Six to ten weeks, and if you want it for Memorial Day, ring in February.

How a commission actually goes

• The call. Ten minutes. A dimension, a room or a deck, a species off the board, and a rough number. Nothing is written down yet and nothing is owed.
• A drawing. Sent within a week, on paper, with the actual sizes on it. Free, and yours whether or not you go ahead.
• Deposit. A third, and it buys lumber. That is what it is for and it is why it is not refundable once the boards are cut, though it is fully refundable before that.
• Drying and milling. Two to three weeks of the lead time is boards sitting in the shop getting used to it. Skipping this is why cheap furniture cups.
• The bench. Two to four weeks depending on the piece.
• A photograph before finish. Sent to you. This is the last easy point to change something, so it is worth looking at properly.
• Balance on delivery, not before.

The two months to avoid

The quietest stretch is September to December, and pieces ordered then get more attention than pieces ordered in the spring, because there is time to do the thing properly rather than the sensible way.

Delivery

• Free inside twenty-five miles. That covers Gladstone, Liberty, Kearney, Smithville, Parkville, North Kansas City, Platte City and most of Excelsior Springs.
• Two dollars a mile after that, one way, up to about a hundred and fifty miles.
• Two of us carry it in and put it where it is going. If it has to go through a gate, measure the gate and tell me before the drawing, because a table that comes apart is a design decision and not an afterthought.
• Stairs are fine, a spiral staircase is not, and neither is a second floor balcony with a sixty inch top. Say so early and the piece gets designed around it.

What I will say no to

• Matching an existing piece exactly. Wood is not paint. I can get close and I will show you close before you commit, but a promise of an exact match is a promise nobody can keep.
• Reclaimed barn wood with nails still in it. One hidden nail costs a planer blade, and the blade costs more than the job.
• Anything under about three hundred dollars, honestly, because the drawing and the delivery eat it. There is a shelf of small things at the shop instead.
• A deadline inside four weeks. I would rather turn it down than rush a glue-up.

If something goes wrong

Joinery is guaranteed for as long as you own the piece. If a joint opens, it comes back and I fix it, and I collect it. Wood movement, checking at the end grain and colour change are not faults, they are what wood does, and I will show you what to expect on a sample board before you order rather than argue about it afterward.

Coming to see the bench

Yes, and ring first. It is a working shop with sharp things in it, so there is no showroom and no set hours, but there is nearly always something half built on the bench that tells you more about how it is made than any photograph would.