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We had a great time hosting a Cabinet Makers Association shop tour at Dark Horse just ahead of  the International Woodworkers Fair in Atlanta in August.

Dark Horse was the final stop on a three-shop tour – the August 21 tour also included two other Atlanta-area shops, Atlanta Cabinet Shop and Custom Creative Furniture.

Give and take

We were able to show our 50 guests – fellow CMA members from all over the country – our set-up and the technology we use, and answer questions about how we operate.

And as I’d hoped, we also got some feedback and ideas about how we could improve our way of doing things. The ideas ranged from workflow suggestions to little tweaks we could make to save steps (and therefore time) – for instance, shifting the location of an assembly table.

We knew our lighting wasn’t great, but we didn’t realize how bad it was until getting several questions and comments about it; we’ve already added some additional lighting and plan to add more.

The most surprising question during the tour? “Hey, since you don’t use that [fill in the blank] much, can I buy it from you?” It’s pretty obvious what equipment we don’t use because it’s all shoved into one area that’s completely inaccessible unless you move other things around. (The answer was always, “Sorry, no.”)

Perks

Our tour stop was sponsored by Rugby Architectural Building Products (which distributes plywood, specialty panels, and hardware); Blum (hardware manufacturer); Jones Metal Molding (local company that is a distributor for Blum and other cabinet hardware); and CAMaster, the maker of Dark Horse’s CNC machine.

Thanks to Hitachi Koki USA, there was a drawing for a Hitachi power tool, and Hitachi and Blum offered demos.

And to cap off the day, we had some surprise Southern hospitality planned for our guests. Around 4:15, a truck arrived, pulling an already-smoking smoker loaded with food for a post-tour barbecue.

It was truly a feast, and I don’t think it would be bragging (or an exaggeration) to say that a good time was had by all.

Thanks to the CMA for including Dark Horse in such a great event.

~ Chris Dehmer

The Oakview project was a dream job on many levels, as we had a chance to collaborate on many of the cool elements featured in this new home.

One of those was the “Murphy” or “wall” bed that the clients requested for their only guest room. At Dark Horse, we love the challenge of using seamless design to make the most of a space, and it was a kick to create our own version of what may the most famous home space-saving invention ever.

So who was Murphy? 

A Smithsonian magazine article from a few years back summed up the history of the Murphy bed:

Inventor William Lawrence Murphy (1856-1957) began tinkering with hideaway beds while living in a one-room apartment in San Francisco in the late 19th century. He was falling for a young opera singer, and courting customs at that time would not permit a lady to enter a gentleman’s bedroom. But according to family legend, Murphy’s limited finances and a strict moral code didn’t spoil his chance at love. His invention allowed him to stow his bed in his closet, transforming his one-room apartment from a bedroom into a parlor. The couple married in 1900.

Murphy beds even made their way into movies and cartoons. The sight of one snapping back up into its hiding place before the sleeper has a chance to get out of it has a lot of comic/sight gag possibilities, as noted by Design Sponge in its detailed look at the Murphy beds (not to mention cabinet beds and piano beds):

Perhaps the reason the Murphy bed stills hold such fascination is the bed’s comedic potential. One surefire way to get a laugh? Fold someone into a Murphy bed! From early Charlie Chaplin (watch Chaplin battle the Murphy bed in the 1916 short One A.M.) to Popeye’s battles with a tiny mouse in Shuteye Popeye (1952) – a Murphy bed gets laughs. The bed even has dramatic potential – James Bond was shut up in a Murphy bed in You Only Live Twice (1967) (watch Sean Connery’s close encounter with a Murphy bed in the movie’s trailer here).

On the flip side, this Mental Floss piece on Murphy beds features a bizarre, tragic twist from the historical footnotes:

After the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906, the beds were placed in many new and rebuilt buildings to maximize space (according to Gladys Hansen, a curator at the Museum of the City of San Francisco, some of the beds already installed in the city folded up violently during the quake, injuring their occupants and killing at least one).

In 1989, courts ruled against Murphy’s grandson in a case centered on use of the name “Murphy bed.”

According to the New York Times, “… the judges, in reversing a lower-court decision, also said that many people had come to use the term Murphy bed ‘to designate generally a type of bed.’ The dictionary says a Murphy is ‘a bed that may be folded or swung into a closet.’ Thus, the judges said, ‘Murphy bed’ has become a generic part of the language that cannot be owned by anyone.”

The Dark Horse version

Our modern version of the Murphy bed or wall bed was part of the clients’ plan to have one of their rooms do triple duty — storage, guest room and kids’ play room.

We worked the bed into a wall of cabinets that are topped by small bookshelf nooks, and if we did our work well, no one would guess the secret that these cabinets hold.

I can honestly say we enjoy just about all of the projects that come our way — even if we do five kitchen projects in a row, each one brings unique challenges — but it’s always nice when a project brings something unexpected that you’ve never tackled before.

There’s one detail that makes this project a piece of history in addition to being a crafty use of space: The bed and surrounding cabinets are crafted from mahogany rescued from the cancelled US Navy PT Boat program.

Several upcoming projects call for Murphy beds, so I think it’s safe to say that William Murphy’s  influence is still going strong.

~ Chris Dehmer