply
can't get any more sustainable for us than that.
Mr. & Mrs. Keys contacted me a few weeks ago
informing that they have a tree services company
coming to the house to feld a very large RED OAK
TREE in their back yard and wanted me to make custom
furniture out of the wood for their house. i gave
them instructions on what they needed to tell the
tree services company so that the logs were cut in a
way that would be suitable for furniture
fabrication. i had the tree cut into two (2),
nine-foot-long logs. the logs are four feet
in diameter.
so today i went to the house with my boy Scott to
pick up the logs and take it to his mill a few miles
away for slicing and kiln drying. after the wood is
dried in the kiln for a few months, i will use the
wood to make Mr. & Mrs. Keys a custom COFFEE TABLE,
a HEADBOARD, a PORCH SWING, a round COFFEE TABLE,
and some WALL TREATMENTS. stay tuned.
 |
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 11-04-2013
spent part of the
morning (110413) picking up two four feet in
diameter RED OAK LOGS that were nine feet
long, in the backyard of a client in Webster Groves.
we then took it to a mill owned by my friend Scott,
to have him mill the logs into slabs and boards,
then kiln dry everything so that I can make a tonne
of furniture in a couple months for the client. stay
tuned. for more info, photos and video of today's
fun day, stay tuned for another post that should be
going live sometime this evening. cheers!
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 11-03-2013
to continue from
yesterday's post about the ancient,
1000-year-old Douglas Fir boards salvaged
a few years ago from the demolished CHECKERDOME
ARENA
(a.k.a. The Barn) that we now have, i wanted to
share a little bit more about my experience getting
the wood at my friend's mill that day.
driving to Roger's tiny mill was absolutely
beautiful yesterday afternoon. my windows were down,
temperatures were in the low 60's and the sun was
shinning. the trees were every natural color
imaginable, as i drove up and down the windy roads
in the hills. at one point i pulled over at the side
of the road to just take it all in. it reminded me
that this world can be an amazing place if you have
the opportunity to see it.
when i arrived — and from the moment i hopped
out of my truck, Roger came right over and greeted
me with the warmest of hand shakes: both of his
hands over my hand, and said "welcome Jermain". we
immediately got into conversation about trees and
wood. you know, almost every day of my life since
2005 i've been speaking to clients about the
importance of trees. most get it, but many do not.
i've spent a considerable amount of time and effort
developing a small company that i think better
delivers that message. i've apparently become this
fancy "marketing genius" when it comes to creating a
successful small business in the industry that i'm
in. but when i meet up with heads like Roger — who
has almost nothing in common with me except for our
passion for working with trees and wood, our deep
conversations reminds me to never loose touch with
why i started MWANZI.
Roger, like every indie mill owner I've met around
the country, is an environmentalist to the core.
except, that's not a title they wood give
themselves. the things i've been speaking with
clients about in my fancy showroom or studio, are
the things that come out of Roger's mouth without
effort, out there in the sticks, with nobody around
but him, his boards and the trees.
he told me, "as a young woodworker, it's important
that you respect the trees. we want the next
generation — your children and their children, to
fight over the pieces of furniture that you made. we
want the pieces of furniture that you made with your
hands and are now in people's homes or in
businesses, to carry on a history that started, in
some cases, over 1,000 years ago."
part of the history for me personally, with this
ancient wood from the CHECKERDOME ARENA, is the fact
that it was a place that a Black person like me
would not have been allowed to go inside of to watch
a game when it was built in 1929. but here we are,
Mwanzi,
adding a new chapter in this story.
i'm telling you, i was fighting back tears. i was so
overwhelmed: the place, our conversation, the
moment. it felt so good to speak with somebody that
understood what i do and what i've worked so hard to
get to, because it's not easy. mills and woodshops
have shut down left right and center in this
country. he said, "all of our best wood ends
up as veneers over particleboard for shitty pieces
of furniture made in China, that fall apart in one
year, then you go back and get more shit."
Roger counted the rings on a three inch section of
one of the CHECKERDOME ARENA boards and counted 70
rings. based on the size of these boards, the tree
that the board was milled from was at least 48" in
diameter, which easily ages it at over 1000 years
old when it was feld.
The CHECKERDOME ARENA was designed by Gustel R.
Kiewitt and stood from 1929-1999 across I-64
from Forest Park and the original home to the
St.
Louis Blues. Roger told me that Gustel
Kiewett and most of the people who worked on the
arena were never paid because the same year the
arena finished construction in 1929, the stock
market crashed and there was no money.
this is some important wood folks, and we now have
all of this wood at our ready, several boards now in
storage and a few on display in our studio for our
clients, documentation from the contractors that
demolished the arena proving its origin, and with
several projects already lined up that we will
incorporate this most historic of historic woods in
St. Louis. want us to make you a piece of furniture
for you with this ancient and historic wood? give us
a shout at
info@mwanzi.com or
hit us up at 314-200-4123 to schedule a studio
appointment to go over a furniture piece idea that
you have in mind.
 |
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 11-02-2013
i had the honor
of spending a beautiful fall afternoon in the hills
surrounded by trees in their fall colors and going
through an expansive stash of ancient,
1000-year-old Douglas Fir boards salvaged a few
years ago from the demolished CHECKERDOME ARENA
(a.k.a. The Barn).
the arena was designed by Gustel R. Kiewitt and
stood from 1929-1999 across I-64 from Forest Park
and was home to the St. Louis Blues. we now
have all of this wood at our ready, several boards
now in storage and a few on display in our studio
for our clients, documentation from the contractors
that demolished the arena proving its origin, and
with several projects already lined up that we will
incorporate this most historic of historic woods in
St. Louis.
in this video, Roger is counting the rings on a 3"
section of one of the boards used to form the
lamella design in the Checkerdome. he counted 70
rings! based on the size of these boards, the tree
that these boards were milled from was at least 48"
in diameter, which easily ages it at over 1000 years
old when it was feld.
want us to make you a piece of furniture for you
with this ancient and historic wood? give us a
shout.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 11-01-2013
play-by-play photos of the fabrication of our
Greenhaus Cabinets® cabinetry and several custom
furniture pieces for the DIAZ-SILVA RESIDENCE
in University City.
our project involves a few interior finishes
categories. first, a beautiful combination of
natural walnut and a custom gray paint CABINETS from
the MOD collection of our Greenhaus Cabinets® (
www.greenhauscabinets.com
) in the kitchen, featuring several lift-system
doors and a custom triple combination built-in tall
cabinet. then, a massive 9-foot-tall, 4-foot-wide,
natural walnut COAT CLOSET UNIT. then finally, a
minimalist L-SLAB PEDESTAL made out of solid, St.
Louis-harvested natural walnut with a featured
oversized box joint for the first floor bathroom’s
sink, and two FLOATING SHELVES made out of solid,
St. Louis-harvested walnut slabs.
the custom furniture portion of our project includes
a 9-foot-long x 4-foot-wide DINING TABLE with a St.
Louis-harvested, live-edge, solid pecan wood top
treated with a custom wood stain color and supported
by a trapezoid base hand made out of a mighty raw
steel with exposed welds.
also, a custom BAR HEIGHT ISLAND TABLE made out of
St. Louis-harvested, solid natural walnut that will
be attach to the top of the half-wall and anchored
into the floor to complete the kitchen island.
finally, we’ve been asked to design and fabricate a
custom BOOKCASE UNIT that will cover a 10-foot-wide
x 9-foot-high wall section in the living room −
there are several additional pieces for the rest of
the home but we’ll deal with that later. all
interior finishes and furniture pieces will be
finished with a low-VOC, clear satin topcoat sealer.
to view more up-to-date photos
of this project in our Facebook page gallery click
here.
 |
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 10-31-2013
it's come to this. a growing tide of table need
built up and now exploded. in other words: i have
16 dining
tables in this rustic, parson-esque style
to finish by the end of next month for 16 different
residential clients. it's the most amount of dining
tables i've had to do in one month -- ever! my
clients by far like this style of table. so do i.
already finished and delivered four. the one in this
picture is my favorite so far. the boards are so
alive and full of energy. doing final sanding before
the low-VOC topcoat finish is applied.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 10-31-2013
mad stoked to announce that we've been asked to
fabricate and install a wide array of interior
finishes and custom furniture at the highly
anticipated JILLY'S ICE CREAM BAR, the new
venture from Food Network Cupcake Wars
winner and Saint Louis fixture Jilly's Cupcake
Bar (
www.jillyscupcakebar.com
), scheduled to open at 608 N. McKnight in
University City in a couple months.
we're working closely with star designer Rohde
Hill (
www.srohdehill.com
) to create the look and feel for the space.
part of our project includes fabricating all of the
bar's CAFE TABLE. the tables will be made out of
various repurposed woods, and brand new, rustic
character wood harvested locally in St. Louis and
treated with custom stain colors on select boards.
these special 1-1/2" thick table tops will sit tight
on our mighty steel "xBASE vol.02"
table bases from our FeRRUM™ (
www.ferrumfurniture.com
) furniture line. Jilly's will be the first location
in Saint Louis to have our hand made, Saint
Louis-made, "xBASE vol. 02" since we launched it two
weeks ago.
#doneknow
we've also been asked to fabricate and install a
fifteen foot long WINDOW BAR. the window bar will be
made with, and will feature a thick, live edge slab
of wood harvested and milled locally in St. Louis,
and will sit tight on a hand made, mighty steel base
that we will weld to fit the specific shape of the
slab.
finally, we're going to fabricate a 8-foot-long,
rustic, parson-esque COMMUNITY TABLE made out of
solid, local pecan wood harvested in St. Louis.
as-per-youknowhowwedo, this project will focus on
sustainably and locally hand crafted, healthy
fabrication, to create a space-specific,
one-of-a-kind look and feel for JILLY'S ICE CREAM
BAR. stay tuned for project process photos and
updates of this exciting project.
|
|
photo /
pictured above with JILLY'S ICE CREAM BAR & JILLY'S CUPCAKE BAR owner
Jill Segal |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 10-28-2013
i remember when i first got my kayak i would take it
out on the water almost every other weekend during
the warmer parts of the year. it's been harder to do
that these days, but i brought my kayak to the
STUDIO over the weekend because i plan to
take it on the water after work/play this week and
just sit peacefully on the water.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 10-27-2013
sneak peek at one of the 30" x 48" repurposed wood
(shipping pallet, 100-year-old Nutting® cart wood,
flooring) table tops that will go on top of our hand
made, FeRRUM™ cafe-style "xBASE vol.02" (
www.ferrumfurniture.com
) for one of our new commercial projects. some of
the boards received individual custom stain
treatments. stay tuned for official project
announcement.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 10-26-2013
it's been only
two weeks since we launched our xBASE vol. 02
from our FeRRUM™ furniture line and we've
already had dozens of orders. hand made in St.
Louis, MO out of raw steel, for $85 per base it does
not get any better than that. we were busy this
afternoon fabricating a bunch of bases for a couple
restaurants and cafes across the country: Nashville,
Kansas City, Saint Louis, Chicago and Indianapolis.
www.ferrumfurniture.com
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 10-21-2013
the front and back door signage at the STUDIO is up.
big ups to PHIL JARVIS (
www.philjarvispaintings.com
) on the hand painted artistry work and CHRIS
BRANSON (
www.christopherbranson.com
) on the genius brand revamp work. can't forget the
homie KEVIN MCCOY (
www.wp-printshoppe.tumblr.com
) for setting it off.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 10-18-2013
we are proud to introduce the mighty xBASE
version 02 from our FeRRUM™ furniture line.
it's the second installment in our 100% steel,
4-prong restaurant table base collection, available
in four standard sizes to support all types of
restaurant tables.
unlike it's cast-iron base counterpart, our 100%
steel construction is much stronger than cast iron.
why? steel has less carbon than cast iron and is
therefore stronger than cast iron. plus, our
xBASE does not need any assembly, no screws and
bolts to tighten or have come loose, and provides
better support for the table top. the 4-prong table
base is the most popular in the restaurant industry.
it provides four points of contact and allows
patrons to sit with their feet on either side of the
base — as opposed to putting their feet on the base.
features raw steel with both exposed and grinded
down welds, and adjustable leveling feet. hand made
in saint louis, mo out of US steel. retail:
$85/pc. for more info visit
www.ferrumfurniture.com
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 10-16-2013
we are honored to announce that we've been
commissioned to design and fabricate several custom
tables for the new and upcoming Grand Center
location of St. Louis fixture, 88.1 KDHX (
www.kdhx.org ).
they are moving out of their old building on
Magnolia Avenue to the old Creepy Crawl space at
3524 Washington Avenue after launching a $4 million
capital campaign to pay for the renovation of the
building and other expenses.
the first floor will house a cafe, a bar, and a
performance venue. the second floor will be used for
production, including a studio for an HD2 channel,
as well as one for recording live in-studio
performances. the top two floors will be used for
administrative and office space. KDHX partnered with
The Lawrence Group to design the cafe, bar
and performance venue.
we are working closely with The Lawrence Group to
design and fabricate custom tables for the bar area.
they were originally going to purchase tables from a
custom furniture outfit in California until one of
the employees at The Lawrence Group said, 'hey
Mwanzi can do that'. we sure can - and better! right
here in the STL. Co-Executive Director of KDHX,
Beverly Hacker was very pleased to know that we
would be doing the tables after admiring our work
for some time and purchasing our Greenhaus
Cabinets® (
www.greenhauscabinets.com
) for her home two years ago.
as-per-youknowhowwedo, the furniture will focus on
sustainably and locally hand crafted, healthy
fabrication, to create a space-specific,
one-of-a-kind look and feel for our KDHX. stay tuned
for project process photos and updates and follow
them on Facebook
here.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 10-15-2013
coming out with some gear very soon. here's a sneak
peek at the t-shirts. some snap back caps coming
down the pike as well. stay tuned.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 10-14-2013
had the honor of having
Urban Chestnut Brewing CO. (
www.urbanchestnut.com
) owners
Florian Kuplent and
Dave Wolfe in the STUDIO today. we went over
final details of their order for 30 of our Bey
Stools from our FeRRUM® furniture line (
www.ferrumfurniture.com
). they decided on using a mixture of rustic/high
character woods from a selection of St.
Louis-harvested woods recently harvested, and
various repurposed woods for the seats. all wood
will be treated with a custom mid-tone brown wood
stain.
plus, i convinced them to make one or two of the
seats for the Bey Stool out of solid chestnut! we'll
see if you can figure out which ones they are. we're
making all the stool bases out of a mighty recycled
raw steel with exposed welds so it will have a very
rich and timeless feel. we also discussed some
additional work which included custom accent wall
cladding in repurposed shipping pallet wood, plus an
extra special custom furniture project that i
pitched to them, but i'll save that for later. stay
tuned.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 10-13-2013
several orders for the Bey Stool from our
FeRRUM® (
www.ferrumfurniture.com
) furniture line have come in this month. started on
an order today for a dozen stools in raw steel w/
exposed welds and rustic, saint louis-harvested
white oak wood seats for the break room bar area of
SCHOELLER LAW, a new law firm starting up in
Chicago, IL.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 10-11-2013
it's week three of the custom furniture project for
CUCINA PAZZO (
www.cucinapazzostl.com
). on deck is a 100-year-old, 9-foot-long pine barn
wood board, salvaged five months ago from a barn
that was demolished to make way for the new St.
Louis Premium Outlet Mall in Chesterfield. the
board's edge is flattened on the jointer and used to
make one of the 30x24 TABLE TOPS. for more
information on this special barn wood click on the
following link
here.
to view more photos of this project in our facebook
page gallery click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 10-06-2013
it's week two of our custom furniture project for
CUCINA PAZZO (
www.cucinapazzostl.com
) restaurant opening in the Central West this fall.
on deck is one of the 30 x 48 table height TRESTLE
TABLES hand made out of repurposed shipping pallet
wood, some 40-year-old douglas fir 2x4s foraged from
a renovation in Benton Park West and originally
milled by the now defunct Keystone Lumber Co.
founded in 1948 — notice this now vintage logo in
the piece, and some old 2x10s foraged from the new
International Tap House (iTAP) location in the
Central West End during the renovation phase. this
table is now ready for the custom two tone, low-voc,
water-based stain combination: white-wash on the top
and grey-wash on the base. after the stain dries it
will receive it's low-voc, water-based topcoat
finish.
to view more photos of this project in our Facebook
page gallery click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 09-27-2013
we were commissioned to design, fabricate + install
a wide array of custom furniture and casework for
the new Fenton, MO location of MAGNET WORKS (
www.magnetworks.com
), a local, family-owned manufacturer of indoor and
outdoor home decor products since 1989.
we fabricated one (1) custom, 10FT COMMUNITY table
made out of STL-harvested wood and loaded with
character for the break room area, two (2) custom,
7FT CONFERENCE TABLES that will connect to form a
12FT CONFERENCE TABLE, loaded with character and
made out of STL-harvested wood, then ten (10) CAFE
TABLES in two sizes made out of sustainably
harvested, FSC-certified wood for the top and
recycled black cast-iron for the base for the break
room area with a more clean and contemporary style.
we also fabricated and installed 20FT worth of
continuous, custom BANQUETTES out of repurposed
shipping pallet wood with a handmade upholstered
seat, and cladding a feature 25FT "MAILBOX WALL"
with repurposed shipping pallet wood. all work will
be sealed with a zero-VOC, satin topcoat finish.
completed september 2013
to view more photos of this project in our Facebook
page gallery click
here.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 09-18-2013
week one of the custom furniture project for
CUCINA PAZZO restaurant opening in the old Duffs
space in the Central West End. we were commissioned
to design and fabricate 27 rustic/high character
wood tables for the restaurant, and to do that, a
dig into our deep arsenal of ecoconsious wood is
being made.
first up, a few 28" deep x 60" long, bar height
TRESTLE TABLES (shown below) made with 100-year-old
repurposed floor joists from a south city rehab and
some repurposed shipping pallet wood, stained with a
custom two-tone, white-wash-grey-wash combination.
shown in the photo is the trestle base for one of
the 28"x60" tables, drying after the water-based,
grey-wash wood stain was applied. it will get a
zero-VOC, clear satin topcoat finish.
the table top will be made out of repurposed
shipping pallet wood and 100-year-old, repurposed
Nutting® warehouse cart deck boards and treated with
a custom white-wash wood stain.
to view more photos of this project in our Facebook
page gallery click
here.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 09-15-2013
enjoyed a beautiful weekend of perfect weather,
scenery and chillaxin' at HAWN STATE PARK in
St. Genevieve, MO with quality beers n' bros. we're
pictured above the tree line on the bluffs in the
Whispering Pines Wild Area.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 09-13-2013
the custom 120" long CONFERENCE TABLE made out of
local, St. Louis-harvested natural WHITE OAK and
treated with a custom, water-based stain for the new
MAGNET WORKS (
www.magnetworks.com
) facility in Fenton, MO. the table couples a
high character, unspoiled aesthetic with a
functional, 1" thick surface for conducting company
meetings. finished with a low-VOC, clear satin
topcoat. completed September 2013.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 09-10-2013
a custom 84" long DINING TABLE made out of
local, born-n-raised St. Louis harvested natural
WALNUT for a client in Chicago, IL. the table
features a solid book-matched walnut slab for the
top and a midcentury modern take on the ancient
trestle base in solid natural walnut. finished with
a low-VOC, clear satin topcoat. completed August
2013.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 09-05-2013
completed the COUNTERTOP & BREW BAR at
RISE
Coffee House (
www.risecoffeestl.com
)
a couple weeks ago, and today the WINDOW BAR
was completed. they plan to open up very soon.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 09-03-2013
installation of
the 25 FT worth of BANQUETTE SEATING made w/
repurposed pallet wood and custom upholstery by
Rashad Hamilton (twitter: @MrRashadH), along with
the cladding of 25 LF of repurposed shipping pallet
wood along the MAILBOX WALL for the new MAGNET
WORKS (
www.magnetworks.com
) facility in Fenton, MO began and was
completed today. installation took approximately
five hours and went very well. up next is the
completed fabrication and delivery of the 10FT
CONFERENCE TABLE, the 8FT COMMUNITY TABLE and 10
CAFE-STYLE TABLES. stay tuned.
to view more photos of today's installation click on
the image below.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 08-26-2013
it is with mixed
feelings we announce that we’ve ended our private
showroom operations at our 2757 wyoming street
address in Benton Park West after four years, and
continuing at a new location a few blocks away in a
6500 SF space in the Cherokee-Lemp Historic District
located at 3412 LEMP AVENUE. this new space
is now known as the
STUDIO space and will house a furniture
fabrication shop. this exciting move frees up much
needed space at the current CABINET SHOP, allowing
the crew to focus attention on our Greenhaus
Cabinets® fabrication.
the STUDIO space is used exclusively to fabricate
our various furniture lines and various custom
residential and commercial furniture projects.
fabricating cabinets and furniture in the same space
became very difficult and needed to be separated.
plus, unlike our CABINET SHOP which is not open to
the public, the new STUDIO space will allow clients
to see finished pieces and pieces currently in
fabrication. clients can also make product and
material selections from the various displays and
samples in the STUDIO. stay tuned for more
developments.
to view more photos of the space click on the image
below.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 08-17-2013
fabrication is in
full swing for our MAGNET WORKS (
www.magnetworks.com
) new facility project in Fenton, MO. the 25
FOOT stretch of BANQUETTE SEATING (see photos) is
almost finished and ready for installation. the
banquettes are made with repurposed PALLET WOOD on
the back rest and an upholstered cushion seat. the
pallet wood is finished with five coats of a zero
VOC, clear satin topcoat and the upholstered seat
was handmade in St. Louis for us by the talented
Rashad Hamilton (twitter: @MrRashadH)
our project also includes cladding a 25 FOOT LONG
half wall directly across the room from the
banquettes in the break/lunch with repurposed PALLET
WOOD. then, build a 10 FOOT long CONFERENCE TABLE
out of STL-harvested solid white oak, a 8 FOOT long
COMMUNITY TABLE in the break/lunch area, along with
10 CAFE TABLES made with FSC-certified wood. stay
tuned.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 08-09-2013
at the WOODSHOP
with
Kevin McCoy of WORK/PLAY applying the
DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. quote silkscreen
graphic to the 6-foot-long WINDOW BAR for
RISE Coffee House (
www.risecoffeestl.com
)
made out of repurposed shipping pallet wood
and scrap wood with a custom water-based color stain
to match the storefront facade.
Jessie Mueller of RISE COFFEE HOUSE asked if
this quote could be incorporated somehow into the
window bar so i asked Kevin to create a design to
apply to the top before it gets sealed. next up for
this piece is the clear, satin, zero-VOC top coat
finish, then installation.
also, note the
special shipping pallet wood that reads "GOWAN".
this wood came from the runner of a severely damaged
shipping pallet, made for GOWAN SEED COMPANY,
a family-owned multinational provider of crop
protection products based in Yuma, AZ. this
repurposed pine pallet wood now lives on in this
piece of custom furniture for RISE COFFEE HOUSE.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 08-02-2013
we are pleased to
announce that we’ve been commissioned to fabricate
custom furniture and create a feature wall for the
highly anticipated, second location of URBAN
CHESTNUT BREWING COMPANY (
www.urbanchestnut.com
) opening early 2014 in The Grove at 4465 Manchester
Avenue.
the new location is in a whopping 75,000 square foot
building — the former RENARD PAPER COMPANY facility,
making UCBC the area’s biggest craft brewery. the
building renovation will result in a bottling line,
staff offices, retail space, a kitchen and bar area,
and seating for about 150 people. windows will look
out on to Manchester Avenue.
the project will seek
LEED
certification for energy efficiency, water
conservation and other sustainable endeavors
including the furniture and feature wall that we
will produce.
so, we've been tasked to fabricated thirty (30) BEY
BAR STOOLS from our FeRRUM™ (
www.ferrumfurniture.com
) furniture line — handmade out of recycled steel
and local, St. Louis harvested wood, a large
COMMUNITY TABLE hand made out of local, St. Louis
harvested wood, and cladding a massive
feature wall
with repurposed SHIPPING PALLET WOOD. all work will
be sealed with a zero-VOC, satin topcoat finish.
stay tuned for project process photos and follow
them on Facebook
here.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 08-01-2013
very productive day with the talented RASHAD
HAMILTON (twitter:
@MrRashadH) at his studio and at the fabric
store. i reached out to RASHAD to collaborate on
this project, and today we went out to get fabric
and cushion for the upholstered seats that he will
be making. the upholstered seats will then go on the
five 54" long BANQUETTES that we're making with
repurposed shipping pallet wood for MAGNET WORKS
(
www.magnetworks.com
). the interior designers at ARCTURIS
(
www.arcturis.com )
set the color direction for the upholstered seat and
we went out with RASHAD to select a fabric that not
only fit that direction, but would also work with
the overall look of the pallet wood in the
banquettes. stay tuned!
for more information on the talented RASHAD HAMILTON
check out this video:
www.vimeo.com/65475143
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-30-2013
week four of six in our Greenhaus Cabinets® (
www.greenhauscabinets.com
) cabinetry fabrication. shaker doors and slab
drawer fronts made out of solid MISSOURI-harvested
SILVER MAPLE in our new "White Sands" zero-voc,
water-based wood stain from our MOD
Collection
for clients in
Lafayette
Square. features custom inset door and drawer
treatments, glass center panel doors, tall pantry
pullout and a lazy susan.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-29-2013
at MAGNET WORKS' (
www.magnetworks.com
) massive new facility in Fenton, MO taking
final measurements for the project. to recap: we're
building 25 feet worth of custom BANQUETTE SEATING
along one wall out of repurposed PALLET WOOD with an
upholstered seat, cladding a 25 feet wide x 4 feet
high FEATURE WALL in repurposed shipping pallet wood
across the room. we’re also fabricating one (1)
custom, 10-foot-long, rustic
conference table made out of STL-harvested
wood and loaded with character, two (2) custom,
7-foot-long, rustic
community
tables, loaded with character and made out of
STL-harvested wood for the lunch room, then ten (10)
café-style
tables
in two different sizes made out of
sustainably harvested, FSC-certified wood for the
top and recycled black cast-iron for the base for
the lunch room with a more clean and contemporary
style.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-29-2013
just wrapped up a lunch/project meeting with
restaurateur BRANT BALDANZA. we're making all
32 tables including several solid wood TRESTLE
TABLES for his new restaurant opening this fall
called CUCINA PAZZO, at the recently closed
Duff's.
CUCINA PAZZO (
www.shackstl.com/cucina
) is an Italian gastropub concept opening later this
year at the recently closed location of Duff’s
restaurant at 392 N. Euclid Avenue in the Central
West End, stay tuned for more.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-27-2013
we completed and
delivered the eleven (11) custom tables for our
SHARPSHOOTERS RANGE & RESTAURANT (www.sharpshooterstl.com)
project in Affton, MO at 8135 Gravois Road this past
Thursday. they are scheduled to open sometime next
month. the table pictured below is a 34" x 96"
custom trestle-style table with a steel base and a
100-year-old reclaimed wood trestle salvaged from a
rehab taking place at the building across the street
from our SHOWROOM. the 1-1/4" thick top is
made out of repurposed SHIPPING PALLET WOOD
and a special insert from a repurposed, natural
MAHOGANY cigar box from COHIBA®. to view
play-by-play photos of the entire fabrication and
all the completed furniture pieces, click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-27-2013
burning the
midnight oil on the final wood/steel trestle table
base hybrid for the 34"x96" repurposed pallet wood
top for
SHARPSHOOTERS RANGE & RESTAURANT (
www.sharpshooterstl.com
). it's coming together nicely. to view
play-by-play photos of the entire fabrication and
all the completed furniture pieces, click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-26-2013
HGTV is in
the house filming inside and outside of our showroom
and the residential space above for the television
show "You Live in What?". it's a show that
covers people who found beauty in dilapidated
commercial spaces and turned them into one-of-a-kind
spaces. they're interviewing our friends and clients
Blue Brick Renovation + Construction, LLC who
rehabbed this building. stay tuned.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-26-2013
we're proud to
introduce the xBASE version 01, our first
installment in our line of 100% steel table bases
for the restaurant industry from our FeRRUM™
furniture line. hand made in St. Louis by Mwanzi
CO. for more information visit
www.ferrumfurniture.com
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-20-2013
we recently
completed a two week long residential project that
included supplying, installing, sanding and
finishing 1900 SF of our private label goodbord™
oak hardwood flooring. it's fsc-certified, and it's
harvested and milled locally in southern Missouri.
our client selected the №1 common, 2-1/4" wide, 3/4"
thick red oak
for their private residence in Kirkwood. the
flooring planks were installed at a 45-degree angle
and a WALNUT picture frame border inserted at the
fireplace. completed July 2013.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-16-2013
we landed another
out-of-state project this month for our Greenhaus
Cabinets®. this time in Illinois in a little
place called Chicago. since we launched our
cabinetry line in 2009, we've shipped orders to six
different states within the continental United
States. we're honored by this fact because we're a
small, independent operation, and sometimes
that can create barriers. nonetheless, we continue
to thrive and receive interest from even outside our
state borders. we hope that wherever there is a need
outside of our immediate area that can't be met by
local craftsman, that we can be an option.
below are photographs of kitchen island cabinets
currently in production at our woodshop for the
private residence of MR. & MRS. COLANGELO in
Chicago, IL. they selected cabinets are from our MOD
Collection after ordering samples. their cabinets
include custom asymmetrical drawer and door
arrangements and made entirely out of rapidly
renewable, SCS-certified, Teragren® bamboo plywood.
as per usual, our cabinets come standard with
Blumotion® soft-close doors and drawers, stainless
steel drawer boxes and finished with a zero-VOC,
clear, satin topcoat finish.
for more information about our cabinetry line —
designed and made by us right here in Saint. Louis,
visit our website at
www.greenhauscabinets.com.
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-10-2013
we are pleased to
announce that we’ve been commissioned to design,
fabricate and install various tops for the highly
anticipated RISE COFFEE HOUSE (
www.risecoffeestl.com
) opening this summer in The Grove at 4180
Manchester Avenue. we will be making wood tops for
the entire bar, which is made up of a countertop,
two-tiered brew bar and a back bar. plus, we are
also making a custom window bar. fabrication will
focus on a tasteful mixture of St. Louis-harvested,
repurposed and reclaimed woods from a variety of
wood species. all work will be sealed with a
zero-VOC, satin topcoat finish.
the coffee shop states on it’s Facebook page that
RISE Coffee House “aims to awaken, bring up and
progress our city through sustainably crafted coffee
and baked goods, all while spinning the tunes we
like best”. love it! stay tuned for project process
photos and follow them on Facebook
here.
|
photo / pictured
below with RISE Coffee House co-owner Jessie Mueller. |
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-06-2013
we are very
pleased to announce that we've been commissioned to
design and build all of the tables and the new bar
at CUCINA PAZZO (
www.shackstl.com/cucina
), an Italian gastropub concept opening later this
year at the recently closed location of Duff’s
restaurant at 392 N. Euclid Avenue in the Central
West End, by Brant Baldanza, John Fogarty,
Mike Rayner, and chef Justin Haifley —
who also operate The Corner Pub, The Tavern Kitchen
and Bar, and The Shack.
as-per-youknowhowwedo, this furniture and custom bar
project will focus on sustainably and locally hand
crafted, healthy fabrication, to create a
space-specific, one-of-a-kind look and feel for our
client. stay tuned for project process photos and
updates.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-03-2013
the installation
portion of our project for ATLAS RESTAURANT (
www.atlasrestaurantstl.com
) at 5513 Pershing Ave. in the Skinker-DeBaliviere
Neighborhood has begun. the CaesarStone®
quartz
bar top and the natural WALNUT wood BAR
FACADE is also in. it's now time for the bar
facade to receive an onsite, clear satin, low-VOC
top coat finish, then clad a curved
feature wall and a
fireplace wall in natural walnut, fabricate
and install the natural walnut
back bar floating shelves and
mirror frame, then deliver the 24 natural
walnut TABLES that we've already finished
making. stay tuned!
view play-by-play fabrication and installation
photos of this project click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 07-03-2013
a special sneak
peek at one of the eleven custom tables we've
completed for our
SHARPSHOOTERS RANGE & RESTAURANT (
www.sharpshooterstl.com
) project at 8135 Gravois Road in South STL,
scheduled to open sometime this summer. the table
pictured below is a 30" x 48" custom trestle-style
table with an all-steel base and 1-1/8" thick
repurposed pallet wood top. sits two people per
length side; four in total.
to view play-by-play fabrication and installation
photos of this project click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 06-262013
PRESSE /
this is the second time we got a little shine in the
pages of
ALIVE MAGAZINE for our work for our clients
TREE HOUSE VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT (
treehousestl.com
). we designed and fabricated the
restaurant's bars on both the first and second floor
using a tasteful mélange 100-year-old repurposed
woods from old warehouse carts made in the late
1800's by
Nutting® and acquired from an old paper mill in
Chicago, and some locally foraged shipping pallet
wood. we also designed, fabricated and installing
custom floating shelves for both bar back walls made
out of locally foraged shipping pallet wood.
for play-by-play fabrication
and installation photographs of this project visit
our Facebook gallery
here.
________________________
POSTED ON: 06-24-2013
we had the honor
and pleasure of being commissioned to design and
fabricate a custom COMMUNION TABLE for the
Tower Grove location of THE JOURNEY CHURCH (
www.thejourney.org
), an interdenominational Christian church
located at 2823 South Kingshighway Blvd. RUSS
MOHR, worship leader at the church, reached out
to me about doing a table for them and had the idea
of doing a unique table that combined a mixture of
rustic, weathered, repurposed wood, with new, select
wood in a way that showed a progression, or a change
from rustic and warn to clean and select: a journey.
i absolutely loved the idea. it would be our very
first COMMUNION TABLE and our very first
institutional project.
the 10-FOOT-LONG table is made from a mixture
of repurposed PINE pallet wood, repurposed
100-year-old MAPLE warehouse cart wood, 100-year-old
reclaimed PINE barn wood, repurposed MAPLE beams
from the building being rehabbed across the street
from our showroom, and brand new, clear, ST.
LOUIS-harvested WHITE OAK, WALNUT and RED OAK.
the communion table measures 3-FEET high and 3-FEET
deep. 3 and 3 is 33, which according to the
BIBLE, is the age that JESUS CHRIST was
crucified on a cross and died. there are several
rows of wood that travel along the length of the
table. each row represents a different and
individual human life and the journey of that
person's life. each row is different. some rows
consist of more rustic wood than others. some rows
have more new wood than others. some rows have
longer stretches of rustic or clear wood. all of
this is meant to communicate the unique and highly
complex journey that our lives can take.
the table is divided into three (a.k.a. "Trinity")
sections: SIN, REPENTANCE and BELIEF.
sin: represented by the torn,
warn and rustic wood on one end of the table. some
areas show full, visible and imbedded nails, as
opposed to just the nail heads that we normally show
when doing a very rustic piece of furniture.
according to the Bible, nails played a very crucial
roll in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, so i
thought having pronounced and very visible, full
nails in the wood could capture that part of the
crucifixion in a very clear way. these large nails
are visible in two of the legs on this side of the
table. i've also placed two boards horizontally in
the table top, to draw firm contrast against all the
other boards in the table top. these horizontal
boards represent a heightened level of opposition to
Christ, to the point were it's going in a completely
different direction
—
these particular boards are also the most rustic
boards on the table top: 100-year-old barn wood
siding exposed to over 100-years of the outdoor
elements that changing seasons bring. it is
hardened, and once covered in red lead paint.
repentance: represented by the
beginning, visible change in the character of
the wood in the middle section of the table, from
rustic to a more fine character. however, since each
row is different, the change does not happen at the
same spot in each row. this was a challenge from a
fabrication standpoint because i needed to convey a
sense of change in an area that could be easily
identified and defined, yet present it a way that
showed that each row represented a unique life, and
thus, a unique and different point of change. not to
mention having to work with the wood that i had
available, which also affects how wide each row has
to be in order to fabricate a table that finished at
the overall table size promised.
belief: represented by the
new, clear and select wood on the other end of the
table top and the two new, st. louis-harvested
natural walnut legs. this wood is in opposition to
the rustic, torn and warn wood on the opposite end
of the table because belief in Jesus Christ as your
personal savior
—
according to the Bible, is the
only way that a human life can be restored from sin
and put back on the path of God's will.
this table was one of the most purposeful pieces of
furniture my company has ever made, which is
different from function. we've made many pieces of
furniture that were meant to meet a very specific
and unique function, but this is the first time
we've made a piece of furniture that has such a high
level of purpose and i'm grateful for the
opportunity.
for more photographs of this project visit our
Facebook gallery
here.
|
 |
|
 |
|
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 06-22-2013
a custom window
table/bench made out of a locally harvested
(MISSOURI), RED CEDAR live edge slab and raw steel
hairpin legs. finished with an all-natural danish
oil. completed June 2013.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 06-15-2013
i had the
distinct pleasure of being invited to give a short
talk at
The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts on
June 12th in a special program entitled "Frame of
Reference Speaker Series" for the exhibition on
American artist and furniture designer DONALD
JUDD. the exhibition is called
Donald Judd: The Multicolored Works.
the program is meant to bring together diverse
members of the St. Louis community to give short
gallery talks inspired by the Judd's works on view
at the exhibition. it's the first exhibition devoted
exclusively to Judd’s heightened engagement with
color during the last decade of his life. The
Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts is the sole venue
for this exhibition, which draws from public and
private collections from Europe and the United
States.
i attended the opening reception on May 10th to get
a better feel for his work. then during my brief
talk three days ago, i spoke of how as a furniture
maker and designer, i appreciated how many of the
pieces — which were for the the most part hanging
on the walls, were presented in such a way that you
had the opportunity to view it from several angles.
no white line stopping you from getting too close.
you could look underneath it and on top of it. i was
impressed with this because when i first looked at
the various pieces, they appear to be floating
shelves — something i have a lot of experience with.
they of coarse were not floating shelves, but the
manner in which they were presented and constructed
had immediate similarity for me. but it was the way
the pieces were — what we cabinet and furniture
makers would say were "finished on all sides". even
the parts that are not visible at first glance were
finished. the vibrant colors are presented
everywhere, and only if you decided to stoop down
and look underneath or peak at the side of the
pieces would you notice it. a sort of anti-gallery
experience. but don't get it twisted: no touching
allowed. the gallery workers will check you quickly
and politely;)
the way the pieces were presented really resonated
with me because I've recently fabricated and
installed floating shelves at ELAIA & OLIO,
LA PATISSERIE CHOUQUETTE and at
TREE HOUSE VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT, and i
consciously designed and installed the pieces so
that people could experience all of the
floating shelves' outward sides, because the wood
was so special. normally floating shelves and even
wall cabinetry is hung at a height where the bottom
and top of the pieces are not "finished" because
nobody will see it. it's also a cost cutting
measure. so when you consciously decide to finish
something that nobody will see unless they decided
to stoop down and look underneath or peak at the
side of the pieces, it's no longer just a piece of
furniture or interior finish, it's now — in my
opinion, a piece of art. it's a piece of art because
it's now about what the maker of that piece intended
for it and not what the consumer or end user
intended. it's intended to allow you to enter into
the artist's world and space.
so, before it was my turn to speak, there was a
woman standing next to me, and i didn't really pay
much attention to her, but she said to me, "that's
going to be a hard act to follow". i was speaking
after a 6-year-old boy. i just sort of smiled and
thought to myself, 'yah, she's right!'
anyway, i guess it was because i mentioned during my
talk that i designed and made furniture and
cabinetry, but this same woman, who turned out to be
thee
Emily Rauh Pulitzer, founder and chairman of
The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, asked me after
the event if I wanted to see the JUDD designed
furniture that she had in her private office and
conference area. now, at the time she asked me, I
had zero clue of whom she was. so here were are,
walking through her office and conference room and
i'm looking at the large, masculine, minimalist,
beautiful conference table and pointing out to her —
without being asked, what species of wood it was,
how JUDD obviously loved compartments, and how the
conference table was not made out of solid wood.
this surprised her. i told her that it was birch
plywood with end grain veneer edge-banding on the
edges to make it appear to be solid wood. she then
replied "it certainly seems solid". so i showed her
how you can tell by following the grain on the top
of the table to the edge and notice how that grain
pattern does not follow along the edge — it's a
different pattern. i then told her that because the
way the table is constructed, a solid wood top, in
this case 1-1/2" thick, would surely cup and bow.
it's clean, natural and consistent color pallet can
only be achieved with hardwood plywood because
hardwood plywood is made out of the most clear and
select wood grain. when logs are milled, one of the
first things mills check for is if the wood is good
enough quality to be cut into veneer for hardwood
plywood. veneers provide a high profit margin for
mills.
anyway, she then brought me into her massive,
gorgeous office space — it was beautiful, and showed
me her desk. I told her that it was made out of
solid wood. she smiled. it was solid white oak
constructed with several shaker-esque sensibilities.
in fact, the flooring was all white oak. white oak
is a premium wood that i use a lot in my pieces. i
was feelin' her style to say the least. so it was
not until this point i thought to ask her who she
was. lol. when she said she was Emily Pulitzer, I
had to collect myself for a second. i said, "so, you
probably have a little something to do with this
place". she laughed and said "a little bit". i was
so in awe of the woman that I totally forgot to ask
her to take a photograph with me. shit! oh well.
maybe next time.
so for those of you who don't know who
Emily Rauh Pulitzer is, she's the second wife
of
Joseph Pulitzer III, the deceased grandson of
the famous newsman
Joseph Pulitzer, who was publisher of the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch for 38 years and
one of the most famous newsmen of the day. for 31
years he chaired the board which was responsible for
awarding the famous
Pulitzer Prize, a US award for achievements
in newspaper and online journalism, literature, and
musical composition established in 1917. Emily is
famously known for her gift of 31 major works of
modern and contemporary art and $45 million to the
Harvard Art Museum, and for receiving
the prestigious
2011 National Medal of Arts Award at the
White House from
President Barack Obama.
needless to say, i had an amazing day at the
Pulitzer and very grateful for the opportunity to
take part in the
Donald Judd: The Multicolored Works
exhibition and for meeting all the wonderful people
there. special shout out to
Katie Hasler, Kristina Van Dyke and of
course Emily
Rauh Pulitzer.
for more information about this exhibit click the
following link:
http://judd.pulitzerarts.org
|
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 06-07-2013
part of our
project for ATLAS RESTAURANT (
www.atlasrestaurantstl.com
) includes fabricating all of their new cafe-style
tables — 22 in total. after several revisions and
meetings, our client felt really good about the
direction the restaurant was going when we
introduced the option of using natural WALNUT — thee
premium domestic wood used almost only for high end
furniture. walnut is my favorite wood and enjoy any
opportunity to work with it.
for these tables, we will use a combination of FSC-certified
walnut and some ST.LOUIS-harvested walnut, and
finish it with a zero-VOC, clear, satin top coat.
see photos of one of the completed tables below.
there are four table sizes and we're about halfway
complete. to view play-by-play fabrication and
installation photos of this project click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 06-01-2013
unsatisfied with
the options for coffee tables at the various
furniture stores in town, the St. Croix's reached
out to us after seeing our work at several
commercial locations in the area and for our
commitment to sustainable woodcrafting. we worked
with them to design a coffee table that fit the
function and form needs for their apartment in the
Shaw neighborhood of South City St. Louis. the
coffee table is made out of local,
Missouri-harvested, solid walnut and finished with a
zero-voc satin topcoat. completed May 2013.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 05-28-2013
we are pleased to
announce that we’ve been commissioned to design,
fabricate and install a wide array of custom
furniture and casework for the new Fenton, MO
location of MAGNET WORKS (
www.magnetworks.com
), a local, family-owned manufacturer of
indoor and outdoor home decor products since 1989.
we’re fabricating one (1) custom, 10-foot-long,
rustic conference table made out of STL-harvested
wood and loaded with character, two (2) custom,
7-foot-long, rustic community tables, loaded with
character and made out of STL-harvested wood for the
lunch room, then ten (10) café-style tables in two
different sizes made out of sustainably harvested,
FSC-certified wood for the top and recycled black
cast-iron for the base for the lunch room with a
more clean and contemporary style.
we’re also fabricating and installing 20-feet worth
of continuous, custom banquettes out of repurposed
shipping pallet wood with a handmade upholstered
seat, and cladding a feature “mailbox wall” with
repurposed shipping pallet wood. all work will be
sealed with a zero-VOC, satin topcoat finish.
stay tuned for project process photos and follow
them on Facebook
here
|
 |
new MAGNET WORKS location.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 05-27-2013
i needed to recharge my
batteries. one of the things i do to feed that
hunger is visit other great cities to take in the
art scene, take in the architecture, visit the indie
bookstores, and eat and drink at the local
restaurants, cafes and breweries. but it's funny
because regardless of how good the food or drink may
have been reported to be at a restaurant, cafe or
bar, if the interior of the space is not done to my
liking, i won't check it out. by "liking", i mean
unique. it has to look and feel like the owners
thought about every single detail in the space.
nothing should be there by chance. it has to look
and feel like they tried to be different and
CREATIVE — an extension of who they are as people.
if i get that vibe, i'll give the food and drink a
try.
i just returned from a trip to CHICAGO. it's one of
the cities i've visited around the world and revisit
many times. the creative energy is high in the windy
city and individuality is encouraged. my kind of
town. yet, although i've visited the city countless
times, i've never took the time to visit the
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME & STUDIO in Oak Park.
well i did something about it — with the
encouragement of a friend of mine, and i'm so glad i
did. i took the tour of the house and admired just
how out of place he was with his time. the furniture
in his house and studio was made mostly out of white
oak with lots of built-ins and bulky, clean lines. i
loved it. he wanted his potential clients to know
from the minute they approached his house/studio
that he was about designing unique and
out-of-the-ordinary homes and furniture. not
concerned with resale value and what the neighbors,
or a future buyer might think. it was
his space and wanted to share himself
with the world. it was up to his clients and the
world to experience it and perhaps be inspired. i
certainly was.
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 05-24-2013
our custom
furniture project for TABLE restaurant (
www.tablestl.com
) is complete. we had the pleasure of
designing and fabricating thee tables for
chef
Cassy Vires and her husband and
general manager
Josh Renbarger and this
highly anticipated restaurant opening at 1821
Cherokee Street in Benton Park.
we designed and fabricated two custom community
tables out of St. Louis raised, harvested and milled
solid white oak and treating it with a custom
brown-wash wood stain. the two tables join to
accommodate up to 14 people with over 15-feet of
communal dining surface in this feature, private
dining area. towering glass windows that allow an
incredible view into the slightly elevated private
dining area.
to follow play-by-play photos of this project in our
Facebook gallery click
here.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 05-19-2013
BACK AT IT w/ 4
HANDS. we're honored to have been provided a second
opportunity to design and fabricate custom furniture
on a large scale for 4 HANDS BREWING COMPANY
(
www.4handsbrewery.com
). click on the following link to see play-by-play
fabrication photos of our first project:
click here. this
time around, we're making a total of 16 custom Bey
Chairs from our FeRRUM™ furniture line (
www.ferrumfurniture.com
) for the tasting room.
the Bey Chairs will be fabricated out of recycled
raw steel for the chair frame to match the bar
height Bey Chairs currently in their tasting room.
however, we will introduce a different stream of
wood category types — previously we used reclaimed
barn wood siding to make the seat and back rest on
their bar height Bey Chairs. among the woods this
time around: repurposed shipping pallet wood,
repurposed soda crate wood, St. Louis harvested and
milled woods, but most notable, some repurposed wood
from Jim Beam Bourbon and Jefferson's Bourbon whisky
barrels. the barrels are made out of quarter-sawn,
charred white oak. the white oak was more than
likely harvested in the Missouri Ozarks — known
around the world for its quality oak, then
manufactured into barrels by one of the stave
companies in the Ozarks region for Jim Beam and
Jefferson's. the wood seat and back rest will be
sealed with a zero-VOC, satin topcoat finish.
so back to the repurposed whisky barrel wood for a
second.
the Bey Chairs we've made
with the repurposed whisky barrel wood will be the
very first time a COLLECTION of furniture has been
made for a commercial space using repurposed whisky
barrel wood in the USA. ALSO, it will MORE THAN
LIKELY be the first time steel and repurposed whisky
barrel wood has been used together to make any kind
of furniture FOR A COMMERCIAL SPACE in the entire
continent of North America. that's right. made right
here, in St. Louis, by Mwanzi CO. , for 4 Hands
Brewing Company.
these repurposed whisky barrel chairs in
particular, despite being sealed with five coats of
satin finish, emit a delightful aroma of aged
whisky. the wood was very difficult to work with.
all the boards had a high moisture content, the
boards are all curved, and have sharp bevels along
the length of each side of the boards. we first
dismantled the barrels, sorted them and placed them
into a very active kiln for a few days to dry out
the wood. each board was then cut to rough length,
then rough ripped on the table saw, then the edges
leveled on our jointer. the boards were then glued
up and clamped together and left to set up for over
24 hours. after that the real artistry of working
with this wood began. the trick is to make these
chairs functional — able to be sat upon, without
losing the character of the wood that distinguishes
it as barrel wood. otherwise, the wood would look
like new white oak purchased from a mill or lumber
supplier, and all that hard work would have been
lost — at least on the surface of the wood. the back
side of the wood is charred black from the whisky
barrel manufacturing process and very noticeable on
the bottom of the seat and on the back of the back
rest.
to maintain the unique character and features the
whisky barrel presents, traditional hand tools like
a block plane, chisel plane, spokeshave, bench
plane, a wide palm carver and a flexcut hooked skew
knife were utilized to better control how the wood
is affected, then hand sanded with four different
levels of grit sandpaper. it's not the type of
cookie-cutter (a.k.a. boring and uncreative),
made-in-china type of furniture you've grown
accustom to seeing in restaurants, cafes and bars
all across the country. so hats off to 4 Hands
Brewing Co. for GETTING IT. we deliver the chairs in
the next few days and hope you have a pleasurable
experience in the chairs. cheers!
ATTENTION:
click on
photo below to view the full photo gallery of this
special project.
|
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 05-18-2013
our project for INTERNATIONAL TAP HOUSE (CWE)
(
www.internationaltaphouse.com
) is completed. we had the pleasure of
fabricating all of their tables: 18
restaurant-style/cafe-style tables with tops
fabricated out of repurposed shipping pallet wood
and bases made out of recycled cast iron, plus two
84" long, bar height community tables made out of
solid, local, STL-harvested and milled white oak.
perhaps the most challenging of this entire project
was the delivery. holly cow! we had to carry those
heavy community tables three long flights of stairs
to the private dining/party area on the upper level.
but man does that area look impressive. this beer
bar is hands down the best looking in St. Louis
right now. wait till you experience it. there are 61
taps in this place with plenty of space and seating.
the interior layout has lots of depth and provides
excellent views. opening day should be in the next
few weeks. cheers!
to follow play-by-play photos of this project in our
Facebook gallery click
here.
|
 |
|
 |
|
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 05-11-2013
i had the honor
of being photographed by the talented photographer
Demond Meek a few weeks ago. click on the
following link to his website for more of the epic
photos he took of me:
click here
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 05-08-2013
it's our great
pleasure to announce that owner and craftsman
JERMAIN TODD has been invited to give a short
talk at
The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in a
special program entitled "Frame of Reference Speaker
Series" for their exhibition on American artist and
furniture designer DONALD JUDD.
the exhibition is called
Donald Judd: The Multicolored Works. the
dates for this ongoing program are June 12th, August
10th, October 9th and December 14th. Jermain will
speak at the first session on June 12th. the program
is meant to bring together diverse members of the
St. Louis community to give short gallery talks
inspired by the Judd's works on view at the
exhibition. it's the first exhibition devoted
exclusively to Judd’s heightened engagement with
color during the last decade of his life. The
Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts is the sole venue
for this exhibition, which draws from public and
private collections from Europe and the United
States.
an opening reception for this exhibition is
scheduled for May 10th from 5-8 pm @ The Pulitzer
Foundation for the Arts. for more information about
this exhibit click the following link:
http://judd.pulitzerarts.org
|
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 05-08-2013
all the
"restaurant style" tables for INTERNATIONAL TAP
HOUSE (iTAP) (
www.internationaltaphouse.com
) at the new Central West End location have
now been completed, made 100% out of repurposed
shipping pallet wood and treated with a custom wood
stain color. now it's time to move on to the two bar
height community tables for the top floor of the
space.
for these community tables, we will use solid white
oak (see photos below) that were harvested, milled
and kiln dried here in St. Louis. the tables will be
solid wood with 1-1/2" thick tops and the legs will
be 3"X3" solid wood square for a clean, solid table
with lots of character, including saw marks, worm
holes and knots. these community tables will also
receive the same custom wood stain as the
"restaurant style" tables we made. stay tuned.
to follow play-by-play photos of this project in our
Facebook gallery click
here.
 |
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 05-06-2013
we are pleased to
announce that we have just been commissioned to
design and fabricate custom furniture for
SHARPSHOOTERS RANGE & RESTAURANT (
www.sharpshooterstl.com
) currently under construction in South St. Louis at
8135 Gravois Rd. and opening sometime this
spring/early summer. this first of its kind facility
in St. Louis will feature a full service BBQ
restaurant with lockers available for customers to
store their goods while they eat at the restaurant
or shop at the fully stocked firearms store. it will
be one of the largest indoor shooting ranges in the
Midwest and all 20 lanes are compatible up to 50cal
with a MANCOM fully automatic target retrieval
system.
we are fabricating 11 tables for the restaurant .
our fabrication will include both wood top and steel
base. the steel bases will be hand made and welded
out of raw steel with exposed welds for four
different table sizes. a few of the tables are
trestle table hybrids with very masculine features.
the majority of the tables are table height but a
few will be bar height. the wood top will be +/-
1-1/8” thick and made out of various reclaimed
and/or repurposed woods with lots of character and
finished with a zero-VOC, satin topcoat finish.
plus, we've been asked to create an accent wall that
measures approximately 11-feet high by 7-feet wide
at the north-east corner of the restaurant (shown on
the right in photo below) by cladding it with
repurposed shipping pallet wood in a vertical
orientation pattern.
stay tuned for project process
photos and follow them on Facebook
here
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 05-01-2013
PROJECT UPDATE:
things are moving along very well with our bar
fabrication and installation project for the highly
anticipated opening of TREE HOUSE
VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT (
www.treehousestl.com
). so far the 1st floor bar facade and bar top have
been fabricated and installed — still have the 2nd
floor bar to do but we're hitting that in a couple
days. part of this project involves the back bar on
both floors. owner CHI "BAY" TRAN
really liked the style of our floating shelves and
saw some examples of them at another restaurant in
town. however, we decided to increase the
thickness/height of these floating shelves to 5" and
increase the depth to 15" for a more robust visual
presence to create an overall, dominating wood
presence and focal point at the bar area. we're
fabricating and installing several floating shelves
at the first and second floor back bar. the
dimensions of the floating shelves are 5" H x 15" D
x 52" L and made entirely out of repurposed wood and
finished with a low-VOC, clear satin topcoat finish.
as-per-youknowhowwedo, we like to incorporate unique
sources of wood in our projects whenever the
situation arises. this is one of those situations.
we've become known for our ability to yield common
shipping pallet wood into beautiful furniture pieces
and these floating shelves will be no exception. for
example, one of the floating shelves (shown below)
is made with repurposed pallet wood from a shipping
pallet made in Thailand out of rubberwood for
a company in Thailand called
Kuiburi
Fruit Canning Co. (
www.kuiburifruit.co.th
), a producer and exporter of canned pineapple
products to countries around the globe. the shipping
pallet we got our hands on carried hundreds of cans
of Kuiburi pineapple products into a St. Louis area
grocery store. now that pallet lives on in a
floating shelf at TREE HOUSE VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT
and every time you look at it you'll remember the
story behind that piece of furniture.
rubberwood is a very common component of imported
goods into the US and generally not available at
lumber yards here in the US. very few people are
familiar with it. if you look for furniture or other
wooden items at large retail box stores, chances are
good that you have seen rubberwood. rubberwood is
the product of the rubber tree (hevea brasiliensis),
which is grown as a source for natural rubber. in
the past, rubberwood was used only locally,
primarily as a fuel. however, over the past 20
years, industrial processing and exporting of
rubberwood lumber has developed rapidly. rubberwood
logs and lumber are now major exports for countries
such as Malaysia and Thailand .
this is one of the things we do here at Mwanzi
CO. we source unique woods with interesting
stories to elevate your thinking about the pieces of
furniture that we make. enjoy!
to follow play-by-play photos of this project in our
Facebook gallery click
here.
|
 |
|
 |
|
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 04-30-2013
after nearly six weeks of fabrication and
installation work, our project for THE LIBERTINE
is completed. what an amazing ride it was. big shout
out to NICK & AUDRA LUEDDE and CHEF JOSH
GALLIANO for giving me the creative freedom to
realize their vision for the space. what an amazing
group of people. this project included building
their entire bar, a 24-foot-long wraparound window
bar, and fabricating the restaurant's 32 tables.
several restaurant fabrication and design firsts
happened in this project, but most notable are the
tables. this is the first restaurant in the country
to have tables made on this scale — 32 in total, out
of 100-year-old repurposed woods. can't wait to
enjoy a meal and a few local beers here. opening
day is May 14th!
to view play-by-play photos of this project visit
our Facebook photo gallery page
here
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 04-27-2013
EDITED: 05-04-2013
it is with great
pleasure that we announce we've been commissioned to
design and fabricate an extensive list of interior
elements and new furniture for a full interior
revamp of ATLAS RESTAURANT (
www.atlasrestaurantstl.com
), a fine French and Italian inspired dining
experience at 5513 Pershing Avenue in the
Skinker-DeBaliviere Neighborhood by
Chef
Bryan Carr and
Diane Carr.
the restaurant is scheduled to shut down at the end
of June and reopen in early July to allow for the
interior transformation to take place. we will be
fabricating all the restaurant's new tables — 24 in
total, redesigning and building their 20-foot-long
bar and the back bar, stylizing an existing 7-foot
high by 10-foot long curved partition wall at the
north end of the space and a floor-to-ceiling
fireplace accent wall, as well as fabricate several
large wooded frames for various wall hung mirrors
throughout the space. and as-per-youknowhowwedo,
this project will focus on sustainably and locally
hand crafted, healthy fabrication, to create a
space-specific, one-of-a-kind look and feel. in
fact,
the entire project will focus
on a mixture of LOCALLY HARVESTED and FSC-CERTIFIED
woods including AMERICAN ELM, WHITE OAK and WALNUT
to create a sleek AND CONTEMPORARY version of our
eco-chic aesthetic.
stay tuned for project process photos and
follow them on Facebook:
here
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 04-13-2013
NOT YOUR AVERAGE
TREE HOUSE. we've been commissioned to design and
build a custom bar and back-bar on the first and
second floor, and a custom dining table for the
private dining area of TREE HOUSE VEGETARIAN
RESTAURANT, the highly anticipated vegetarian
restaurant opening this spring at 3177 South Grand
Blvd. in south city by owner
Chi “Bay” Tran.
Chi asked that we design and build both bars in the
restaurant with an emphasis on character wood in an
effort to help create a sense of warmth and natural
beauty in the space. and as-per-youknowhowwedo, this
project will focus on sustainably and locally hand
crafted, healthy fabrication, to create a
space-specific, one-of-a-kind look and feel. some
feature ingredients include fabrication of the
1-1/2" bar tops made from a mixture of 100-year-old
maple Nutting® warehouse cart wood acquired from an
old paper mill in Chicago and repurposed joists from
a rehabbed building across the street from our
showroom a couple blocks away from the restaurant.
the facade of both bars will be clad with repurposed
shipping pallet wood. we will also fabricate a
series of 4" thick floating shelves for both back
bars out of repurposed shipping pallet wood that we
will then treat with a special chemical formulation
we've developed to create a natural grey weathered
affect in the wood. finally, we are designing and
fabricating a special dining table for their private
dining area on the second floor made entirely out of
repurposed woods with some very special touches. all
pieces and casework are finished with a zero-VOC,
water-based clear satin topcoat finish. you can
follow them on Facebook
here
to follow play-by-play photos of this project in our
Facebook gallery click
here.
 |
 |
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 04-08-2013
very pleased to
announce we have been commissioned to design and
fabricate thee table for the highly
anticipated TABLE restaurant (
www.tablestl.com
), the sister restaurant to HOME WINE KITCHEN
— St. Louis Magazine's 2012 Restaurant of the Year,
from chef
Cassy Vires and her husband and
general manager
Josh Renbarger, opening in June of this year
in a 7,000 square foot space at 1821 Cherokee Street
in Benton Park.
already dubbed, "the table", we are designing and
fabricating two custom community tables out of St.
Louis raised, harvested and milled solid wood, and
treating it with a custom brown-wash wood stain. the
two tables will join to accommodate up to 14 people
at over 15-feet of communal dining surface in this
feature, private dining area. towering glass windows
that allow an incredible view into the slightly
elevated private dining area, it will be epic for
sure and cause many a patron to desire a special
moment to partake of food and drink inside of it.
we're honored to be fabricating such an important
piece of furniture for a restaurant named after a
piece of furniture. are you kidding me! when i heard
about the restaurant's name i said to myself, "there
is no way in hell a restaurant in St. Louis is going
to be called "Table" and i'm not doing their
community table!" lol. so i reached out to them and
they were just as excited for it to happen as i was.
when they came into the showroom i said, "this is a
conspiracy, because you know i'm at your mercy here.
i would almost do this for free. almost!" they got a
good laugh out of that. stay tuned for project
process photos.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 04-06-2013
THE BAR /
PHASE TWO
/ the bar at The Libertine is pretty
much finished except for a section at the south-west
area of the bar top that will lift up and allow
staff in-and-out of behind the bar and a drink rail
along the inside perimeter of the bar. we'll take
care of that sometime next week when we begin
framing out the window bar, which will span the
entire window on the south side of the space and
continue along the east wall in the bar area.
so, about this bar top. it's very special, to say
the least. it's made with 1-1/2" thick, 100-year-old
solid maple wood, repurposed from old warehouse
carts made in the late 1800's by a company called
Nutting®
— they're still around today, and acquired from an
old paper mill in Chicago.
there is no
other bar top in St. Louis like iT, and iT's
probably the very first bar top in the country made
with this specific kind of wood. it's
rich in history, character, and style. it's also a
very hard countertop to make because of all the
unevenness, height differences, bowing, imbedded
nails, thick and rusted out bolts and screws that we
must tamper with and deal with before anything is
even made. it's easy to go to a lumber supplier and
purchase brand new, straight, flawless wood and make
something out of it. it's another thing to work with
deeply "flawed" and ancient wood and make something
fine and beautiful out of it without loosing the
character and the aged features in the wood.
for this
reason, this countertop had to BE fabricated
entirely by hand using traditional woodworking tools.
i think we've accomplished something special here
and i really hope you can appreciate this top STL.
and there's more. we've also infused a single board
made out of solid red oak that came from what are
called "draft pallets", from St. Louis' own
Anheuser-Busch. these pallets are not like the
average pallets you may have seen. the boards are
over 4" thick and carry their kegs across the
country in trucks. these pallets are embossed with
tebt;A-B Inc." and we have a bunch of these, so
we'll use this wood in other projects.
follow our complete play-by-play fabrication and
install photos at our Facebook gallery by clicking
HERE
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 04-01-2013
THE BAR /
PHASE ONE
/
last week we completed styling the facade of the
14-foot bar we designed for THE LIBERTINE.
the facade is clad with new and woodshop scrap
FSC-certified woods including natural walnut,
cherry, birch, maple, and red oak. i got a really
good workout doing this install. i must have
performed over 300 squats over the coarse of two
non-stop hours going from the miter saw to cut the
boards to size on the floor to the bar to position
and secure the boards. turned out really nice. the
boards were arranged in the moment and in the zone —
i was feeling it. the wood countertop is next.
follow our complete play-by-play fabrication and
install photos at our Facebook gallery by clicking
HERE
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 03-24-2013
PRESSE /
we got a little shine in the APRIL 2013 issue of
ALIVE MAGAZINE for our upcoming work for the
soon to open vegetarian restaurant on south grand,
TREE HOUSE VEGETARIAN RESTAURANT (treehousestl.com).
we've designed and will fabricate the restaurant's
bars on both the first and second floor using a
tasteful mélange 100-year-old repurposed woods from
old warehouse carts made in the late 1800's by
Nutting® and acquired from an old paper mill in
Chicago, and some locally foraged shipping pallet
wood.
we're also fabricating and installing custom
floating shelves for both bar back walls made out of
locally foraged shipping pallet wood. finally, we
will fabricate a very special dining table made out
out STL-harvested, milled and kiln-dried wood for
the restaurants very intimate, private dining area
on the 2nd floor, which by-the-way, has a awesome
private balcony overlooking south grand avenue.
you can read the article on Alive Magazine's website
by clicking
HERE, and can
follow Tree House Vegetarian on their Facebook page
by clicking
HERE
 |
 |
________________________
POSTED ON: 03-24-2013
PROJECT /
KELLER RESIDENCE BATHROOM REMODEL / after a
few showroom appointments and weeks of planning to
pick out the perfect porcelain tile, MR. & MRS.
KELLER finally settled on three beautiful styles
from CROSSVILLE®
amongst our two 12-foot-high walls of
recycled-content tile and several display towers in
our showroom. next, they completed the entire
bathroom demo themselves and had a blast — no pun
intended. once all the dust settled, we came in with
our crew to install all of the tile that we
supplied, installed the glass door, and took care of
the plumbing and the fixtures. completed March 2013.
to view complete play-by-play installation photos in
our Facebook gallery simply click right
HERE
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 03-24-2013
CITY GARDEN
MONTESSORI SCHOOL GALA / had the honor of being
asked to donate a custom dining table for a live
auction item at the City Garden Montessori
Charter School 2nd Annual Gala held a couple
weekends ago. it went well. so well in fact, that
the custom table that will be built for the winner
sold for $1500 and sold twice! yes, twice. the bid
started off at $600 and made its way up to $1500 in
about two minutes, and apparently, two people
thought they won the table and were not going to
budge. so, I was asked if I could make two tables
and I said yes. win-win because now the school get's
$3000 and both winners are happy. it feels so
good to use my skills for such a great cause because
at the end of the day it's the things we do for
others that really matter.
www.citygardenschool.org
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 03-24-2013
play-by-play photos of our custom furniture
fabrication and complete bar build-out for THE
LIBERTINE, the highly anticipated "reimagined
neighborhood eatery" opening this spring at 7927
Forsyth in downtown Clayton by restaurateurs and
sommeliers Nick and Audra Luedde, and St.
Louis celebrity chef and James Beard award
semi-finalist Josh Galliano.
we were asked to design and build all the
restaurant's 32 tables, design and build the entire
bar, and design and build an extensive window bar.
and as-per-youknowhowwedo, this project will focus
on sustainably and locally hand crafted, healthy
fabrication, to create a space-specific,
one-of-a-kind look and feel. some feature
ingredients include fabrication of all the 1-1/2"
thick tables and bar tops out of 100-year-old maple
wood, repurposed from old warehouse carts made in
the late 1800's by Nutting® and acquired from an old
paper mill in Chicago. all pieces and casework are
finished with a zero-VOC, water-based clear satin
topcoat finish.
follow our complete play-by-play fabrication and
install photos at our Facebook gallery by clicking
HERE
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 03-15-2013
we are closed
March 15-22. peace out!
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 03-03-2013
after nine months
of planning and dealing with the tedious
construction details that go into performing an
entire main floor renovation, our clients were
finally ready to pick out the fun stuff for their
University City home: the interior finishes! our
FSC-certified solid cherry hardwood flooring from
Model®
set the stage for the entire 1,900 square foot main
floor space and opened the way for our LUX
collection in glossy white from our
Greenhaus Cabinets®
(greenhauscabinets.com)
cabinetry line. completed february 2013.
_______________________________________________
POSTED ON: 03-01-2013
palit®
/ introducing BAUX. a nimble table (end
table, coffee table, stool, etc., etc.) from our
PALIT®
furniture line. hand made out of locally
foraged, repurposed shipping pallet wood. each BAUX
is fabricated by hand by designer JERMAINTODD.
finished with a satin, non-toxic, water-based
topcoat. the first BAUX piece was fabricated for the
brew pub Alpha Brewing Co. located at 1409
Washington Avenue in downtown St. Louis. go check it
out. for information on our furniture line visit our
website at
palitstl.com
_______________________________________________
|
|
