KC's Woodworking

When they were building these barns, they probably had no idea that a hundred years later that some people would be coming to take them down to build furniture out of them. They had no idea about that, but yet I think that they would somehow feel honored, It'something that we all experience. We all experience second chances to write wrongs and to become new again and to make improvements in our own lives. It's fun to sort of play the role of creator, taking something that has no meaning or value and no purpose and creating it into something spectacular and redeeming it. I'mitch Tr I'm the principal owner and craftsman at Adventure Indoors. I'm Ryan and I'm a craftsman with Adventure Indoors Woodworking. A significant part of my childhood is outdoor experiences, experiencing just the thrill and the joy and the adventure of the outdoors, whether it's hunting or fishing or camping. The whole idea with this Adventure Indoors is trying to capture the essence of taking what was once outside and keeping it as natural as possible and bringing that into the comfort of a home. What first led me onto the path of woodworking was Saturday morning shows with Norm Abram on New Yankee Workshop and this whole house. That watching those shows started for me at a young age of six or seven, as long as I can remember. I remember being a battle between my brothers and I. They wanted to watch cartoons and I wanted to watch fishing and woodworking shows and that was what planted that seed very early for me. Woodworking is something that has ran in my family. My grandpa, for about 20 years, owned a furniture shop, built some awesome stuff out of oak and walnut, passed that on to my dad and so naturally when I was little my dad was always tinkering in the basement building something. He had kind of a small workshop down there and That experience was significant for me. Just starting with a pile of materials at the beginning of the day and some time later there'something that's functional. When I was in college for about a year while I was there I got to work with my grandpa in his shop and that's really where I grew in my woodworking knowledge. I learned about joinery, learned about different types of wood and so really for me it's an honor to carry on this family tradition that was started with my grandpa many years ago and then on to my dad and now me and who knows maybe my kids someday will be taking up the family trade. And so what gets me excited is that this barn I mean the owner of this farm obviously knows it's here but it's nestled away here in the woods and no one really knows about it. But for me as a craftsman I can come in and see that there is great potential here. And so to be able to start from the process of just being in the barn and taking it down, I think it's chopping through big beams and pulling off paneling, taking it to our workshop, doing the denailing, sometimes power washing the wood, sanding, planing the entire process all the way up until building the piece of furniture and delivering it to a customer. For me it's the fact that we can trace it all the way back to the original location and I love just taking great pride in the materials that we use. When we get our go ahead to make for example a coffee table we will look at the design and then we'll start to draft up a couple ideas and then from that point we'll come out to the barn and we'll start to harvest and just depending on what the piece is really asking for we'll choose that n And a lot of times the board is warped and turned and torqued in whatever direction the grain has wanted it to do for the last hundred years that the wood has been sitting in this barn. And so what our job is to denail it, to plane it, to join it and make it a straight board again and bring it back to what we believe is its natural intent to turn into something that we can build with and create something beautiful with. Sometimes when we're constructing the wood will ask for something else, sometimes it asks for more, sometimes the board asks for less, sometimes they just ask to be lacquered in a state that we rip them out of this barn at and kind of whatever they're asking of us we try to get them to that point and try to release the full beauty and the full potential that the board has. This furniture isn't just furniture that we want to get out the door as soon as possible, but we really feel When a barn is built it's cut down from trees. The trees that were cut down to make the barn that we're in right now were started growing two or two hundred and fifty years ago, almost as old as this country and so that was the first intent. So once the process of building the barn was over the story continued on. Cattle filled this barn, horses filled this barn and then the life of the barn was over, the purpose was over and so the process now that we're in is tearing the barn down and then letting the story continue. And so when it gets to go out of our shop