This live edge walnut desk and chair set is about as custom as it gets. The clients met us in our Seaport showroom with an idea- a dream let's call it- and a number of dimension and functional requirements on a hand-drawn sketch. They wanted it to fit a specific wall in their Beacon Hill home. It needed to leave room for the door to the roof deck to swing open, notch over the baseboard, have air vents for the electronics, have the chairs tuck all the way in, have pen drawers, and sliding drawers for coffee and plates, but still have room for knees.
We also gave several drawings to the clients on chair design. With their input, Cannon Hill designed these chairs ourselves. We drew several options for the back, the seat, the side profile of the legs and the client was able to mix and match and tweak. There's nothing more satisfying than seeing a hand drawing become a beautiful piece of walnut furniture.
This custom a desk requires computer specs. It requires careful planning. Everything has to be built on paper before a simple piece of walnut is cut. We went back and forth with them on several design options for the placement of the shelves and drawers, and the shape and size of the chairs. There were over fifty emails associated with this build. Finally we'd gotten everything figured out on paper but then there are still some challenges with the build.
We needed to come up with a way to have the sliding drawers take up minimal space. There was no room for factory made hardware to slide between the underside of the desk top and the pen drawers. So we did what we do best at Cannon Hill Woodworking and we problem solved and tested homemade mechanisms until we got it right.
The top of this desk is a live edge walnut slab. The walnut slab itself was sourced from New Hampshire. At Cannon Hill we work with New England based distributors large and small. This slab was milled up by a Boston area professor who mills trees as a side job. It's fun to go on the hunt for the right slab through all channels and come out successful.
Here is another desk we built with a live edge walnut top:
https://www.cannonhillwood.com/photos/live-edge-desk-oak-drawer-fronts
The cabinet or media unit for this desk is solid walnut cladded over walnut plywood. There is a small shelf that slides out for coffee cups, and a pen drawer just underneath it. The chairs are handmade, solid walnut. They are made to slide in entirely underneath the desk. All dowel, wood, and wood glue joinery. No screws.
We had a lot of fun building this one and we are very proud of it. It now lives right on the Back Bay/ Beacon Hill border overlooking the Boston Public Garden.
If you're looking for something truly custom- a one of a kind furniture piece that can't be bought in stores, please don't hesitate to reach out. 857-576-2089 or info@cannonhillwood.com.