Design – Dark Horse Woodworks

A renovation tale: The finish line (Part 3)

April 3, 2019 by darkhorse with 0 Comments

As promised, Dark Horse is happy to (at last) bring you the final installment of our “Professional cabinetmaker wrestles his own kitchen reno to the ground” story, complete with photos.

As mentioned in earlier posts, there are distinct pros and cons to doing your own kitchen overhaul.

The good news is that you’re likely to end up with exactly what you wanted, down to the smallest details.

The bad news? That might take a lot longer than you’d imagine.

When you’re spending most of your time working on projects for paying clients, it can really slow your progress to the finish line of your own kitchen. Just to be clear – for me, the finish line doesn’t mean you can put things in your cabinets or cook a meal in the kitchen. For me, it means every last detail is complete, and every aspect of the kitchen reno is so pristine that you’d feel at ease about bringing in a professional photographer to photograph the “After.”

After the bulk of the work was complete on my project, a handful of items lingered on the check list for months and kept me from declaring it finished.

Getting by with a little help from your friends

A major woodworking trade show was held in Atlanta last August, and my friends and fellow board members from the Cabinet Makers Association came to town.

I had the CMA crew over for dinner one night before the show got under way. Given that everyone knew about my reno, it was a great opportunity for them to see the mostly finished version. I planned to tell them about one of the lingering issues on my to-do list and get their advice: The wine fridge door wouldn’t open correctly.

It was hitting the divider to the right of it, and I hadn’t been able to figure out how to fix it.

Former CMA president Matt Krig came over first, and we looked at the problem door and talked through it; then board member James Fox arrived and joined the conversation. Eventually, Monika Soos and her husband Radu arrived, and I pointed out the problem to them.

“Why don’t you just reverse the door?” Radu asked.

Of course.

The very simplest and most obvious solution had never even crossed my mind – or occurred to the others as we stood around staring at the problem.

Sometimes you can’t get out of your own way.

(Thank God they came over.)

The details

Aside from those final tasks dragging on for longer than I’d have liked, I couldn’t be happier with the way the kitchen turned out.

It has the look and feel we were going for – a mix of modern and retro elements (you can read more about the thinking behind the design in this earlier installment).

The color scheme was an off-white that had a green tint with red and gray accents. Designers Christy Dillard and Heidi Pearce helped with the overall color schemes (including working around the red oven).

Here’s a rundown of the main features and details in the new kitchen:

The cabinets are transitional, somewhere between modern and Art Deco style, painted with a color called Tapestry Beige. The material is routed MDF.
The countertops are quartz.
The idea of having some glass-front cabinet doors was appealing, but that limits what you can store in those cabinets if you want to keep the overall look of your kitchen aesthetically pleasing. To steer clear of that limitation, we went with ribbed glass and put a panel painted the same color as the cabinets behind the glass on the upper cabinets.

The decision to use unusual/retro-style appliances was an important part of the design scheme. Viking offered a double oven in factory red – one of the two ovens has a traditional pull-down door and the other is a French-door style. The placement of the ovens in the corner of the kitchen is a bit unusual, but it’s very effective.
Unfortunately, we could not find a red retro refrigerator to match. Thanks to a brilliant suggestion from the staff at appliance dealer Howard Payne and Co., we found a stainless steel model and took it to an auto body shop where it was painted to match the ovens.
All appliances were made by Viking, with the exception of the wine fridge, which was made by Jenn-Air.
The Blum Servo Drive touch-to-open system (a last-minute addition to the budget that was well worth it) is a favorite feature. Only two things in the kitchen require opening: the dishwasher and the wine fridge. In addition to the convenience of the touch-to-open system, the lack of hardware also makes for clean lines.
The backsplash was created from made-to-order tiles in shades of brown, cream and pale green.
The pendant lights came from Etsy.
The flooring is porcelain tile.
There are some other cool features scattered through the kitchen, including a roll-out pantry and a deep drawer with inserts to corral long-handled kitchen utensils.

Where a desk used to sit in the old kitchen, you’ll now find the wine fridge (the one with the “problem” door), a cabinet to hide the microwave, toaster and coffee maker, and big, deep drawers (liquor bottles are tall, after all).
A 27-inch iMac is mounted in the corner cabinet, which makes it easy to look up/display recipes or stream movies/TV while cooking.

The reno didn’t increase the square footage of the kitchen, but taking the cabinets all the way up to the ceiling added a lot more storage. The adjacent laundry room also got an update with a new stacking washer-dryer set and new flooring to match the kitchen.

I also added a small, matching cabinet in the adjacent sitting room (which was converted from a sleeping porch during an earlier reno). This cabinet serves as a bar area and has extra storage.

The bottom line

So was it worth it to bring my work home, so to speak, and slog through all of the disruptions and delays?

Absolutely.

I spend my days giving my clients their dream kitchens, and it’s really satisfying to finally have a dream kitchen waiting at home.

~ Chris Dehmer

Postscript: Here’s a photo of the previous kitchen as a reminder of where we started. To see more “before” photos, read the first post in the series.

A renovation tale, Part 2: Demo Day(s)

July 12, 2018 by darkhorse with 0 Comments

In Part 1 of this story, you heard about the lead-up to the kitchen reno I’ve been working on at home, and the ups and downs that come with being a professional cabinetmaker overhauling my own kitchen.

After working on so many awesome kitchens for clients, I wanted to have an amazing kitchen at home, too. So my wife and I had to put ourselves in the shoes of clients and find our way to a design we could agree on. Once we got all of our ducks in a row, it was time for that made-oh-so-famous-by-HGTV step in the reno: Demo Day.

Or, in my case, Demo Days.

Because one of our dogs can’t stand loud noises, we had decided that I’d skip a vacation with extended family over Labor Day weekend last fall and take care of the demo while my wife and the dogs were away.

I’d finished the new cabinets in August, and I was ready to get rolling.

My own worst enemy

The kitchen we’re replacing was a DIY project that I tackled before starting Dark Horse (you can find more details about that in Part 1). For an amateur job, it was fine and served us well for 15 years. All in all, I couldn’t complain about my first big kitchen project.

But when I started in on the demo, I began to feel differently.

I’m glad there were no TV crews on hand for the Dehmer Demo because it turned out to be a lot more complicated and frustrating than swinging a sledgehammer. I had some unprintable thoughts about the job that Amateur-DIY Chris did on installing that kitchen.

It sucked. In a word, it was overbuilt. The fact that I built it in place meant that the entire kitchen was basically one big cabinet (the cabinet makers who are reading this will instantly understand the problem this creates for dismantling a kitchen).

As I wrestled with those cabinets, I thought about how we do things at Dark Horse now and cursed my overzealous ways. In spots where one screw would have been fine, I had used five. It was mind-boggling.

In this photo (taken as installation of the new cabinets got under way), you can see a piece of an original wall cabinet that was particularly stubborn.

In the end, I had to cut the cabinets off the wall, and demo took every bit of the two and a half days I had. In addition to the hard physical labor it required to get the cabinets out, demo-ing the floors turned out to be labor-intensive, too – pulling up each board and getting the nails out was no fun.

All that is to say: While I understand that smashing up a house pre-reno makes for great TV, it’s really not much fun, especially when you find yourself doing battle with the younger, less savvy, more meticulous version of yourself.

And then there was none

Anyone who’s gone through a kitchen reno is familiar with the work-arounds you have to resort to in the post-demo phase, and we used them all – eating out, ordering take-out, making good use of our grill and (of course) washing dishes in the bathroom sink.

When your renovation work-around strategy consists of eating a lot of take-out meals, we recommend dog-proofing your trash can … just saying.

Meanwhile, we were dealing with all of the bumps in the road that come with actually installing the new kitchen … delays, last-minute changes, trying to get on the same page about all of the big and little decisions you’re faced with in real time. (Didn’t we make all these decisions during the design and planning phase?? you both think every single day.)

Even someone who does this for a living can’t sidestep issues cropping up unexpectedly, not to mention those moments of decision paralysis (for us, it was the paint color for the walls) or last-minute inspiration.

My 11th-hour decision to use Blum Servo Drive to open all the drawers required a fair amount of work that would have been much easier if planned for up front. (Servo Drive is an “electric motion support system” that allows you to open and close drawers just by tapping them.)

Once the floors were finally finished, it was a bit of a free-for-all for awhile, and then we got back to following the usual rules of a kitchen installation.

Cabinets went in, followed by counter tops. Once the counters were in, appliances were installed, plumbing was hooked up and the final electrical work was done. All of that happened in about three days once the tops were in.

Then it became a matter of tying up loose ends: Moving some lighting, building and installing one last cabinet once the rest were installed and a little trim work. (Some of these loose ends are still loose!) We also had to complete some other reno tasks in the laundry room and sunroom – these spaces became part of the kitchen reno only because the flooring needed to be extended into those rooms so it would all match.

Light at the end of the tunnel

In the final post, I’ll show you the finished kitchen and tell you more about what went into it (literally) – cabinets, appliances, floors, backsplash, hardware, etc.

Early days of installing the new cabinets

To close out this post about the messiest part of the project, I’ll leave you with this bit of perspective/advice about creating or renovating a kitchen: Just go for it. Get what you want.

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For our reno story, the Blum Servo Drive system was the major “go for it” feature. We had talked over and over again about how much we’d love to have it in our kitchen, but we always ruled it out because of cost (about $2,600). At some point during our reno, I was talking to a client and making my usual soapbox speech about all the reasons not to skimp, and I realized I was ignoring my own advice.

While I understand that budgets matter, I recommend that you think about the big picture. The kitchen is the most-used room in your house: Don’t compromise.

Postscript: We love our touch-to-open drawers and doors, and we have no regrets about adding them to our budget.

~ Chris Dehmer

A renovation tale: Shoes for the cobbler’s children (Part 1)

February 9, 2018 by darkhorse with 0 Comments

In this modern version, I’m the cobbler, and it’s way past time for me to build a new kitchen at my house.

Our first kitchen reno – pre-Dark Horse

I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to build dream kitchens for clients year after year and not want to create your version of the ideal kitchen.

Long ago, about six years before chucking my day job and starting Dark Horse, I renovated our kitchen on my own. When we’d moved into our Craftsman-style house, the kitchen was tiny, maybe 10×10. It had a sink and a refrigerator, and that was it. The original giant cast iron sink was rusted and not very practical. The metal cabinets were not deep enough to hold modern dinner plates, and there was no stove or oven.

When we first bought our house, this was the state of affairs in the kitchen.

And another view; this kitchen is a cabinetmaker’s nightmare.

The renovation I did as an amateur with some solid skills was fine – and it was certainly a huge step up from what we started with. The style we went with then was traditional, and the kitchen has served us well.

But about three years ago, I reached the point where I had to do something with all of that inspiration I’d been getting from my Dark Horse work. While there was nothing wrong with our kitchen, it was not what I’d call “awesome” – and I wanted to come home to a truly awesome kitchen.

My wife and I were on the same page, and the decision was made.

Getting started

There’s no doubt that there are advantages to being a professional when you’re doing a personal kitchen reno project. But I’ve learned firsthand that there are some hurdles you can’t escape whether you’re an amateur or a pro, and other things that become more complex because you do this stuff for a living.

For instance, I quickly figured out that when the goal is agreeing on a design and making all the other decisions that have to be made, having professional expertise in the mix can complicate matters instead of speeding them along.

Most couples setting out on a renovation are starting from the same place, after all, learning as they go.

The unique challenge for my wife and me was the fact that we brought two very different perspectives and sets of experience to the table. Because I do this for a living, I have what is probably an excruciating amount of knowledge about everything that’s involved. On top of that, building kitchens for a living also means that I have strong preferences.

To sum up what I mean, picture this not-so-imaginary scene: My wife rolls her eyes as I explain why we must have XYZ feature/material/hardware in the new kitchen. Minutes later, I throw my hands up because she just doesn’t appreciate the great wisdom I’m bringing to the process. Repeat scene – many times.

Beyond the difference in perspectives, doing your own renovation also makes you appreciate the ease of working with clients on a kitchen that isn’t yours.

I have many conversations with clients about what their dream kitchens will look like, and I now recognize what a breeze this part of the process is for me. During the planning and design step, I get to lay out the options, explain the basics and then exit the process. The clients go away and hash things out, and we meet again to finalize everything.

When it’s your kitchen, you can’t step away from the process and let other people make the decisions. You have the same challenge as all of your clients who are doing a renovation with a partner: You have to work through it all with the other person, make a case for your (strong) preferences and end up as close to mutual satisfaction and civility as possible.

Another shot of the first kitchen I installed; it’s all gone now.

Desk area included in our original reno kitchen

Finding common ground

So how did we get through the decision-making phase?

My wife had been looking at a website called Houzz since we first started talking about the project three years ago.

In case you’re not familiar with Houzz, the short version is that it’s a website filled with home design ideas, photos of real-world, finished projects, vendor pages and a lot more. Dark Horse and pretty much any other company involved in building or renovating homes have a presence on Houzz because so many homeowners go there to search for ideas. Houzz turned out to be the main driver for my wife to figure out what she liked.

My past projects were a big source of inspiration for me, of course, and I knew from the start that I wanted to move away from the traditional look of our current kitchen. I liked some aspects of the modern kitchens that have become our specialty at Dark Horse.

At some point along the way, I spotted a kitchen I really liked in my wife’s saved projects on Houzz. I had never seen a style quite like it, and I’m sure that’s what caught my attention. By the time this kitchen entered the picture, we were on about version 6 of our project design attempts; the fact that we both liked this one was big, and we knew we needed to run with it.

There were still compromises to be made along the way, of course – for instance, my wife wanted painted cabinets, and I preferred wood grain. In this case, I decided not to push my preference since the overall design was something I liked.

Chance encounters

On top of the challenge of getting on the same design page, we also experienced another common renovation struggle: Getting to the starting line.

Building other people’s cabinetry for many hours a day can certainly take a toll on your personal renovation plans, and even the goal we’d picked as an incentive ended up being a convenient excuse to delay the project. When we’d decided to go forward with the reno three years ago, our goal was to have it completed before the Dark Horse holiday party that we host in early December every year.

But for the next couple of years, when work projects and personal obligations began to stack up in the months ahead of December, we’d throw in the towel. “Well,” one of us would say, “there’s no way we can get it done before the party now, so we might as well wait.”

In the end, it was a chance encounter that threw the switch on the project at last.

In January 2016, with the latest holiday party behind us and the renovation still not scheduled, I headed to a big industry show in Orlando. While I was checking out new hardware and other products for Dark Horse, I stumbled across some cool retro appliances, and they gave me a new shot of inspiration.

I came home and sent an email to a design team I know and asked them if what I had in mind was up their alley. They sent back an enthusiastic “yes,” and by the end of January, I had sent them a list of the appliances and other things we liked.

Full-steam ahead

By the end of February, the designers had sent us options for finishes, floor tiles, walls, backsplashes, etc.

The style we landed on doesn’t fit neatly into any of the usual categories, so maybe “eclectic” is the best way to describe it. There are modern elements, such as clean lines and minimal door hardware. The raised panels on the doors (kind of a reverse Shaker) give a nod to the Craftsman style of the house, and we added some retro touches via the appliances, tile floor, backsplash and reeded glass doors.

Once we hashed out the design particulars, the project fell into a good rhythm.

In March, we made final decisions on appliances, and by Memorial Day, I had begun building out the cabinetry. Around the first of August, the cabinets were done, and I decided to start demo the week of Labor Day. One of our dogs is petrified by loud noises, and we decided it would be better to have him out of the house; my wife and the dogs headed out of town to join family for a long-planned vacation, and I got ready to dismantle that kitchen I had labored over all those years before.

On HGTV shows, everything I’ve just described takes place in a span of days, not years, and “Demo Day” is a pretty exciting highlight for everyone, with homeowners and TV hosts alike bashing walls and ripping cabinets apart.

In order to keep some suspense and excitement going in my reno story, I’ll wrap up Chapter 1 (“before”) here and begin Chapter 2 (“during”) with the thrills of Demo Day; be sure to tune back in to find out what a Demo Day is like in the real world!

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A lucky glimpse of our work on a “mid-century modern treasure”

August 18, 2017 by darkhorse with 0 Comments

Screen Shot 2017-08-18 at 4.46.51 PM For most of our projects, we create cabinetry for multiple rooms in a home, and we end up with extensive photos of the final “product” that we share in our gallery.

For a recent project, we worked on only one room, creating high-gloss kitchen cabinetry with the Zero-Edge technology we invested in last year. In this case, we did not do the installation, which is rare for us. Work is hopping, and I never followed up to get post-installation photos of the finished kitchen.

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Fortunately, this beautiful mid-century modern home went on the market not long ago, and it drew the attention of Curbed Atlanta, which featured the home in July (“In Druid Hills, midcentury modern treasure is ‘unadulterated’ for $799K”).

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It was great to see the finished kitchen, and thanks to the kindness of the staff at Domo Realty, which is handling the sale of the home, I’m able to share screenshots of the kitchen here.

A view of the kitchen from the dining room

If you enjoy mid-century modern, I highly recommend that you take a look at the Curbed Atlanta feature, as well as the Domo Realty listing for extensive photos of this distinctive home.

And the folks at Domo also passed on a compliment that we appreciated: The house is under contract, and they told us that the kitchen helped sell the house. We enjoy seeing all of our projects through from start to finish, and that kind of feedback is the icing on the cake.

Dark Horse wins 5 Awards from the Cabinet Makers Association

September 1, 2016 by darkhorse with 0 Comments

BalmoralBarView In our relatively short history – Dark Horse was created in 2007 – we’ve had a lot of good news come down the pike.

If you follow our blog, you know that our work has ended up in Dwell magazine a few times; that homes we’ve worked on have been featured on Modern Atlanta tours; and that a home we worked on years ago was featured in the New York Times a few months back.

But there’s nothing quite like being singled out by our peers across the United States and Canada with Cabinet Makers Association (CMA) awards. We’ve been fortunate to win Wood Diamond awards every year since we joined; these honors means so much because we know that our fellow cabinet makers truly understand the time and attention to detail that goes into every one of our projects.

So you can imagine how excited we were when the CMA recognized Dark Horse with four first-place Wood Diamond awards and one third-place award at the CMA awards ceremony in Atlanta last week!

So what is a Wood Diamond Award?

The awards recognize cabinetry companies of all sizes in the United States and Canada for work submitted in 38 categories. This year the CMA added a third project budget classification to further narrow down the submissions by dollar amount. CMA members can now submit projects that fall into three project budget categories: Projects Under $25,000; $25,000 – $50,000 projects; and projects costing more than $50,000.

All judging is done by CMA members who did not submit any projects for consideration.

Hats off to our visionary clients and partners

Without design-savvy clients, designers, architects and all of the other talented people we partner with on projects, Dark Horse would not have award-worthy work, so we have to share our thanks for this year’s Wood Diamond projects; below are a few details about the work that was recognized.

The Balmoral project

First place, Euro Kitchen under $25,000 category

For the Balmoral project, we created a sleek kitchen featuring a bar area with suspended cabinetry above it. The kitchen island incorporates open, lighted wine storage, and we also created a hidden pantry.

Balmoral house

Floating

July 21, 2016 by darkhorse with 0 Comments

At Dark Horse, we’ve created quite a few things that float. (And nope, we haven’t run away from home to become magicians.)

In design parlance, floating simply means that a shelf (or a table or bench or whatever you dream up) appears to float on a wall, with no visible brackets holding it there.

For this #ThrowbackThursday post, here are a few of the floating features we’ve created for clients.

In the Oakview home, we created a floating library:

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… and two colorful powder-coated steel vanities for the bathrooms:

… and a beautiful walnut floating vanity for another spectacular bathroom in the house.

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In the Highland House, quite a few things float. When you come in the front door, you see our floating lockers in the entryway:

Both the large walnut vanity and a simple bench float in this Highland House bathroom:

In this bedroom, two “live-edge” nightstands float on either side of the bed. (“Live-edge” means that the natural edge of a piece of wood is incorporated into the design of the piece.)

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In the Friar Tuck home, which was recently featured in the New York Times, we built elegant floating Macassar ebony vanities for two of the bathrooms:

… as well as a floating dresser:

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And for the Olympic house, we built another floating library. This stained walnut veneer shelving is held up by steel supports hidden behind the sheetrock; each shelf is rated to hold 1,300 pounds, so the clients can bring on their heaviest books and treasures!

Olympic library

We love doing all of this sleight-of-hand work for our clients (especially since it’s tough to make a living as an actual magician), and we hope these creations give you some inspiration for your next renovation project.

~ Chris and the Dark Horse team

Dark Horse featured in the New York Times

April 13, 2016 by darkhorse with 0 Comments

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We’re happy to announce that our work debuted in the New York Times today!

The Friar Tuck house, a beautiful modern home renovation we worked on a few years back, is on the market, and the Times chose to feature it in its “What You Get” real estate series. Each story in the series features three properties of varying styles in different areas of the country that are for sale in the same price range.

In the story published today, “$1,800,000 Homes in Kentucky, Atlanta and New Mexico,” we were called out for the award-winning kitchen cabinetry in the home:

The kitchen has quartz countertops, a 16-foot-long island and stainless-steel appliances. The room’s rift-sawn oak cabinets have a single continuous grain across the doors. The work of Dark Horse Woodworks of Atlanta, the cabinets received an award from the Cabinet Makers Association. Off the kitchen, there’s a bar designed to be handy to the pool through sliding glass doors. Additionally, there’s a library, set off with pocket doors.

We created extensive cabinetry throughout the Friar Tuck home, including the bar referenced in the excerpt above, and the article called out some of that work as well (though without crediting Dark Horse specifically – hey, you can’t win ‘em all):

The master bedroom is outfitted with extensive ebony cabinetry, including a television cabinet above a gas fireplace and dressers in a closet. The bathroom has a vanity with double sinks and a quartz countertop, as well as a frameless glass shower.

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We hope you’ll check out the article as well as the slide show (just click past the photos of the first home to get to the Atlanta house photos). The photos include our kitchen cabinetry, the bar, and the shelving and a TV enclosure we built for the fireplace/living area.

Interested in seeing the rest of the Dark Horse creations not pictured in the NYT slide show? Check out our own coverage of the Friar Tuck project.

Links, all in one spot:

NYT article

NYT slide show

Friar Tuck on darkhorsewoodworks.com

Setting the bar high

December 10, 2015 by darkhorse with 0 Comments

In the building and design world, the kitchen is what comes to mind for many people when they hear the word “cabinetry.” At Dark Horse, we relish the opportunity to work on projects that go far beyond the kitchen, and we had a great time creating this beautiful custom bar.

Inspired by a bar in an LA hotel that the client liked, the bar we created as part of the Wesley project features grain-matching throughout; grain-matching is complicated and painstaking, but the result is well worth the effort.

The Walnut Bar

The inside of the bar – yes, we grain-match everything because that’s how it should be done.

Grain matched panels on the upper soffit. We created a door on a pivot hinge to lead to the back of the bar.

Kudos from our peers: Cabinet Makers Awards

April 13, 2015 by darkhorse with 0 Comments

Dark Horse joined the Cabinet Makers Association just a couple of years ago, and I couldn’t be more pleased to have had our work recognized in both of the CMA Wood Diamond Awards competitions that have taken place since then.

This year, the CMA awarded Dark Horse first place in the competition for European-style entertainment centers under $25K and an Honorable Mention in the competition for European-style kitchens over $25K.

It was especially gratifying to win first-place for the entertainment center we built as part of the Brandon Mill project. For this piece, our clients gave us a drawing and said, “This is what we want.”

Then life intervened, and my mom got very sick. My team rallied around and did the build-out without me, so this project will always remind me of her and of the great feeling that came from knowing that my team could and would step up for me.

Our clients were very happy with the final result, so we were, too. It’s nice to be able to make someone’s sketched-out dream come true.

Our honorable mention award came for the kitchen in the Oakview home, a project that has gotten a lot of attention, with the most high-profile kudos coming from Dwell magazine. We’ve mentioned this project on the blog several times, as Dwell continues to highlight different aspects of the great design and execution of this very cool home.

On a personal note, the thing I loved most about the Oakview project was getting the opportunity to work with mahogany that was recovered from the hulls of PT boats from World War II (which would have been destroyed otherwise). It was very cool to work with wood that has such a rich history; we were able to use it throughout the house, not just in the kitchen that was recognized by the CMA.

Here’s a bit more detail on the project pulled from our CMA awards entry:

“We were lucky enough to obtain some 1/8″ thick mahogany veneer that was originally harvested by the United States Military during WWII for the production of PT Boat hulls. This project also marked our first foray into using steel as a veneer.

“Being able to turn this veneer that was originally intended to be used as a PT Boat hull into a dream kitchen was an honor.

“This project was all about grain matching cabinets and unique veneer panels. Limited pulls were requested so we utilized push to open hardware and and finger pulls in most cabinets.”

On a big-picture level, I think that everything I said on the blog about last year’s CMA awards still holds true. So I’ll pull from that post:

At Dark Horse, we’re rewarded for our work all the time, in a couple of ways. First and foremost, we make a living through the projects we build, which is no small thing, of course.

Second – and I think the Dark Horse staff would agree with me on this – we’re rewarded by the satisfaction we have at the end of a project. You can’t beat the feeling you get from seeing an idea transformed into a tangible piece of furniture or set of cabinetry. It’s doubly satisfying for us because we pride ourselves on the details – including a lot of the things the new owner will never notice.

But it’s also pretty exciting when we’re rewarded by being singled out by our peers. We’re proud to have been recognized, but we’re equally grateful to our clients. Without people who value craftsmanship enough to give their business to Dark Horse instead of making a visit to the instant-gratification furniture showrooms and discounters, we wouldn’t have a livelihood, much less an award.

Thank you.

~ Chris and the Dark Horse team

The best kind of surprise: More Dark Horse work featured on dwell.com

March 13, 2015 by darkhorse with 0 Comments

We love the concept of recycling, especially when it involves Dwell magazine taking beautiful photos of our work from past feature stories and including them in new stories on dwell.com.

First up: In “How to Design with Mahogany,” posted on February 20, Dwell featured the mahogany cabinets we created for the Oakview house, which was originally featured in the story “An Angular Futuristic House in Georgia” in 2013. (You can read more about that Dwell story on our blog and see a lot of great photos from the project in our gallery feature.)

Dwell’s introduction to the February feature sings the praises of mahogany:

Every variety of wood has its own personality. Rich yet restrained, mahogany is a soothing presence. Here’s how seven modern homes put it to use.

We share Dwell’s appreciation for mahogany (as you’ll see if you browse through our work), and we’re honored to be included in this gallery.

Bonus detail: The mahogany used for these cabinets — and all of the cabinetry in the Oakview home, including a cool Murphy bed — was rescued from the cancelled US Navy PT Boat program.

Spotlight on modern bathrooms

The second instance of Dwell admiring our work enough to mention it twice is also drawn from Dwell’s original feature article on the Oakview home.

This time around, it was eye-catching bathroom cabinetry that made it into a slideshow feature.

“Modern Bathroom Design, Remodeling, and Decor Ideas” opens this way:

Browse beautiful and innovative bathroom designs from the pages of Dwell and get inspiration for your own bath tile, toilet, bathtub, bath sink, and shower

Here’s the “slide” featuring one of the bright Oakview bathrooms:

(We do need to correct one important detail on this one: The brilliant-red floating vanity and powder-coated steel top are Dark Horse originals. The sink is made by Kohler.)

Thanks for the kudos, Dwell — feel free to feature our work any time!

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Category: Design

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