Last updated on August 14th, 2018 at 11:54 am
Already following our Blog? For more info sign up for our e-newsletter
This blog is written by your friends at Vermont Woods Studios. Check out our Vermont made furniture and home decor online and visit our showroom and art gallery at Stonehurst, the newly restored 1800s farmhouse nestled in the foothills of the Green Mountains.
Last updated on March 31st, 2017 at 01:22 pm
We like to think that the experience you’ll have at Vermont Woods Studios is unlike that of any furniture store you’ll shop at. There are some obvious ways we’re different, of course. For one, we’re located at an old ski-resort and farmhouse in the foothills of the Green Mountains. And being in an old farmhouse comes with its quirks–one of which is space. With the average furniture store spanning 20,000 square feet, according to a Furniture Today article (2010), our showroom space is approximately 1,500-2,000 square feet.
Already following our Blog? For more info sign up for our e-newsletter
This blog is written by your friends at Vermont Woods Studios. Check out our Vermont made furniture and home decor online and visit our showroom and art gallery at Stonehurst, the newly restored 1800s farmhouse nestled in the foothills of the Green Mountains.
Last updated on February 28th, 2019 at 10:55 am
We have conversations with customers every day about the color of real cherry wood furniture. It’s no wonder! When I just googled “real cherry wood” well over 50 shades of red, brown and even yellow came up. Quite a variation, isn’t it? Truth be told, half of these images are NOT of cherry wood.
When the big American furniture companies started off-shoring their furniture in the 1980s they found it cheaper to use rainforest woods than cherry. But consumers love cherry. So they stained rainforest woods and gave them various trade names containing “cherry”. For example Makore, an increasingly rare African wood being illegally logged in Sierra Leone and Gabon has been sold under the trade name Cherry Mahogany (though Makore is not closely related to either cherry or mahogany). Worse yet, it’s listed as an endangered species due to illegal logging and exploitation by organized crime which has taken root in the global timber industry.
Many times customers come to Vermont Woods Studios looking to buy real cherry wood furniture that matches existing cherry pieces in their homes. After discussions and emailing pictures back and forth they are shocked to find that their “cherry” furniture from Bassett, Ethan Allen or other big “American” companies is not cherry at all but rubberwood, poplar or engineered hardwood.
At Vermont Woods Studios, our cherry furniture is indeed made out of real, solid North American Black Cherry wood. The color starts out as a light pink and slowly ripens to a rich reddish brown over time, as it’s exposed to light. Nina’s photo of the rocker above shows the range of natural cherry colors after the wood’s been exposed to light for a few months.
Are you interested to learn more? Find tons of information and photos of American made, real cherry wood furniture on our website & send us your questions on Facebook or in the comments section below.
Already following our Blog? For more info sign up for our e-newsletter
This blog is written by your friends at Vermont Woods Studios. Check out our Vermont made furniture and home decor online and visit our showroom and art gallery at Stonehurst, the newly restored 1800s farmhouse nestled in the foothills of the Green Mountains.
Last updated on August 15th, 2018 at 04:31 pm
In the world of Vermont’s Made to Order Furniture there are many advantages: your furniture is handcrafted especially for you, you can customize it to fit exactly into your space, you can feel good about the fact that your furniture is made from trees that are harvested sustainably with respect for the forest environment, you’re helping to keep American craftsmanship alive & thriving, providing jobs and much more. But there is one downside to having furniture built just for you:
Time to Craft
Depending on who is making your furniture (we work with a dozen or so independent furniture makers), and what they’ve already got in their queue, time to complete building the furniture can vary.
The best way to find out the estimated lead times for our furniture is to check the Lead Time tab on the product’s page. You can read more general information about our lead times on our Shipping & Delivery page.
Time to Ship and Safely Deliver
After the furniture is built, it takes another 1-5 weeks to ship it, depending on where the customer lives. Fine furniture cannot be FedEx’d (unless maybe it’s an end table or something that’s been designed for quick-ship). Believe it or not, some of today’s FAST furniture delivery companies have average damage rates of up to 40%!
We’ve learned over the past 10 years of delivering furniture to homes in all 50 states that rushing an order to it’s destination is a gamble. It might get there safely… then again it might not. And since our customers are already waiting several weeks for their authentic, made to order furniture, we don’t want to have to call them and say, “sorry your furniture was damaged in transit and we have to re-craft it. And re-ship it”.
Fortunately our customers understand this and are generally very patient and willing to wait for something that will one day become a family heirloom.
Rebecca, Sean, Michelle and Loryn use a series of emails and phone calls to keep clients in the loop during the crafting and shipping process. Right after your order, you’ll receive an email acknowledgement asking you to review the order details for accuracy & giving you an estimate of when it will be delivered. Then when your order is half way through the process, we’ll email you again with an update. Another communication will arrive when the craftsman has completed your order and we’ve scheduled it for pick-up with our furniture shipping specialist. Finally when your order is in your area, we’ll connect you directly with our shipper to schedule a convenient time for delivery. All along the way, you’ll have someone here, that you know by name, to talk to if you have any questions or concerns. Then after delivery, we’ll email you again to make sure the delivery went well and you’re happy with your new furniture.
In this world of instant gratification, where most furniture buyers walk into Bob’s Discount Furniture, Ikea or Ashley Furniture and walk out an hour later with something that’s substandard and unsustainably produced overseas by huge multi-national conglomerates, we find ourselves immensely grateful to our customers for their patience in waiting for the real thing. When buying furniture that’s built to last a lifetime, we hope you’ll feel it’s worth the wait.
Read our previous article on made to order furniture & lead time.
Already following our Blog? For more info sign up for our e-newsletter
This blog is written by your friends at Vermont Woods Studios. Check out our Vermont made furniture and home decor online and visit our showroom and art gallery at Stonehurst, the newly restored 1800s farmhouse nestled in the foothills of the Green Mountains.
Last updated on September 29th, 2022 at 08:44 pm
Interior design is not a new concept. For decades, people have been making a living by creating works of art with furniture and accessories as their palette and empty rooms as their canvas. It is probably not a surprise that fashioning the perfect design for the inside of your home is crucial to how you feel and react in your environment. Interior design is all about aesthetics. It’s about taking items that are visually appealing and combining them with your personality to create something unique and personal to you.
Already following our Blog? For more info sign up for our e-newsletter
This blog is written by your friends at Vermont Woods Studios. Check out our Vermont made furniture and home decor online and visit our showroom and art gallery at Stonehurst, the newly restored 1800s farmhouse nestled in the foothills of the Green Mountains.