custom furniture

Have any of you ever had a piece of custom furniture made before?  I don't recommend it.  Only because it is too awesome and it is very likely that should you ever have it done then other furniture will just always seem like crap.  I admit it isn't totally sound logic: avoid something because you know how awesome it will be and you probably won't have many opportunities to do it again or you will get addicted to it and then things will really get ugly.

Leif has the same logic when it comes to massages.  He won't get them for fear of loving them too much.  He has probably watched me, one too many times, pathetically trying to get him to rub my shoulders as a sub par substitute for the Thai ladies at my favorite massage place.  Please, I beg, just five minutes.  That is all I need.  My muscles are so sore.  I'm sick folks. I need help. 

Back to furniture and having people with skill and talent make it for you.  Yup, that is what we are doing.  Josh is making a table for us.  His business is Arbor Exchange and they make gorgeous furniture from reclaimed wood.  We are going to be getting a beautiful table that we can name and make part of the family.  It is the closest thing we will ever come to having a pet thanks to my allergies and general laziness when it comes to animals.  The table will be called Sir Winston Waldorf Watson.  A stately name worthy of a stately table.

This past week I met Josh at a 95 year-old saw mill in Van Nuys (which is totally not a quaint Dutch community, btw) to look for the wood that will become Sir Winston.  It was fun.  It was educational.  It was saw-dusty.  I took lots of photos.

When I saw this red fire safety bulletin my immediate thought was, "Don't worry about the fire, man!  You have more pressing concerns.  Like your second head"  Seeing it written out isn't quite as funny as it was in my head.  Definitely it would not make it as a finalist for The New Yorker cartoon captions.

After taking all of these photos the only one of the actual slabs we picked out was with my iPhone.  I'm lame.

The tree -consensus was a pine tree- was from the Angeles National Forest.  I believe it was a casualty of the Station Fire (Josh can probably correct me if I am wrong on this) which wiped out something like 160,000 acres back in 2009.  That was a really sad time here in Los Angeles.  They barely just reopened most of the Angeles Crest earlier this year.

It is pretty phenomenal that not only is the table being made by our most awesome friend but that when we move to Portland we will literally be taking with us part of that which we love the most about this city.  

I can't wait to it all finished and customey.