Join an industry group for an instant network and plenty of great ideas

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One of the shop tours organized by the Cabinet Makers Association

If you’re a regular reader of our blog, you know that Dark Horse is a big fan of the Cabinet Makers Association (so much so that I became a board member last year).

The best part of being in this group is the ability to draw on the knowledge of other members; in the grand scheme of things, Dark Horse is a “newcomer” compared to some shops that have been around for several decades, and I always learn a lot thanks to the generosity of others.

And it’s always a great moment when we find that we can offer some wisdom to other shops.

On-call help

The idea for this blog came up when we were putting together a post (we’ll publish it soon) about our new CNC router, a game-changing technology/machinery addition at Dark Horse.

We chose to invest in the software that partners with the router first, and learn our way around that piece of the process before buying the router.

Now that we have the router, and we’re gearing up to put it all together and start cutting our custom cabinetry pieces in the Dark Horse workshop, I have no worries about any questions that are sure to come up in real time and need quick resolution.

Why? Because I know that I can always pick up the phone and call one of my CMA friends who already have a lot of hands-on experience with CNC routers.

As with many situations, your personal network of friends and industry colleagues can often deliver the answers you need even more quickly and effectively than a manufacturer’s customer service “hotline.”

And this advice isn’t just for building industry types … 

When you start a business, it’s tempting to want to go it alone and look at the others in your line of work as competition – even if they aren’t literally vying for the same customers, you may see them as competing against you for awards or respect or reputation.

You’ll miss a lot of opportunities to learn if you think this way.

I highly recommend that you find the equivalent of the Cabinet Makers Association for your industry and join up and be active; with groups like this, you get out what you put in.

I’m looking forward to my next chance to pick up some new ideas in a couple of weeks: Just before one of our big industry events in Chicago, the CMA is sponsoring one of its shop tours so we can check out nearby cabinetry companies.

I’ll be there, looking for ways that Dark Horse can up our game.

Grateful: A quick look back at a year full of opportunity

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NYT kitchen

It’s been another great year for Dark Horse, and none of it would have been possible without the faith that our clients place in us when they hire us to help build their dream projects.

Below are a few of the 2016 highlights we featured on our blog over the course of the year; click through to read more details about each story if you’d like.

Thanks to all of our clients, supporters and friends for sending us work and reading our stories over the past year: We wish you all a great 2017.

~Chris and the Dark Horse team

NYT kitchen

April 13, 2016

Dark Horse featured in the New York Times

Our work debuted in the New York Times in the spring!

The Friar Tuck house, a beautiful modern home renovation we worked on a few years back, was 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, “$1,800,000 Homes in Kentucky, Atlanta and New Mexico,” we were called out for the award-winning kitchen cabinetry in the home.

August 26, 2016

Chris Dehmer elected to Cabinet Makers Association Board of Directors

Chris was honored to be elected to the board of the Cabinet Makers Association (CMA), the association for professional cabinet makers and woodworkers in the United States and Canada.

“Being part of the CMA has given Dark Horse the opportunity to connect with and learn from many stellar wood-working businesses across the US and Canada,” Chris says.

September 1, 2016

Dark Horse wins 5 Awards from the Cabinet Makers Association

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 this summer!

The Balmoral project

First place, Euro Kitchen under $25,000 category

The Wesley bar

First place, Residential Bar (European) under $25,000 

The Olympic house 

First place, European Library under $25,000

Third place, European kitchen under $25,000

The Stonehaven project

First place, Mudroom under $25,000

October 5, 2016

Seamless: Dark Horse acquires “Zero-Edge” capabilities

We’ve acquired the technology to produce cabinetry and furniture components with seamless edges. Zero-Edge Technology, as it’s usually called, is a game-changer for our company and the industry as a whole.

 

 

Seamless: Dark Horse acquires “Zero-Edge” capabilities

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We have big news that our friends in the furniture and wood-working world may understand best: We’ve acquired the technology to produce cabinetry and furniture components with seamless edges.

Zero-Edge Technology, as it’s usually called, is a game-changer for our company and the industry as a whole.

Why is it such a big deal?

In short, because it’s always a challenge to add edge-banding to panels without a noticeable seam that is prone to fail eventually. Zero-Edge banding is more heat- and moisture-resistant than typical edge treatments.

REHAU, a polymer company, agreed to let us share these images from a presentation they created:

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One of the trends we’re seeing in our work is the increasing demand for high-gloss cabinetry, and to create these cabinets, you have to have zero-edge capability.

With gloss acrylic, you can’t have a glue line, so the zero-edge machine melts the back of the edge and trims it off so your creation appears to have always been a single component.

If you happen to be fascinated by technology, design and woodworking/cabinetry, and getting into the nitty-gritty of this sort of thing interests you, the folks at Woodworking Canada have written a great article about the future of Zero-Edge technology. Here are a few of the highlights/excerpts from the article:

“If what’s happening in Europe is any indication, and it usually is, then the demand for zero edge will increase dramatically in North America and Canada, and most experts agree that in as little as two to five years, invisible edges will make up a significant portion of our market as well.” ~ Murat Dugan, president of IMA Canada Corp, a pioneer in edge-banding

How does it work? 

“Using a co-extruded, active layer that is colour-matched – rather than applying hot-melt glue as is the norm in traditional edge-banders – the new system creates a zero edge or invisible glue line that is difficult to distinguish from one produced using a laser unit.”

What are the advantages?

“Not only is zero-edge aesthetically pleasing, but it also makes for stronger and longer-lasting edges and offers anti-bacterial benefits that make it a great solution for restaurants, health-care and similar public uses.”

And zero-edge is often necessary for “contemporary, slab or high-gloss cabinetry, which continues to grow in popularity.”

We love being ahead of the curve at Dark Horse – thanks to our new investment, we can produce the high-gloss acrylic cabinetry called for in our next two projects. The zero-edge machine also opens the door to commercial projects and will enable us to provide some services that shops and even homeowners in the region have not had access to until now.

Stay tuned to see what new territory Dark Horse heads into next!

Georgia’s Gorilla Golf tourney to support Dian Fossey fund’s conservation efforts

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On September 27, Dark Horse Woodworks’ Chris Dehmer is participating in the 6th Annual Gorilla Golf tournament in Atlanta, which raises funds to help gorillas in the wild.

The tournament is organized by Ape Conservation Effort (APE), a Georgia non-profit comprised of volunteer members who share a passion for animals and a commitment to saving the great apes (bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans).

Want to make a donation? Here’s a note from Chris:

Dear friends of Dark Horse:

I’m excited to be golfing in this year’s Gorilla Golf Tournament; playing involves raising a minimum of $500 for this great cause, and I wanted to share info on the event in case this is a cause you feel strongly about, too.

100% of the proceeds raised will benefit the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (DFGFI), headquartered in Atlanta. Gorillas in the wild are critically endangered and desperately need your help; there are fewer than 1,000 mountain gorillas left in the world.

For more than 45 years, DFGFI has been dedicated to gorilla conservation through daily protection, anti-poaching efforts, research, education and helping neighboring communities. Your contribution will make a difference: Extinction is forever, but endangered means there is still time.

Want to help me raise money for this great cause?

If you’d like to be a sponsor, you can make a contribution online or via mail.

  • Online: Visit the “sponsor a golfer” page on the APE website and look for my name.
  • Mail: Make checks payable to Ape Conservation Effort (please be sure to include my name on the memo line). Send your donation to:

Ape Conservation Effort

800 Cherokee Avenue, SE

Atlanta, GA  30315

Thanks for considering this great opportunity to support DFGFI, and for helping Ape Conservation Effort raise funds and awareness to save this majestic animal.

~ Chris, Dark Horse Woodworks

Dark Horse wins 5 Awards from the Cabinet Makers Association

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BalmoralBarViewIn 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

Read more about the Balmoral project.

The Wesley bar

First place, Residential Bar (European) under $25,000 

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Our assignment with the Wesley project was to create an elaborate bar inspired by a bar in a Los Angeles hotel that the homeowner liked; while we might have enjoyed a field trip to check out the LA bar in person, we took the photos provided by the homeowner and ran with those as inspiration.

As you’ll see in the photos, we did grain-matching throughout the bar — a process that is always complex but gratifying when the work is complete.

Read more about the Wesley bar.

The Olympic house 

First place, European Library under $25,000

The Olympic home, designed by Lightroom Inc. (architecture) and Suzanne Seymour Interior Design, is a beautiful three-level modern home with detached garage and a separate studio apartment.

Olympic library

The library features floating stained walnut veneer shelving, 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!

Third place, European kitchen under $25,000

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The Olympic kitchen features custom gloss-white cabinetry and Thermador appliances. Unlike most kitchens we work on, we had to finish the tops of the cabinetry due to the unique design of this home, which is open from the main floor to the rooftop terrace 30 feet up.

On this solid walnut island with waterfall edges, the grain is matched from the sides to the top.

Read more about the Olympic project.

The Stonehaven project

First place, Mudroom under $25,000

In the mudroom of this home, we were asked to incorporate four lockers – one for each family member – and then use the remaining wall space for cabinets to store other household items. The exterior of the cabinets in the mudroom were painted after installation.

 

Read more about the Stonehaven project. 

Sometimes, there’s no need to come up with new ways to say what’s true, so I’m going to end with what I said when we won Wood Diamond awards for the first time several years ago: 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

Read more about the Awards and our fellow CMA member companies who were recognized for their fine work. 

Chris Dehmer elected to Cabinet Makers Association Board of Directors

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IMG_5387We’re happy to share the news that Dark Horse Woodworks’ Chris Dehmer has been elected to the board of the Cabinet Makers Association (CMA), the association for professional cabinet makers and woodworkers in the United States and Canada.

The CMA is a professional organization enabling “cabinetmakers and woodworkers from both the residential and commercial markets [to] get together and share their hard earned knowledge and experience to help one another.”

Chris was elected to join Mike Mitchell of Burger Boat in Manitowoc, Wis., and Keith Smith of Keith Smith Custom Builders in Greer, S.C., as members-at-large on the board of directors.

Dark Horse joined the CMA just a few years ago, and we’re proud to have had our work recognized in all of the organization’s Wood Diamond Awards competitions that have taken place since then; the CMA awards covering our walls are great marketing tools for us because they tell prospective clients that our work lives up to the high standards of our peers in the industry.

(You can read about some of our CMA-award-winning projects here and here.)

“Being part of the CMA has given Dark Horse the opportunity to connect with and learn from many stellar wood-working businesses across the US and Canada,” Chris says. “Dark Horse was just a few years old at the time we joined and I didn’t have a background working in a shop, so it’s been invaluable to learn from other CMA members and be part of such an active and educational organization. I’m honored to be able to join the board and become more involved.”

~ The Dark Horse team

 

3 tips to take to heart before you start your dream project

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We’ve put in a lot of time helping people make their dream homes – or dream renovations – a reality, and today I thought I’d throw out a few kernels of wisdom that may be helpful to people considering a dream project.

I’m not going to be the first or last person to share this advice, but I believe that some of these rules of thumb can’t be repeated enough.

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One of the dream projects we were honored to help bring to life

  1. Please understand that the real world does not operate like the world of HGTV. 

I can’t tell you how often those of us who do this for a living away from cameras run into the notion that miraculous things can be achieved in a week … or less.

If you want a great, lasting result, you should not suggest that your contractors do your renovation at warp (or TV show) speed.

  1. Regarding your budget: Think ahead and make sure your early decisions/upgrades/changes don’t translate to scary shortcuts on the back end. 

Sometimes, our involvement comes later in the process, and by that point, it’s not uncommon to find that clients’ budgets are shot. This can then lead them to decide that they’re going to go with cheaper cabinetry to make up the budget shortfall. We’re obviously biased about this, but we think it’s a bad idea to have to resort to low-end, non-custom cabinetry at the last minute, especially when the rest of your new home or renovation has gotten the high-end treatment.

Save yourself from these late-in-project dilemmas by making budget decisions all along the way that keep the entire project in mind.

3. No matter what time estimate you hear at the beginning, make a mental note that it will probably take double that amount of time. And I’m not sure doubling is even enough. You may have the very best contractors and specialists working on your project, but even then, things happen. Unpredictable things. Big things. Or a succession of small things. Or a mix of the two. Regardless, the more mentally and logistically prepared you are for these things to come along and delay the move to your dream home, the more sane you will be when move-in day actually arrives.

We hope these reminders are helpful and not daunting – we can tell you from experience that when you’re patient and committed to the project you’ve dreamed up, the outcome will be worth it.

~ Chris Dehmer and the Dark Horse team

Floating

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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:

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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

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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: 

Setting the bar high

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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 Walnut Bar

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

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.

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