Blog | Marvelous Woodworking

09 Dec 2016

Marvelous Woodworking Cabinetry, Custom Furniture, Fireplace Mantels, Staircases, Woodworking Projects Permalink

Opportunities to Use a Custom Woodworker

Marvelous Woodworking December 9, 2016

Here at Marvelous Woodworking we solve a variety of different design, storage, and style issues with our custom projects. Designers and homeowners come to us to turn their ideas into reality. There are a multitude of opportunities to use the skills of an experienced custom woodworker—fireplace mantels, staircases, cabinets or furniture can all be hand-made. When store-bought options do not fit the look and functionality you are looking for, using a custom woodworker means you do not have to settle for the “next best thing” in your home.

Custom Fireplace Mantels

One particularly challenging space to remodel is the fireplace mantel. Many homeowners want to update their fireplace with technology features, a different style, or more shelving. However, ready-made designs often do not fit their vision or the functionality they need. Custom fireplace mantels allow homeowners to incorporate all of their unique specifications into the design.

A current popular trend is mounting TVs above fireplace mantels, turning the area into an entertainment center. However, placing cords, wires and components out of the way becomes an issue. Our unique solution is custom hollow mantels that store cords out of sight but keep them easily accessible. The result is a gorgeous and functional mantel.

Staircase Updates

Updating a staircase has similar remodeling difficulties. Because of their precise and delicate construction, they cannot be altered or replaced easily. Redoing a staircase is still an attractive idea as it dramatically impacts the look and style of a home’s interior. Replacing round-headed newel posts with boxed or straight-lined posts is one popular update, as well as replacing wooden balusters with metal ones. A staircase remodeling project is perfect for an experienced custom woodworker who knows the different options available and how to dismantle and reassemble a staircase properly. We have advised many of our clients on how they can combine different design elements to create a stunning staircase.

Custom Furniture

It is rare to stumble across the perfect piece of furniture you need and also love the look of. However, the piece may not be in production anymore. Some of our clients come to us to recreate an item they found in a catalog, or add to an existing set of furniture they have but the style is no longer available where they first bought it. Custom furniture can be made to suit your needs exactly, and be constructed to last for years to come. Our goal is to create heirloom-quality pieces when we craft a custom piece.

Custom Cabinetry

A custom-made cabinet can solve quite a number of issues that store-bought cabinets cannot. Homes have their own quirks and odd corners where standard cabinetry often does not fit correctly. A custom woodworker avoids those issues by creating a cabinet for the exact place you want it to go, and can include as many doors, shelves, drawers, or open spaces you need. The style is also completely customizable: paint, finishes, veneer wood surfaces and stains are all possible. We design our cabinetry pieces with the rest of your house in mind as well. We take cues from the architectural details of your home and existing cabinetry, such as fluted moldings, crown moldings, angles, or raised panels. The result is a cabinet that gives you the functionality you need while complementing your existing style.

One designer we work with often has summed up nicely why she chooses to go custom for many of her projects: “It’s all about the character of the home—anyone can build one, but character is what sets apart, and Marvelous Woodworking is good at supporting that vision of character and personality.” When we build a project, our goal is to make a piece you love and fits perfectly into your house like it has always been there. We enjoy working closely with clients to create their perfect custom project, in both historic homes and newer ones. Call us at (317)679-5890 or send us an email and we will schedule a free consultation with you.

11 Nov 2016

Marvelous Woodworking Woodworking Projects Permalink

Painted, Stained or Natural: Picking the Right Wood Finish

Marvelous Woodworking November 11, 2016

All custom woodworking projects—a built-in entertainment center, staircase or furniture piece—will require a finish choice: paint, stain, or natural wood. Picking the right wood finish relates to the overall look of a project, and has the potential to make the piece look really fabulous. We at Marvelous Woodworking are in love with the look of natural wood, but we always put the customer’s vision first and guide them to the best options in order to achieve the result they are looking for. Below we offer some tips on how to go about choosing the best wood finish for your project:

Complement Your Home’s Design

It makes sense to pick a finish that will go with the rest of the interior of your house. Entertainment systems, built-in cabinetry, fireplace mantels and staircases are naturally going to be part of the structure of a room. They will stand out oddly if their finish doesn’t complement their surroundings. Built-ins are often painted in order to fit into the style of the home, such as the entertainment system below.

Custom furniture with a quality finish, however, should go with just about anything. Pieces that stand by themselves have more flexibility in what they have to match.

We built a shelving unit with benches in a 1950’s bungalow style home. We took great care in custom milling trim pieces so it would match the rest of the home’s interior architecture. The paint in the rest of the home had been redone many times over the years by do-it-yourselfers, resutling in thick layers of brushed-on paint finish. We matched that look by coating several layers of paint on the trim ourselves. A high-gloss smooth finish would not have looked right.

Choose Your Wood Species Carefully

When you are working with a custom woodworker to create a piece, you have the option to choose your type of wood and finish. If you are looking for a particular color through stain not paint, we recommend you start with your type of wood first. It makes sense to choose a dark wood if you want your project to have a rich look, rather than choosing a light wood first, then trying to stain it a deeper color. Pine, for instance, is a light wood that does not take stain well, and can turn out blotchy. The color of the wood you choose does not affect the cost—darker woods are not necessarily more expensive than lighter woods, and vice versa. What affects cost is availability and the ease of processing. There are many species of wood to accommodate many hues and shades. Your local home fix-it store has a very limited number of species to choose from but a professional custom woodworker will know where to get anything you want, and will know how to stain it correctly.

Some woods, like cherry, mahoganies, and teaks, will look darker and richer over time. In these cases, you can place a lighter stain on your project, knowing that as it ages the color will deepen. The main consideration with stains is that you have to think about heaviness and tint. Typical stain categories are browns, reds, and yellow-oranges—preference as well as matching other pieces of furniture can play a part in deciding both richness and hue of your stain.

Select Your Shine

If you are going with a natural wood or stain, you will want to use a clear coat or finish for protection. These products come in three options—glossy, semi-glossy, and satin. Glossy and semi-glossy look sleek and shiny, but also easily accumulate dust and fingerprints, requiring more maintenance. Satin is more durable and forgiving, and is often used on wood floors.

Consider Pricing

Stains and paints are not necessarily more expensive, but talk it over with your woodworker. Not having to apply that finish will save labor hours; it may even be that you could use an expensive (and more unique) wood for your piece and pay the same price as if you used a less-expensive ordinary wood, but had it stained or painted.

In the end, your finish choice is determined by what look you want for your piece and home. We at Marvelous Woodworking have experience with a wide variety of processes and know what it takes to give you the best result. We take the time to explain the pros and cons of all options and let you decide. Contact us here or call (317) 679-5890 to discuss your custom woodworking project.

14 Oct 2016

Marvelous Woodworking Cabinetry, Historic Restorations Permalink

Project Highlight: Meridian-Kessler Historic Home Restoration

Marvelous Woodworking October 14, 2016

Our partnerships with Indianapolis interior designers bring us some fun and challenging projects. Designer Elaine Pauley called us recently to assist in a Meridian-Kessler historic home restoration for one of her clients. The house was built in 1955, but much of the interior was in an outdated 70’s style; Elaine’s goal was to help her clients bring it back to its mid-century modern roots. Old homes can be difficult to update as things were constructed differently years ago, and new additions often do not fit structurally or aesthetically. However, Elaine had worked with us before on several design projects, and she knew our expertise in custom woodworking would solve these problems.

Our clients were looking for a well-crafted, large bookshelf with some additional storage for a family room. This project was easy to accomplish in the old house as it was a simple job of measuring the ceiling height and creating the desired look. We finished the bench top in natural cherry, a warm wood that has a way of darkening nicely over time.

For optimum visual interest, we handpicked and arranged all of the cherry pieces individually. All natural wood has its own personality, and looks its best when the craftsman designs around each piece.

When the owners purchased the home, the hearth room was a bit of an interior design mess, with dark paneling on the walls and an unsightly TV projector hanging from the ceiling. At first their plan was to wait to remodel the room, but they disliked it so much they soon had Elaine rip everything out! The goal was to modernize the space into a family room where they could watch TV, relax and entertain friends and family. They also wanted storage on the right side of the large brick fireplace. With the quality, functionality and character they were looking for, there was no way store-bought cabinetry was going to fit the bill.

The custom cabinetry includes a roll-out TV stand, general storage and a place to hide and access the AV components. The homeowners did not want the TV out all the time as they do not watch it a lot, so designing the cabinetry to hide the TV was an important feature.

The family room had more challenges than just its outdated 70’s look; the ceiling was very uneven. It was quite the challenge to make the ceiling look uniform and flat, but with some clever molding tricks, we managed it, and even put molding above the brick fireplace in accordance with true mid-century style.

When you are working in an older home, little of the original structure is square or perfectly aligned, making custom solutions the best way to get things just right. On this project, the varying ceiling heights made custom molding necessary for the room to look its best.

Elaine offered some nice words about our work: “I have worked with Marvelous Woodworking before and I have been seeking them out ever since. They are my go-to craftsmen for quality, problem-solving, and producing exactly what I want. Doug Marvel is such a good listener—a big reason why he can make what you’re looking for. He has a passion for what he does and it shows in his work. You call Doug when you are looking for character; anyone can just build a home, but character is what sets it apart and Doug is good at supporting that vision of character and personality.” Thank you Elaine!

We at Marvelous Woodworking love working closely with clients to create their perfect custom project, in both historic homes and newer ones. Call us at (317)679-5890 or send us an email and we will schedule a free consultation with you.

09 Sep 2016

Marvelous Woodworking Cabinetry, Fireplace Mantels, Renovations, Woodworking Projects Permalink

Project Highlight: Historic home in Fort Benjamin Harrison

Marvelous Woodworking September 9, 2016

One of the Marvelous Woodworking team’s specialties is working in older homes and adapting to the quirks and challenges of bygone architecture and details. A couple in the Fort Benjamin Harrison area have been clients of ours for four years. Jeanne and Scott live in a 1904 historic home that was once part of the old military base. “After that much time of wear and tear,” said Jeanne, “nothing is square or perfect anymore. It’s very hard working in older houses, but we call Doug and his team because they have the ability to make everything look perfect, like it’s always been there.” We’ve completed many projects in their historic home:

Marvelous Woodworking created a custom built-in cabinet with bookshelves and a space for the TV and its electronic components in the home’s garden level. “The cabinet is basically a smaller version of what I had in my old house,” Jeanne said. “We used to live in Zionsville in a home three times as big. I wanted to carry the look of the old house to our new home, even though it was much smaller in scale. Doug looked at the cabinet in the old house and built another one, scaled-down, with the same look and feel. I just had to tell him what I liked, and he knew how to recreate it.”

The mini-kitchen Marvelous Woodworking built was also on Jeanne’s garden level, and was crafted to match the custom built-in cabinet’s style and look. The mini-kitchen includes a wine refrigerator, sink, microwave and under-cabinet lighting. “I like to design things myself,” said Jeanne, “and Doug can take and run with what you come up with. I drew the mini- kitchen and he just built it perfectly.”

In Jeanne and Scott’s main kitchen, we added a custom wine rack to the end of the cabinets. “The point of that wine rack is to make the end of the kitchen cabinets interesting,” said Jeanne. “Because it’s an open kitchen, I wanted something better-looking than just the flat, boring end of a cabinet. Doug co-designed the wine rack with me, basing it off our old one.”

The wine rack and fireplace are in the same room visually, and when the fireplace was being redone, Jeanne saw an opportunity to bring in Doug to create a high-quality mantel to complement the wine rack. “When we tiled our fireplace area, we knew we wanted a unique, natural wood finish mantel. Doug is a furniture maker and knows wood—he picks the right piece with the right grains and can treat it until you get exactly the level of finish you want.” The mantel is mahogany; it has been oiled and buffed around seven times to bring out the wood’s gorgeous natural colors. By creating the wine rack top and mantel piece from mahogany with similar finishes, we added a subtle detail that helps tie the vast room together.

Jeanne also had us make and install white crown moldings all around their ceilings to create a highly-detailed, artistic look throughout their house. “In our previous home, we had crown moldings as well, and I loved the character it brought to my rooms,” said Jeanne. “Here we have12-foot ceilings, which are fairly high, and with that height a room practically needs crown moldings in order to look polished. They really give our home a finished look.”

“We are still adding to our home here in Fort Ben,” said Jeanne. “Right now, we’ve got Marvelous Woodworking on an outside project. We know their work is going to be absolutely beautiful, but also structurally sound, sturdy and safe.”

We at Marvelous Woodworking love working closely with our clients to create their perfect custom project, in both historic homes and newer ones. Call us at (317)679-5890 or send us an email and we will schedule a free consultation with you.

The Marvelous Blog

Opportunities to Use a Custom Woodworker

Painted, Stained or Natural: Picking the Right Wood Finish

Project Highlight: Meridian-Kessler Historic Home Restoration

Project Highlight: Historic home in Fort Benjamin Harrison

Recent Posts

Archives