fine furniture
Solid Wood Bedroom Furniture Sets: Finding The Best Value
Finding the Best Value in Solid Wood Bedroom Furniture
Handmade, real solid wood bedroom sets are a significant investment so if you’re shopping for one, you’re no doubt looking for the best overall value in terms of quality and price. Comparison shopping is hard work. It takes days, weeks and even (for many of our customers) months to research all the design and style choices for fine hardwood bedroom furniture sets.
And the price comparisons can really get tricky. Pricing can initially look like it’s all over the place but once you start to narrow down the level of quality you want you begin to see that, with high end, American made furniture, the pricing falls into a very narrow range. That’s because there’s just not a lot of room for mark-up. Handcrafting fine wood furniture takes extraordinary amounts of time to create and when that work is done here in America (which is probably important to if you made it to our blog) it needs to be compensated with a livable wage.
So when it comes to offering the best value for American made fine furniture, retailers like us (Vermont Woods Studios) have the greatest opportunity to save you money by being smart about the way we ship furniture (it turns out that shipping 3 or more pieces of furniture isn’t much more expensive than shipping one) and do our administrative work. With our solid wood bedroom furniture sets we’ve focused on both and are able to discount these sets a full 20%.
Just so you know, this is the best price and lowest discount we’re able to offer at anytime, all year long. While others might mark up to mark down by 70% or so routinely, we do not. Our prices accurately reflect the cost of creating your furniture and getting it to you safely via the best fine furniture shipping specialist in the country. So check out our solid wood bedroom sets today and let us know what you think on Facebook. To find out what others are saying, check out our testimonials page and the Customer Review section of our blog.
Fall Into Savings: All Dining Furniture Sale
September has arrived, and with it, the feeling that fall
has begun. In Vermont, the signs
of fall are: pumpkins replacing summer berries at the farm stands, pick your
own apple signs, and of course, leaves coloring our landscape. The last of the
harvest brings us some of our favorite seasonal treats, like apple cider and
pumpkin pie. With cooler weather approaching, there will be a shift to inside
dining to enjoy these seasonal decadents with family and friends. It is time to
start thinking about retiring your barbeque grill and patio furniture for the
season, and preparing your dining room for fall feasts. What better way to
spruce up your dining room than getting some new furniture? So, we're making
that easier by putting all of our hardwood dining furniture styles, including
modern, contemporary, traditional, and shaker on sale until September 18th.
Save up to 20%, plus free shipping and a lifetime guarantee. See our online gallery for details.
Why Back Fine Furniture With A Lifetime Guarantee?
Because this is back-to-school time, most of the furniture sold in August and September is sort of disposable… you know what I meant, right? Even Kendall (I'm embarassed to say) had to make an emergency trip to Ikea to pick up a portable bookshelf for his dorm room.
Most people just assume that the furniture they buy is going to be on the curbside in 5-10 years. It's part of the "planned obsolescence" strategy which ensures furniture stores that future sales will be strong.
So why, at Vermont Woods Studios are we selling heirloom quality, fine furniture that's backed by a lifetime guarantee? It probably seems foolish to many.
But quite honestly, here's the reason why: Heather's taken three orders today from repeat customers who love their Vermont made furniture. It's the real thing and there's nothing quite like it.
In an age when few things last for decades (let alone generations) we're proud to be selling Vermont made furniture and it seems only fair to back up our promise of quality with a lifetime guarantee.
If a lifetime guarantee on fine furniture is important to you, how 'bout letting us know on our Facebook?
Celebrate Vermont’s History and Future with Our American Made Furniture Sale
By Loryn Dion
While festivals and events across the state will be celebrating American history next week, Vermont Woods Studios will be honoring a vibrant past of Vermont woodworking this 4th of July with a storewide 20% off sale.
Being new to the Vermont area, I’ve been consistently researching the events and traditions that are celebrated here in the Green Mountain State. So with 4th of July around the corner, I began looking into the best places to see fireworks, enjoy music and entertainment and learn about Vermont’s past. What I learned is that Vermont has a very rich history that Vermonters waste no time in celebrating come Independence Day!
Plymouth, Vermont is the birthplace of Calvin Coolidge, the country’s 30th President and only President to be born on Independence Day. Every year in Plymouth, a special event, The President Calvin Coolidge Birthday Celebration, is held to celebrate his life and legacy. This celebration includes a march from the village green to the cemetery where a wreath from the White House is laid at the President’s gravesite, a chicken barbecue at the Wilder House Restaurant and a live Vermont Public Radio interview with nationally known commentator and author Amity Shlaes, about her latest book, Coolidge.
Another event that has been highly recommended by Peggy is the Vermont Symphony Orchestra Concert – Summer Festival Tour. At multiple locations across Vermont, guests can pack a picnic, enjoy an evening with friends and family listening to the beautiful arrangements of the VSO and then watch a spectacular fireworks show to top off the night. Visit their website to learn more about the events and find a location near you.
Here at Vermont Woods Studios, we’re celebrating the only way we know how: honoring our fantastic craftsman with a storewide furniture sale! Woodworking has been an integral part of Vermont’s economy and lifestyle for over 200 years. The origins of Vermont woodworking can be traced back to the late 1700’s when cabinet-makers would set up shops in town centers and use local hardwoods to create unique furniture pieces to sell to the public. These furniture-makers took pride in every piece they made from start to finish and today, Vermont Woods Studios is proud to say that the same passion still lies in Vermont woodworkers.
This 4th of July, this tradition can be celebrated from July 1st through July 7th with a special storewide sale that only happens twice a year. We are offering all of our handmade, fine furniture at 20% off, the lowest prices we can possibly offer. So give us a call, visit our Web site or stop by next week and celebrate Vermont history with us. We look forward to hearing from you. Happy 4th of July!
Loryn Dion is a Marketing Assistant at Vermont Woods Studios, an online furniture gallery which showcases Vermont's finest wood furniture. Follow our blog to learn about Vermont fine furniture, Vermont happenings, our mission, and our team.
Fine Wood Furniture, Sustainability and Rainforest Conservation
Kendall posted a new webpage the other day on the link between your furniture, rainforest conservation and a greener, more sustainable world. It's why we do what we do at Vermont Woods Studios Fine Wood Furniture.
Sometimes I feel like a nutcase– living in Vermont and talking about rainforest conservation all the time. But I can't help it. It's one of the Top 3 environmental problems of our time, yet few people seem to know about it.
Check out these rainforest facts and let me know if you too see this as a matter of great urgency.
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1.5 acres of rainforest are lost every second (that equates to 50 million acres a year: an area the size of England, Wales and Scotland combined)
- 54 of the world's 193 countries have lost 90 percent or more of their forest cover. Rainforests that once covered 14% of the earth's land surface now cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years.
- Nearly half of the world's species of plants, animals and microorganisms will be destroyed or severely threatened over the next 25 years due to rainforest deforestation.
- We are losing approximately 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year.
- As the rainforest species disappear, so do many possible cures for life-threatening diseases. Currently, 121 prescription drugs sold worldwide come from plant-derived sources. While 25% of Western pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, less that 1% of these tropical trees and plants have been tested by scientists.
- Most rainforests are cleared by chainsaws, bulldozers and fires for its timber value and then are followed by farming and ranching operations
- There were an estimated ten million Indians living in the Amazonian Rainforest five centuries ago. Today there are less than 200,000.
- In Brazil alone, European colonists have destroyed more than 90 indigenous tribes since the 1900's. With them have gone centuries of accumulated knowledge of the medicinal value of rainforest species. As their homelands continue to be destroyed by deforestation, rainforest peoples are also disappearing.
- In Indonesia, the current aggressive rate of logging could eradicate native forests within only 10 years. Unlike our temperate forests in Vermont for example, rainforests do not regenerate after they are destroyed. Once gone, they are gone forever and along with them the wonderful diversity of plants and wildlife that inhabit them.
If you've managed to read this far, you rock! Leave a comment below or check in with us now and then on Facebook to see what we're doing to to help replant the rainforest with our Plant a Billion Trees project. Join us and together we can make a difference!
Defining Fine Furniture: Finish
So far, in an effort to define "fine furniture" we've discussed craftsmanship and the type of wood used, so now let's talk about finish. One thing most people are surprised to learn is that even though a piece of fine furniture is crafted and assembled it's a long way from being finished.
I like the way Vermont furniture maker, Bob Gasperetti of Mount Tabor puts it: "The saying that it takes 90% of the time to accomplish the last 10% of the work couldn't be more true than in handmade furniture."
He is right! I wish you could run your hand across one of Bob's table tops right now. After a piece is built, Bob sands the surface to 320 grit (this requires multiple sandings with increasingly fine sandpaper). That takes forever but there is no substitute if you're looking for the kind of smooth, supple feeling you get when touching Bob's furniture.
After sanding, Bob applies multiple coats of a non-toxic, environmentally-friendly oil until the surface of his furniture feels as smooth and soft as a baby's skin.
Some people would opine that an oil finish is the only option for "fine furniture" but as someone who doesn't like to take the time to maintain (aka re-oil and it's really no big deal, but I'm lazy) an oil finish I'll say oil is not the only option. Vermont furniture makers offer dozens of other choices, including a blend of oil and beeswax, non-toxic lacquers and even an eco-friendly clear finish made out of whey (a byproduct of our Vermont dairy industry). Copeland Furniture is once again leading the green furniture industry in the research and application of eco-friendly water=based lacquer finishes. I'll write about them next time when we wrap up this disucssion of fine furniture definitions with the topic of sustainability and karma.
Anyway, no study of fine furniture finishes would be complete without a visit to the workshops of a few fine furniture makers where you can run your hands over the furniture and compare the sensations from different finishes. Information and driving directions to the shops I've talked about (and many more) are available in the Vermont Forest Heritage brochure. If you're coming in from Boston or New York to go skiing, you'll pass by a number of them. So if there's no snow, or it's too cold to ski or if you're just too tired… take a day off and treat yourself to a tour of some of the world's best fine furniture workshops.
Fine Furniture Definitions: Craftsmanship
The other day I noted that a customer asked us for a definition of "fine furniture" and since we could find no real consensus out there I decided to put out– well– yet another opinion, actually. My first post was about the type of wood used for fine furniture. I think the next aspect ought to be about craftsmanship.
I found this video by Brent and Derek Karner and their craftspeople at Clear Lake Furniture in Ludlow, VT. It's really a great illustration of both the human and machine-driven craftsmanship that defines fine furniture. In the video Brent shows the process of how fine wood furniture starts as trees, sustainably harvested from well managed forests. Then he brings you into his workshop where to see his craftsmanship up close: wood is rough sawn, planed, shaped, prepared for joinery and assembled. He explains different types of joinery, like dovetails, mortise and tenon, splines and how they are created.
I like Brent's discussion of craftsmanship in terms of man versus machine. He concludes that, done properly, both methods can have excellent results although he shows that in many cases it's a blend of man and machine that's optimal.
In Vermont we have several woodworking purists who focus almost exclusively on the use of traditional hand tools, and their craftsmanship is exquisite. One of my favorite companies working to preserve traditional handwork traditions is Shackleton-Thomas. But the majority of Vermont's fine furniture makers do employ high precision modern machinery which not only brings the price of furniture down, but sometimes produces a more exacting result.
The next aspect of fine furniture craftsmanship I want to mention is finish. But let's do that another day.
In the meantime, if you're in Vermont (which after all IS the Fine Furniture Capital of America) and you're looking to get a better understanding of fine craftsmanship, there are hundreds of small furniture makers who would be happy to introduce you to their craft. Check out this great Vermont Forest Heritage brochure which lists furniture makers all around the state and provides a map showing where each one is and what their hours of operation are. Clearlake furniture is on the map and is on your way to Okemo Mountain. It's open almost every day but call ahead for an appointment if you want to get a tour of their workshop and see their fine craftsmanship in motion.
Defining Fine Furniture: Type of Wood
Similar to the term American Made Furniture, there's no standard definition for "fine furniture". But a customer brought this up yesterday so I thought I'd take a shot at it. At Vermont Woods Studios we specialize in fine wood furniture, rather than upholstered furniture so I'll keep the discussion confined to that.
This may seem odd, but I'm going to put style aside for another subject because I think each creative woodworker has his or her own ideas about style. Naturally there has to be a strategic blending of form and function, but making a judgement about that is personal and subjective– you could write a library of books about it and still not reach a conclusion. I'm not sure style belongs in a definition for fine furniture.
So for now I'll stick to tangible perameters like craftsmanship, uniqueness, joinery, type of wood, type of finish, sustainability and durability– plus one intangible which I'll call karma. Today let's look at the type of wood a piece of furniture is made with first– then we can consider the other characteristics in the next few posts.
Fine wood furniture starts with hardwood (like cherry, maple, walnut and oak) as opposed to soft wood (like pine and other coniferous woods). Furthermore, in today's world (by my definition anyway) those hardwoods are grown sustainably in America as opposed to imported woods that are clear cut from the world's rapidly disappearing rainforests (like ipe, rubberwood, mahogany, jatoba and teak–this ties into a karma discussion). You can learn more about American hardwood species here: cherry wood, maple wood, walnut wood, oak wood.
It's not just the wood species that sets fine wood furniture apart. Once a species is selected, fine woodworkers go to greath lengths to carefully select each board that goes into a piece of furniture, depending on where the board is being placed (like in a drawer front, part of a table top, an accent piece or part of the frame).
Woodworkers select boards based on things like grain, color, texture, shape, character and whether it's part of the tree's heartwood (inner circles of the tree and dark in color) or sapwood (outer circles of the tree and light in color). There are different levels of attention to detail in wood selection and they are reflected in the price of a piece of furniture. Many of our woodworkers in Vermont are aligned with the philosophy of George Nakishima who felt that wood selection is an almost sacred art that honors The Soul of a Tree. Others are more practical but both philosophies on wood selection can be the foundation of a great piece of "fine furniture" depending on what the customer is looking for.
Later we'll talk about how craftsmanship, origin and sustainability add to the definition of fine furniture.
Online Furniture Shopping: 2011 Customer Reviews, Complaints and Performance Metrics
If I'm investing a lot of money in something– say a new car, I spend a significant amount of time researching my options. Then when I've made a decision on a particular car I continue to research everything about that model and the company that makes it.
Well, I figure the same is true for people when they're investing in high end, handmade furniture. But unfortunately not much performance data is available from furniture companies. Either they don't do customer satisfaction surveys or they choose not to publish their results. Why is that?
Although we're a small company, we've been surveying our customers since we started our business 6 years ago. I thought I would share some of our results and performance metrics with you over the next couple weeks. These results are taken from a survey of 130 customers who just received their new furniture over the last few months. We received 69 customer responses for a pretty decent response rate of 53%. The questions we asked them included:
Please rate our performance in the following areas
* Quality of furniture
* Ease of ordering
* Shipping and delivery
* Response of customer sevice personnel
* Would you purchase from Vermont Woods Studios Furniture again?
Here's the link to follow the results of our customer reviews, complaints and satisfaction survey as they emerge. Check back in now and then over the next few weeks to see what our customers are saying about their furniture.
Black Friday Plus Fine Wood Furniture Sale, What’s that?
by Dennis Shanoff
I feel the unseasonably warm weather this month in Vermont has lulled us into a false sense of distance from the holidays. But low and behold next week is indeed Thanksgiving! And all the chaos that seems to go with that. Traveling, preparing for guests & visitor’s and of course all that cooking… Oh yeah, and not to mention getting up at 5:00 am the next morning to be first in line for all those “Black Friday” deals! Retailers have really created such a sense of urgency and drastic savings around this event that you almost feel silly doing any holiday shopping on any day but “Black Friday”! But we now also have a “Cyber Monday” for those that prefer to skip the lines and traffic and do their bargain hunting online from the comfort of their home or office. So is this our second and final chance at big savings?
Well our idea for this years Black Friday savings event was to give you more time… more time to preview our fine wood furniture and more time to shop. To do this we have created a “Black Friday Plus” sales event and what is different about this event is that we are giving our customers 4 days to preview and 6 days to shop! The actual sale kicks off Wednesday November 23rd at 8:00 am and runs through midnight on Cyber Monday, November 28th. So that’s 6 days for you to save 20% on furniture storewide, plus free delivery!*
So you can take your time the next few days to browse our online fine furniture gallery and preview at your convenience (remember to bookmark your favorite pieces). Of course our online gallery is available 24/7 so when there’s a break in your potentially hectic schedule you can still easily catch the sale! If you happen to have questions and want to speak to our team, the only days the office will be closed will be Thanksgiving Day and the following Sunday– otherwise we are open 9am-5pm. But knowing our team I am sure someone will give at least a quick check into our emails those days! So welcome to our fine wood furniture store and Black Friday Plus event.
Here's wishing you and your family a relaxing Happy Holiday (to the extent that's possible)!
* Excludes our one of a kind custom artisan furniture and Everwood outdoor furniture which is always on sale with a low price guarantee
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