Custom Furniture for Living in Style

Whether you’re home alone, entertaining guests or spending a quiet evening with your family, you want where you live to be a comfortable and inviting place that reflects your individuality.

A little innovation--adding a carefully crafted table, a new fabric to your chairs or a front-yard seating area--can give your space a fresh outlook.

North County has scores of craftsmen and designers creating custom and customized furnishings for the home. It has nurseries to help turn your landscape into an intimate garden. It has shops that supply you with the materials you need to do things yourself. It has creative people with ideas you’re free to borrow, or if you like, hire to put their talents to work just for you.

On the following pages, a report on some of what’s happening on the home front in North County. Often working out of settings as cozy as their garages, North County’s custom furniture builders are creating everything from desks with secret compartments to ergonomic chairs, from kid-sized shelves to gallery-quality tables.

Crafting a piece of furniture to meet your precise needs, or giving you the opportunity to add a unique piece to your home sets custom furniture makers apart from others in the business.

From the utilitarian to the sublime, here are a few of the North County artists and craftsmen making one-of-a-kind furniture:

Exotic woods

Kit Wilson’s furniture--at home in art galleries and living rooms--is often crafted from exotic woods. Among the woods he uses are South American cocoloba, which has black striping and comes in oranges, purples and reds; Central American goncalo alves, in browns and yellows; and a curly Africa wood, shedua .

“These are precious materials, especially in today’s world,” Wilson said. “If I’m going to use them, I have to do something that has real value to it beyond that of satisfying a market. I want to do something that will endure longer than my lifetime.”

One of Wilson’s current projects is a modular unit that will disassemble to move to a different place, or to create a different look. “It will not necessarily be a static piece once it’s done,” he said.

“I try to make something that goes beyond just a functional piece of furniture, something that adds an artistic element,” Wilson said of his work. “I try to do things that have a feeling of motion in the patterns and geometric shapes so it takes on a different look than the essential function you want it to perform.”

A San Diego art gallery, Signature, now has some of Wilson’s pieces on display. One is a high, long, hall table that is modeled after the only wooden truss bridge in San Diego. Wilson used an engineering theme to give the table the feel of the Jacumba bridge. The $4,500 piece is made of an African wood called shedua and is joined together with green-patinaed brass.

Prices for Wilson’s art furniture start at $600. He works with individual clients and draws a design the customer approves before he begins work on commissioned pieces.

Kit Wilson Furniture Art, 575 N. Twin Oaks Valley Road, San Marcos, 744-6240, hours: Mon.-Sat. by appointment. Spanish accent

Peter Alexander Grau designs and makes Spanish-style pieces in his Solana Beach shop. Grau has a small showroom and woodworking studio on the premises, where he crafts armoires, beds, dining sets and tables.

He has a few standard designs, but usually makes no more than five of the same piece. The difference comes in the hand carving on each item and the color that is used to accent the wooden furniture.

For example, Grau paints the hand carving on the doors of his armoires blue, green, yellow, red, turquoise or any other color a customer wants. His pieces appear squarish and solid, and have a rustic look.

“I do the joints like someone used to do 100 years ago,” Grau said. “Most guys today do modern joinery, which I refuse to do.”

Prices range from $250 to $2,500 for a custom-built, hand-finished piece, and delivery time is usually three to four weeks.

Peter Alexander Grau, 111 S. Cedro Ave., Solana Beach, 259-0353, hours: Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sat. 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; or by appointment. Unexpected details

From his home workshop in Vista, furniture maker Dick Hardwick crafts only free-standing pieces, such as a cherry wood executive desk that disassembles into four sections for ease of movement and shipping.

The desk features a concealed electrical panel that opens at the touch of a finger and solid cherry drawers with interlocking dovetail joints. According to Hardwick, the design is so flexible that he has constructed at least five style adaptations.

The adaptation of a coffee table design demonstrates Hardwick’s versatility. To achieve three different looks with the same design, he constructed one table in a geometric pattern, another of rosewood with a leather top and a third that was finished with black lacquer.

“One thing I pride myself on is I give that extra little surprise the customer wasn’t expecting,” Hardwick said. For example, his desks have secret drawers and compartments. One woman who bargained for a Formica top table received one in oak.

“When she saw it, she was just blown away and loved it,” Hardwick said.

He works out a budget with his clients depending on the type of wood and finishes desired. Prices have ranged from $100 to $30,000. “There are different ways to construct something within most people’s budgets,” Hardwick said.

Richard E. Hardwick’s Exclusive Furniture, Vista, 630-5759, hours: by appointment. Formidable chairs

L. Clayton Meyer has designed a series of chairs that fit the human form. After testing his plastic lounge and rocking chairs on hundreds of people, Meyer developed a mold and will begin production of his line this summer.

Chair designs include foam-filled head and arm rests that look like leather. A side table, attached to either the left or right, is standard. And an ottoman has been designed to complement the chairs for maximum comfort.

Meyer, who designed and manufactured the first completely round house in the 1960s, originally made the rocking chair in solid wood. About 400 to 500 limited-edition rockers have been sold.

“I found out I couldn’t produce them fast enough, so someone said, ‘why not reproduce the design in plastic?’ I’ve sold (the rocker) to therapists, medical people, people with bad backs, pregnant women. The design conforms to the human anatomy.”

The lounge chair with side table will retail for about $350, the rocker at $300 to $325 and the ottoman at $100 to $150. They are made from a polyester resin in black, white and rose, although other colors will be available at an additional cost.

Form Furniture by Meyer, L. Clayton Meyer, Escondido, 741-2908. Building concepts

For the past six years, Albert Witholt has worked with interior designers, architects and individual clients from his 1,000-square-foot shop in Valley Center. Previously, he had a shop in Del Mar for three years and worked for seven years from his La Jolla home.

“A designer or an architect will come to me who already has a concept,” Witholt said. “It is up to me to work out the details. Clients, lay people, can’t always visualize from a blueprint, so I do sketches and scaled drawings for them,” Witholt said.

He works with solid woods, plywood veneers and plastic laminate materials to create his custom furniture with straight lines and gently rounded curves.

“My style is more contemporary, although if someone has Queen Anne furniture, I have to cater to that,” Witholt said.

Witholt charges $25 per hour for his services, although the first visit with a client is free. Based on that fee, the total cost of each job is estimated for the customer.

Albert Witholt Woodwork, 28435 Lizard Rocks Road, Valley Center, 749-7019, hours: Mon.-Fri. 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., or by appointment. Kid-sized furniture

When Mike McCallion’s wife opened a child-care center in Temecula eight years ago, she bemoaned the fact that she couldn’t find inexpensive, quality furniture for her pint-sized charges.

“Free-standing children’s furniture costs a lot of money,” McCallion said. “I told her, ‘Why don’t we build things that can hang on the wall?’ ”

He designed single unit that contains a cook stove, sink, microwave oven and old-fashioned wall telephone. The unit been used in preschools and YMCAs in San Diego and Riverside counties.

“The state (of California) requires cubbyholes for each child,” McCallion said. “Child-care centers are allowed so many kids per square foot (of space). By hanging the cubbyholes on the walls, the space they use doesn’t count against them in the state’s formula.”

McCallion’s style is simple and functional--the lines are clean and the finishes durable.

McCallion has built play stoves, refrigerators, tables for toddlers, doll beds and puppet tables for youngsters. He also built an immovable car with a steering wheel out of birch and oak.

He uses nontoxic, non-air polluting finishes when he makes things for children. “It’s all done in a water-base clear finish and a water-base contact cement for Formica,” he said. “They’re also built to last. You may open your kitchen cabinets 5,000 times in your life. Children may open their (play) refrigerator door 5,000 times in a month.”

McCallion sells his single-unit stove/sink combination for $45.

The Children’s Workshop, Sylvan Design Studio, Mike McCallion, 10217 Legend Rock Road, Escondido, 749-8590, hours: by appointment.

WHERE TO FIND A WOODWORKER

The San Diego Fine Woodworkers Assn., a countywide organization with about 740 members, offers a list of craftsmen who will make one-of-a-kind furniture. Included on the list are furniture makers in Leucadia, Solana Beach, Vista, Poway and Rancho Santa Fe.

To receive a list of craftsmen, write P.O. Box 99656, San Diego CA 92169.