This Dog Crate is Nicer than My House
Sometimes our slogan “if you can dream it, we can build it” causes us to be pushed to our limits.
This custom dog crate…maybe castle is the better word… did just that. It pushed our skills to the limit. But when we hit our limits we just go PLUS ULTRA! and go beyond.
The end result is this masterpiece. My apprentice and I worked extremely hard on this and I am very proud of how it turned out.
Lets start with the top.
Not just a normal tabletop, but a solid oak three-stain chevron top.
Amazing Drawers
Next, is the normalist… most normal… part of this furniture, a drawer and cubby bank. All our drawers feature under-mount (hidden) ball bearing soft-close drawer sides and built from beefy 3/4 material.
Below is the kennel area sized to hold two huge dogs. If you look closely the bars are different than our standard bars. This time we used stair balusters provided by our client. It really added to the elegance of this unit.
The body is built out of Beech, our standard hardwood, and stained with Varathane “Worn Navy.” This was the first time we used this color and it reminds us of denim.
Now we get to the part that had me scratching my head. I’ll admit it took me a few tries to get this right.
A Trap door. We needed to control the dog’s access to food during feeding times. So we built a food cover. But we have really big 90# dogs so the cover needs to hold their weight.
This cover also needs to slide open easily during feeding time.
The bowls were my next challenge. How do I get them close to the floor of the kennel without them hitting anything?
This is what we came up with. See the cool contrasting bottom? That was actually a mistake. I ended up with 1/8” of bowls hitting the front of the kennel. All that work and the bowl sat 1/8” too high!
So I modified the drawer by cutting out a section of the bottom and adding a new base. I used some walnut plywood. This gave me 1/4” of room which was just enough for everything to work as desired.
Once we were done, we delivered it to our customer in Houston. This guy is extremely heavy.
Custom furniture should be functional as well as beautiful.
We’re all limited for space in our homes so we need the furniture we do have to perform multiple roles and be functional.
But your home should also be a place that brings you joy.
Having a beautifully crafted custom furniture piece provides both. The function you need and the beauty that makes your house a home.
What can we build for you?
