San Diego Urban Timber

2012 Press & News

2012-02-21T14:41:00.000-08:00

OK, it's fair to say that it's been way too long since our last post, but please know that it's not for lack of want. Dan and I have been busy on some pretty exciting projects, a couple of which i'll be posting about in separate posts. Here's what's new in 2012 after the jump:

We've been working with designer Michael Soriano and the owners of Bare Back Grill on their new place in Ocean Beach called Raglan Public House. SDUT worked with Michael to design and build the exterior façade as well as the bar die and back bar structure. The restaurant is now open and we highly recommend it. It's got a great beer selection and the food is phenomenal. A big shout out to Joe and the team at Equity Builders who did all the main construction. They're top notch guys.

Speaking of Raglan, here's some press about Michael: San Diego Magazine

Speaking of San Diego Magazine, here's an interesting rant from SD Mag's editor, Troy Johnson. Now while we love all things wood, and don't totally agree with Troy, he brings up some pretty interesting points.

Other happenings:

The Rancho Bernardo Inn has recently updated it's sports bar and we built 2 massive, bar-height tables. the space looks great and the tables really tie the room together, if I can quote The Big Lebowski. We just delivered yesterday so no pics yet, but hoping to get that done this week.

Lastly, we have been working on a range of furniture for a wonderful family in Bonita. All their furniture was made from felled eucalyptus trees from their own property. the last, and most involved project was a 3 drawer buffet to match their dining table. it's one of our favorite pieces so far. The pic at the top is their buffet(more detailed info in an upcoming post)

Avocado and Reclaimed Coffee Table

2011-10-10T16:34:00.000-07:00

If there's one thing California is known for, it's avocados. Dan and I have been wanting to work with the wood for some time now. It's beautiful in color and workability, but the trees don't get to big in diameter with any long lengths so a lot of our work with the wood has been relegated to platters, bowls, etc...

We did get some nice, coffee table sized logs from out in the Escondido area just off the I-15 and put together this coffee table. The uprights are reclaimed fencing material (fence boards, 2x4s, 4x4s, etc...) and the internal shelf and trim pieces are urbanwood California Pepper. This is a retail piece available now for $3,000.00 at Mixture in Little Italy.

Outdoor built in bench w/ pull out tables and storage

2011-10-10T16:28:00.000-07:00

A while back we got to build a custom wine bottle storage rack out of reclaimed material with matching cladding for a client in the Bankers Hill neighborhood of San Diego. He's got a great condo that has a very intimate (read small) patio that didn't really lend itself to most outdoor furniture on the market. We took some measurements and sketched a few ideas for the client and came up with the following bench. It's made from reclaimed douglas fir, salvaged redwood fenceboards, casters, and leather pulls (re-purposed from an old knife scabbard!).

We think we came up with something that's equal parts funky, rustic, comfortable, and utilitarian. The pull out timber side tables can serve as extra seating for guests and the casters make them easily positionable. The piece really looks great in the location though it was difficult to photograph, but I think you can get an overall sense of the work.

As always, many more images after the jump

One Of A Kind Side Table

2011-09-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

Dan worked a few long hours to design and build this pretty funky, but (in my opinion any way) pretty amazing, one-of-a-kind side table. All the components are sugar gum eucalyptus, though not from the same tree. The branches are hand notched to fit around the stump, and the finish is our standard waterborne, low VOC urethane. The branches are finished with a hand rubbed oil. Lots of detail shots after the jump.

~ a

Recent press about SDUT

2011-09-16T18:53:00.000-07:00

An article featuring SDUT just came out this week in San Diego CityBeat that you can check out here:

http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego//article-9532-furniture-and-surfboards-made-in-san-diego.html

And Where Magazine's annual Guest Book, which is a beautiful hard cover, perfect bound coffee table book about San Diego, just came out and we've got a little write up there too:

http://issuu.com/socalmedia/docs/where-guestbook-san-diego-2011

Labor Day is for laboring, right?

2011-09-12T02:19:00.000-07:00

(yeah, i'm a recovering graphic designer who still likes to stay up till 3 AM using photoshop. click on the image to see a larger version)

We spent the labor day holiday milling a very heavy sugar gum eucalyptus in 90º+ weather in nearly 100% humidity. Oh, and it was on a steep hill on a canyon with no real stair access to boot. So far we've spent 2 full days on this project and have only harvested just under 1/2 the slabs we plan on milling from the tree. Labor of love, with heavy extra servings of labor!

All told, it will take us nearly 5 full days, and 3–4 full trailer loads to get all the material out of the canyon and into our kiln. This type of harvesting as opposed to massive scale logging is very labor and time intensive, and yields a minimum amount of wood, but that wood is immeasurably more interesting, beautiful, and environmentally conscious. In large scale logging you have huge machines removing hundreds of trees a day (yes, a day!!!), then big trucks hauling it, mills processing it, and then again onto big trucks or boats to reach manufactures.

Our wood comes from anywhere within 1 to 75 miles of our shop in the San Diego area; transported by a small little toyota truck; dried specifically to meet the unique needs of urban trees; and then thoughtfully turned into beautiful, heirloom-quality, hand crafted furniture. In fact, sometimes the tree ends up as furniture in the very home the tree came from. Circle of life? Not totally sure, but pretty effin' bad a$$ if you ask us. Lots and lots of pics of the first 2 days of milling after the jump.

(Click on any image to view it larger)

Dan using an Alaskan Mill to cut the slabs

This tree fell over when the hill below it eroded requiring us to do some excavating to be able to work on the tree

The view facing east. The street in the distance below is Reynard

This is me trying to get artsy with my 52mm macro lens

Dan is always sitting down on the job.

This is the view facing up hill to the West. Over the hill and down will lead you to the I-5 and the San Diego Airport

Diggin' for burried gold, SDUT style

2011-09-12T00:09:00.000-07:00

Dan and I are always out scavenging for new materials. Most of the time it's local trees, but we love reclaimed material as well, be it old growth wood used in old construction buildings, fence boards and posts, or even the occasional dismantled pier. So when I found out that the folks over at Liberty Station were getting ready to start renovation on some more of the barracks, we got in touch with Chris Bittner over at OBR Architecture to see if there may be any chance we could salvage some wood to build furniture out of.

Unfortunately, since the exterior structure was not being torn down, there wasn't any historic wood for us to salvage, but there was another gold mine of material laying just above the ceiling! Tons of fiberglass insulation.

We've recently completed construction of our new kiln (the one that uses old beer cans and the sun to generate heat), and as we get it fully operational, we plan on overhauling our older kiln out in East County to make it more efficient. A big component of that overhaul will be better insulated walls. It couldn't have been better timing.

The insulation at Liberty Station was destined for the land fill, but we loaded up our trucks and trailer with as much as we could. Soon enough, this material will be given a second home helping us dry local urbanwood. It may not be pretty, but we take pride in trying to reuse, re-purpose, & recycle as many things as we can. This haul won't end up in any furniture pieces, but it will make us able to process the materials we need to make the furniture. One requires the other.

In point of fact, our new kiln and adjoining spray booth structure was built nearly completely with salvaged materials, including electrical outlets, circuit breakers, fans, and more.

The insulation wasn't the only thing we salvaged though. We got a lot of window jamb material that we can use to make the stickers we use to space out the stacks of slabs as they dry. A bunch of cool vintage metal office-size trash cans that will make some great planters. An old desk that we're hoping to salvage the metal base and repurpose it in a furniture project. And then there's this little beauty that will end up in my home:

For those of you who know a bit about furniture, that is in fact a vintage Herman Miller chair circa 1960s. Sometimes it pays to play in other people's trash.

We'd like to thank Chris Bittner again, for giving us a tour of the Liberty Station project, putting us in touch with the right people, and sharing a few beers with us at Desi's afterwards.

~ alex

Here's those vintage trash cans:

Outdoor Dining Set

2011-09-04T13:06:00.000-07:00

These chairs are the prototypes of a line of outdoor furniture we plan on building. The production run chairs are very similar, though they'll have about a 2" taller back. These are finished with an outdoor oil, but they can be left unfinished so that over time they end up with a nice gray, weathered patina. More pics after the jump.

Dining Table Set and Entertainment Center

2011-09-04T12:47:00.000-07:00

We finished a dining table and matching bench set for a couple who were welcoming into the world their new baby daughter. They wanted something minimalist, but also solid. What better combination than sugar gum eucalyptus and steel?. This table and benches may have clean, simple lines, but it sure weighs a ton. Luckily felt pads and hardwood floors makes life easy. A side note, the candle holders on the table were made from cutting apart an old P.O.S. Ikea bed frame! SDUT is not above salvaging anything. more pics after the jump

The entertainment center the client asked for had very specific requirements. They wanted the width to be accommodating for 2 components side by side and 2 high, plus fit the bulk of their DVD library. The client already had his speakers sitting on white foam risers, so we went with that as a design element and use sugar gum eucalyptus to match the dining table set and a automotive-finished white steel frame. The drawers utilize a push-to-open slide mechanism to eliminate the need for hardware.

The drawers are design to fit 2 rows of DVD's, including deluxe box sets and over-sized packaging. More pics after the jump.

A special thanks to Brian and the crew over at Vincent Designs. As always, they're simply amazing when it comes to steel work.

New California Warning Labels

2011-09-04T12:32:00.000-07:00

These damn long-horned borer beetles can be a real nuisance (see this post for more info). They kill living trees and chew up felled trees. Hopefully they can read, otherwise, things may have to get "real" at SDUT.

That's Pine?!

2011-08-02T01:38:00.000-07:00

So pine isn't usually known for being the most aesthetically appealing wood in the modern design pallete, but we've been fortunate to get some Torrey Pine, which in many areas cannot be cut down without special permits. It is one of the rarest of the pine trees and only thrives in San Diego and on 1 of the channel islands. The 2 trees we've managed to salvage were both taken down due to safety reasons and we couldn't be more thrilled to give them a good home and a second life. The wood is much more uniformly dense and figured than many other pines.

We used a few large slabs in a custom kitchen we're wrapping up in Idyllwild (pics to come later) and we had this beautiful piece left over. During a LATE night and some (as always) pressing deadlines, Dan and I came up with this one-off design in response to the material on-hand. Brian over at Vincent Designs fabricated the folded steel lower shelf for us in an even shorter deadline than we thought possible so we really can't be more thankful.

The coffee table is available for sale for $2,500 at Mixture in Little Italy. More Details and pics after the jump.

Photos by Natalie Kardos: It's Too Sunny Out Here

DETAILS:

• Top and Leg: Urban Torrey Pine, salvaged from coastal Del Mar, near 19th and PCH; low VOC, durable waterborne urethane finish

• Stump Leg: Urban Sugar Gum Eucalyptus, salvaged from a log that had been sitting in a back yard trash pile in Scripps Ranch for 25 years!; oxidization stain, hand rubbed oil and wax finish

• Shelf: Bent steel plate and welded mounting bracket, black patina, waxed and lacquered (fabricated by Vincent Designs)

Introducing the 1x3 Coffee Table

2011-08-02T01:10:00.000-07:00

This is one of our latest retail designs. Steel base (fabricated by the incredibly talented Vincent Designs) with urbanwood or salvaged wood. The fence boards in this piece came from a house in the Mission Hills area, and the fence was originally built in the early 1900's!

Different options include:

• STEEL BASE: white (pictured), raw, blackened, or custom color

• WOOD TOP: salvaged redwood fence boards (pictured), salvaged cedar fence boards, different urbanwoods (i.e. Sugar Gum Eucalyptus, Torrey Pine, Elm, etc...)

Pricing: $1,000–$1,500 (pictured table is SOLD)

All photos courtesy of Natalie Kardos: It's Too Sunny Out Here

El Take It Easy

2011-08-02T00:53:00.001-07:00

We did some fun work for a restaurant in San Diego's North Park called El Take It Easy. We made custom tables for their front outdoor patio and a custom back bar shelving unit. EZ strides to bridge San Diego and Tijuana cultures since the 2 cities are neighbors and certain design aesthetics were taken into account for that. The actual bar is a beautiful poured cement form while the dining tables are made from OSB, a readily available, cheap material. Jay, the owner or el jefe, wanted our work to be elegant, sexy and modern, but also be something that was salvaged and re-purposed, a common principal just south of the border.

more info and pics after the jump

The tables were simple - salvaged Black Oak from Palomar mountain and powder coated steel bases, but the back bar unit design was a struggle for us initially, until we came across some amazing salvaged material. We found a stack of old HDO plywood normally used for building large concrete molds (for bridges and such), and we knew it was perfect for the job. It has a great patina, including spray paint, tie holes, and concrete stains. As Jay said "It looks like it came straight out of the dump - in the best possible way!"

Since the shelf was going to be salvaged, we figured the stemware racks should be too. We re-purposed downed traffic sign posts (called uni-strut) and welded some rods through the holes that glasses could hang off of. We took all those, plus the steel from the outdoor tables and had it powder coated to match the upholstery being used for the custom booth along the entire north wall of EZ.

The final touches were Black Oak trim left over from the tables for the edges of the shelves and counters, and some rigging to suspend and support the shelves off the back brick wall. We're really happy with the results and the restaurant is great too. You should check them out next time you find yourself in North Park.

A big thanks to Natalie of It's Too Sunny Out Here who graciously gave up a perfectly good saturday so that I could drag her around to take great photos of our work. Check out her site, she is AMAZING.

~ alex

The stools for the small table are salvaged square milk crates with solid Black Oak tops

Apartment Therapy

2011-07-15T11:31:00.000-07:00

remember this teaser we showed you a few weeks past?

Well the final product is on display in a feature in Apartment Therapy. Thanks to Ben and Abby (& Lucy the pug) for giving our table a good home, and AnnaMaria Stephens for writing a great story on their home!

There's a few snap shots of the table after the jump

99 bottles of beer on the, err, 736 cans of beer on the roof...

2011-07-14T10:08:00.000-07:00

So Dan has been working hard on getting our new solar kiln built and operational at his property, and I've done my best to help. And by help I of course mean drink his beer and eat food from his garden.

But in all seriousness, We have been working hard these past few days to get our new kiln up and running. The concept is quite simple, a sealed & insulated room where we stack the lumber and pump in heat (and sometimes steam) to condition and dry the wood using just the sun's energy to generate the heat. Dan found some great resources on line where people were building their heat collectors using aluminum cans! Dan and I don't need much of an incentive to drink a cold beer so it just seemed fitting that we build the "beer can kiln."

Special thanks to everyone over at Counterpoint in Golden Hill for saving cans as well because let's face it, 736 cans of beer is a lot of beer to drink for 2 guys, even in San Diego with micro beers galore. Here's some in progress pics (with more after the jump)

~ alex

(updated: I originally posted that it was 512 cans, but I didn't count an entire collector!)

Sound Diffusers

2011-07-09T15:51:00.000-07:00

Ok, so this isn't exactly an urbanwood project, but I did just help my friend build these diffusers for his recording studio and I thought they came out pretty cool. They're based off a design from a BBC studio that we found in an issue of Tape Op Magazine.

Speaking of cupcakes

2011-06-23T01:10:00.000-07:00

Ciao Cupcakes' "Green Machine" makes it's official debut this Saturday (06/25/11) @ the OB Street Fair. The truck will be parked at Bacon St & Newport Ave and the menu looks DELICIOUS!

STRAWBERRY RICOTTA: Strawberry cake made with local handmade ricotta, organic local strawberries & whipped strawberry cream cheese frosting

SIGNATURE TIRAMISU: Vanilla bean cake, layer of sweet marsala Italian cream, whipped mascarpone frosting and a thick dusting of rare red cocoa powder

HOUSE CAKE: Dark chocolate cake with vanilla bean Italian buttercream

ALOHA: Coconut cake, white chocolate Italian buttercream, organic coconut flakes, crushed macadamia nuts

Cupcakes anyone?

2011-06-22T11:35:00.000-07:00

We've done quite a lot of work now for restaurants in town. From all the downstairs tables (including a a 10' long communal table and a 40" round coffee table) at Firehouse American Eatery, Patio tables and a custom shelf and stemware rack for El Take It Easy, Coffee tables for Analog, and tables and 3 custom doors for the Linkery, but we've never done a mobile food truck.

Until now that is. Ciao Cupcakes is getting ready to unveil they're "Green Machine" and we've been commissioned to build a counter for the side of the truck as well as some trim for the window and door on the passenger side. Below are some pics of the truck & the counter. The wood is redgum eucalyptus from Poway (counter (side note, I got stung by 15 bees gathering that tree, but that's another story)) and San Marcos (wood trim).

We hope to have photos of the truck finished, but for now, here's a few pics of the work in progress plus more after the jump.

What do you get with...

2011-06-13T16:14:00.000-07:00

...17 clamps (for just the 1st part of the glue up), 29 offcuts of sugargum eucalyptus, a salvaged fence post, and a manzanita branch? well, here's a teaser pic. The final product is finished, but is being photographed for an upcoming article in apartment therapy so we'll post that when it's out.

RETAIL PIECE: FENCEBOARD FOLDOVER COFFEE TABLE (v.2)

2011-06-13T15:41:00.000-07:00

Here's a new retail coffee table design we've, well, designed. It utilizes local urbanwood (Black Oak from Palomar Mountain) and reclaimed redwood fenceboards salvaged from the Mission Hills area); finished with a waterborne, low VOC durable urethane; dimensions: 29" x 54" x 15".

This particular one has already sold, but if you'd like one, please contact us. Pricing varies from $2500–3000 based on wood species (above pictured sold for $2800 + tax/shipping/etc...) and turnaround time is currently 6–10 weeks. We can make the design in various dimensions to meet your specific needs.

More images below the jump

Meet the longhorned borer beetle

2011-06-06T02:10:00.000-07:00

You never know what you're going to come across when doing urban forestry. We're currently working on a property out in Bonita (among countless other projects). The husband and wife have a nice property and are redoing their landscaping to be more focused on native plants as well as starting their own garden so they had a bunch of eucalyptus trees cut down, but they didn't want to just discard them.

They found us online and have commissioned us to build them some rustic outdoor furniture and a dining table. Dan and I started milling some cool looking stumps for a huge outdoor table a few weeks ago and then recently came back to start milling the material for the outdoor bench and indoor dining table. (see some pics of the stumps and more after the jump)

While milling, we came across a few of the above pictured, longhorned borer beetles. They're menacing looking if you ask me, and they can make quick work of the outer layer of a tree. A healthy eucalyptus tree would be able to fight off a beetle by sort of flooding the area the beetle is invading and drown the beetle, but once a tree is felled, there's really no defense for the tree.

We don't particularly like using pesticides, but since we kiln our own wood, we can eliminate the problem simply by getting the wood up to 150º or so. Speaking of kilns, our main kiln is a solar powered kiln but we do have a kiln in the shop that we made utilizing a sauna heater off craigslist. It came with some funny signs that we couldn't resist not to put up:

Sneak Peek At A New Coffee Table

2011-05-23T00:53:00.000-07:00

We've refined a design of a retail coffee table we recently built and sold through Mixture. Version 2.0 will be unveiled soon, but in the mean time, here are some sneak peaks for you.

Some Examples of Urban Forestry

2011-05-23T00:39:00.000-07:00

Here are 2 recent trees we got in San Diego. I think they showcase some of the diversity in this city. We often hear from people when we tell them what we do, "are there even any trees in San Diego..." or something to that effect. Well, we may not have the dense forest on our city's borders the way the northen part of our state does, but yes, San Diego is chalk full of trees, big and small.

These trees also show 2 different examples in some of the locations where we find our trees. (more after the jump)

~ alex

This first tree is an oak that we got on a person's ranch out near Lake Hodges. Heavy recent rains caused the tree to fall over. The ground was so wet when it fell and the tree so heavy (the 10' section we took was probably 3000lbs alone) that it was buried about 1/2 way. It took all of Dan's and my effort (and the help of leverage) to get the log free and onto the trailer

This tree came to us thanks to a couple about to build their new home up in Solana Beach. Their property had a large Torrey Pine and some Red Gum Eucalyptus that the wife felt really strongly should not end up in the dump, mulched or just burned. She did some research and found us online. Pine is normally a soft and light wood, but I can tell you that at 36" in diameter, 3.5" thick, and 10+' long, it's &*©k#%@ heavy. It took Dan, myself, and 2 of the people doing demo & clearing on the property to get the slabs on to the trailer.

Innagural Blog Post

2011-05-22T23:54:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the SDUT (b)LOG! We've just returned home from a beautiful weekend in San Francisco attending what we hope is going to be an annual California Urban Wood Conference. We got to meet some interesting people in all aspects of urban forestry, and it's inspired me to get this blog started.

Dan and myself (Alex) will be updating this blog often with information and pictures of different projects we're working on, new trees or materials we've found, or the occasional animal we find in what is quickly becoming the SDUT zoo (to date we've gotten a wandering cat, a family of mice, some lizards, a pigeon we've named orville), and most recently a gopher (pictures below the jump).

~ alex

This cat wandered in and rubbed against my leg while I was in the middle of cutting some wood on the table saw. He/she was cute, but scared me half to death.

Dan Found this guy one night while putting in a (one of countless) late night.

And here's Orville (top left hand corner of the pic)