Cross Coffee Table

This coffee table is made from thick tinted glass that belonged to our neighbor. It is chipped but not jagged and has seen a lot. The base is a solid pine block with radial reclaimed wood supports. Sturdy, fashionable, environmentally sound, and multi-stylitic. It is kind of an industrial, meets urban, meets rural piece. It represents the Brooklyn way of simplicity, and repurposing.

Dali Table

This askew table/bench adds a touch of surrealism to any room. The angled legs reflects upon its vicinity the feel of a puzzle book of impossible shapes.

The top is made from a large piece of gnarly Douglas Fir, which we sanded down heavily, and varnished with a glossy finish. One side of the supports is a very used, dark, used pine wood, whereas the other is a pinkish yew wood.

Longboard friendly, as you can see. This table can get along with any number of household items.

 Between the three woods, which range from burgundy to pink to green, this is a very incongruous piece. At first glance, it basically looks normal, but the longer you look at it, the weirder it seems, pulling you in deeper and deeper...

Plank Lamp

 This lamp provides great accent lighting. It works to shine a light upon the focal point of the table's arrangement. Much of the light also shines back toward the wall. I can picture any number of small figurines, knickknacks, or seasonal decorations on the little ledge.
The contraction is all reclaimed wood, with long supporting bolts for the shade. Electrical wiring is done in house and guaranteed to last. Could we have hidden the wooden supports and cut them flush? Yes, but that isn't what we're about! We love seeing what makes up a piece of furniture and hope that others can appreciate that the piece of wood had a prior use and has been reimagined into something completely different.
Thanks for reading!

Whitewashed counter

This piece is very personal and not really for sale. I don't think we're even taking it when we move out. This is our addition to the layout of our kitchen.





The wood is a very fine, dense cherrywood. Judging by its battle-scars, it has either had many uses, or was in a very sturdy structure. Curved edges, ripped pieces, and cut corners; this wood has seen many things. When we took it in, this wood had a quarter inch of char on two sides. It must have been part of a terrible house fire. From the pit of a fire to a sunny corner in our kitchen as its focal point. This wood has seen many things and been transformed along the way.

Since we are working with a corner, we just used L braces to hold it in: two on the long side and one on one end. Despite the wood being quite heavy, the small braces hold it very well and it is very sturdy.

The whitewashing process is pretty fun to do. It just takes a little bit longer than painting and a little more knowing hand since the paint will sit where it is laid. To whitewash, you need to wipe off the paint before it fully dries. You can either paint it and then wipe it off or just apply the paint with a washcloth as we did. On a funked up surface like this one, it deposits not only in the natural grooves of the wood, but also in the crevices, holes, and cracks that is has garnered in its lifetime in our service. Whitewashed cherry wood, I salute you!

Wok and Block lamp

Have you ever seen a wok and thought "that would make a pretty kickass lamp"? Well we did, and we have made the thought a reality. From the heavy wood block at its base, to the gnarly metal wok on top, this lamp is an urban glory.

The wok shade is a very dark, dingy piece that is also very personable. It reminds me of Old New York. The city with the dark alleyways, pee-soaked streets, and constant demonstrations. The kind of city that would inspire movies like Escape From New York.








There isn't really much to say for the rod, just that it's an old hollow broomstick that hides the electric wire quite efficiently. The mass at the bottom is repurposed pine wood from our friendly local lumber yard. As with all repurposed things, it is interesting to imagine what the piece has seen in its time on Earth. The exposed rings on its top reveal that the tree it came from was at least 100 years old; I counted 96 clear rings, and it must have had at least a couple more beyond the cut. The tree's health is laid out and its cross-section is its postmortem. Through the tree's health, you can see a century of life in a single point on Earth: the draughts, the floods, the ground nutrients, the rising and dropping temperatures… A tactile history of Earth.


Overlaid onto that century of growth is a clearly long history serving people. Layers of paint, mysterious rusted nail holes on a rounded surface that seems terribly structurally unstable… In my mind's eye, it was part of a porch somewhere in Queens. How many people passed this stump as they walked up their porch steps daily? What history has unfolded here?

Personable chair

Everyone seems to have an opinion as to what this chair looks like and has earned a few nicknames. I've heard "King Chair", "Wall-E chair", "Romeo", and the slightly less inspired "Pallet Chair". Something about it just makes people relate on some level.

The chair is made out of the better part of a pallet, and a sturdy backrest on a metal strip. The structural support is owed largely to the long bolts that go throughout the pallet and can be seen from the side throughout the pallet planks.

The plan is to make adjustments to the chair. Maybe a Wall-E slip-cover…

UFO chandelier

Conor was obsessing over the prospect of making a hanging light fixture out of a bicycle wheel. When I say "obsessed", I mean about 3 mentions of the light in a week. Imagine how happy he was when I found one! It was literally lying in tall grass. It looks to be in mint condition, but upon further inspection, you can see that the hub is very bent and impossible to fix without causing structural damage to the metal. It fit our designs perfectly though.


We hung it from the ceiling, around an old dome-shade with very thin metal wire. That combined with a very oddly textured reflective insulation material makes it look very much like a UFO. The fairy lights that we hung to turn this chic lowbrow lamp into a chandelier make it look a little jellyfish-ish.

The light is dispersed nicely throughout the room as the wheel is angled outwards. The fairy lights'  reflection makes a trippy pattern on the TekFoil (basically thick and shiny bubble wrap). It's like staring into a new age candle or lava lamp. There's something about dim lights that is oddly appealing. We must be more closely related to moths than we tend to think. Only we turn away when the lights get harmfully bright. I think that moths have an Icarus complex. But I digress...

Montfort bench

We made this bench on Saturday. It's a nice exposed-wood loveseat bench with an industrial feel.

The seat of the bench is made from the same pallet as the glass-topped coffee table. It has great character and bestows the bench with its name.

The supports and armrests are basic 2x4 and 2x6 Lowe's lumber. Structurally sound with 10d nails. Very strong construction. I would confidently invite a McCrary twin to pop a squat.

The exposed wood knots and nails are a stark contrast to the sleek, clean, and unstable Ikea brand of furniture. The only alteration we made to the wood was a simple course-grain sanding to take away any sharp splinters that could poke and snag.

"Needle"

We figured it needed an accent, and maybe a little more comfort. We opted to make pillows out of burlap coffee bean sacks (kudos to Variety café and their awesome staff!). The pillows inside are very comfy and the burlap cover smells beautifully of earth with a hint of coffee. The designs on the sacks are pretty chic and trace back to Ethiopia.

The wood could be a little more comfortable, but the piece is great for dinner parties, as the armrests are a great height and sufficiently wide to avoid getting stuff knocked off. I find myself using them to put down my plate, glass, or desert, paying no mind to the table right beside me.

Can you imagine yourself sitting here, sipping a glass of chardonnay with your arm rested on its armrest on a sunny Sunday? I can't because I don't know you. But you can, and that's what counts.

Glass table

Our pride and joy, we made this sturdy little table just this week. Materials include an industrial pallet, reclaimed glass from an old table, and 4x4 cedar legs held in with 3/8th inch steel hex bolts. We're very proud of how it turned out. I get lost in the doubly obstructed view through the wooden slats and tempered glass.
I think this table would qualify as modern industrial. It would look great with anything of either world. I would like to imagine it as the setting of a breakfast niche in a warehouse apartment.
I doubt anything we make will ever be as undeniably sturdy as the base of this table. I mean could you take a hammer to the glass top? Yes. But the wooden frame is stronger than most New York City doors and apartment walls!

This is Us

Kansas Conor, making the cut on a reclaimed pallet

D.Rep Alex repainting the inside of a dresser

We like to build stuff. We've been upcycling various materials to furnish our apartment. Our apartment's full now but we have so many ideas and want to keep building. We will be putting our creations up for sale. Come by our apartment/showroom and pick out what you like!

We go to our local lumber yard, thrift shop, and online retailers to find under-utilized pieces and make them into innovative works of functionality and art. Open to ideas, suggestions, tips, requests, and commissions. Join our counter-culture! (yes, we make counters too)