What started as an act of frugality has become a journey to convert what nature discards into something of lasting beauty. Many years ago we gave up city living and purchased woods in Minnesota. We were shocked by the number of trees knocked down by wind every year. Initially, we would just cut these up for firewood. In doing this we couldn’t help but notice the variety and splendor of the grain in many of the logs. At the same time we also noticed that the furniture offered in our local stores was manufactured either with wood that was not as nice as what we were burning or not even real. Being quite naive with a “how hard can it be” attitude, we decided to have some fallen trees milled into rough boards and kiln-dried. To change these boards into furniture turned out to be a much longer and arduous process than we initially thought, but the end result of that first project transformed the way we look at wood furniture and the environment.

At the Woodworks at Wit’s End we only use rescued lumber found locally. We have this lumber milled and dried locally as well. From this, we create custom hand-crafted furniture. Our wood shop is small so we only turn out a few pieces a year. And yes, we get attached to them and are sad when they leave us.

Lee Blue