B&L Woodworking is renowned for its sheds & home outbuildings, but it wasn't for a shed that contractors & friends directed to us to B&L Woodworking in the Amish market north of Kingston. B&L also makes excellent Furniture -- with gorgeous workmanship, beautiful wood & graining that speak to you, all made to order, built to last. Customers can select & personalize the style, wood, finish, edges, & other details to their taste. In all our business with them, they lived up to their strong reputation for trustworthiness and quality.
We were on a search. We wondered if together we could adapt a classic style to get a look that suggests Mid-Century Modern. We talked to Jake, B&L Woodworking's expert customer representative on site in their section of the Amish Market.
Our story: We needed a new bedroom set when we moved into our new house, & we'd struck out finding anything we really liked. We'd even tried some custom woodworking artisans, only to find that explaining 'what we want' wastes their time, runs up the cost, & may not turn out to BE what we want. We learned: if we want custom, have a Design.
Jake agreed to see if they could do a bed for us . Newly retired, we had the time to develop our own idea. We measured & visualized the space our bed would occupy, studied Mid-Mod beds & side-tables on the web, then took weeks to come up with a Concept & draw a Sketch, which we evaluated & simplified to cost-reduce it. It took us another month to translate our sketch into graph-paper drawings with detailed views, our very own Plan with all dimensions labeled!
Jake never pressured us. He is straightforward, patient, & a good listener, easy to get along with. He is available & very responsive to phone calls & emails. He gave good us advice when we asked him a question.
We gave him our design package. The team of creative craftsmen/carpenters he works with in Pennsylvania constructed our design perfectly, delivered it on time, & expertly installed it, with no extra charge.
We moved on to the other items we envisioned in our bedroom set. Next-- a dresser, bed-side tables, & a wall-attached table, light wood with dark cross-sawed oak touches. Doing one item at a time gave us the added benefit of paying for each as we did it. We now have as part of our heritage a unique BR set that echoes Mid-Century Modern style with an Art Deco flair in the tables. (It's even a choice in their catalog.)
More! We had 2 quite functional pieces (a desk & a small table) that we wanted to keep, rather than buy new. We weren't up for messing with refinishing. Instead, B&L made new tops for them. The greystain spalted elm we used is distinctive!! It's right in style today & gets constant compliments.
Long story short, for a lot of reasons we're delighted to have found Jake & B&L Woodworking.
PS -Several times when visiting Jake, just for fun, we looked at B&L's huge variety of cool gazebos & sheds. We're not allowed one where we live, but if we were in the market, that's where we'd go. read more