Frequently Asked Questions About Live Edge Wood Slab Tables
Q: What is Urban Lumber or reclaimed wood, what makes it different?
A: Urban lumber can come in many forms from live edge slabs, wood cookie slices, rectangular planks and beams, and construction grade softer wood. This wood is milled from logs that have been rescued from local urban areas typically from trees that have fallen from storms or cut down for landscaping, or new construction. Most lumber from big box retailers is not reclaimed and is mass produced and pressure treated. Most do not offer local grown lumber or hardwood slabs. Urban lumber is usually cut by local small business sawmills that get logs from tree services. These sawmills spend a great deal of time and specialty equipment processing logs into furniture-grade wood slabs.
Q: Why is live edge furniture considered eco-friendly?
A: Urban lumber and live edge furniture is considered eco-friendly because you are re-using valuable natural resources with minimal impact on the environment for processing and minimizing waste by using the lumber all the way to the edge of the tree. Trees clean the air and store carbon amounting to over 50% of it's weight. By processing the tree into lumber its giving all of that stored carbon a practical longterm purpose beyond burning it and releasing back into the atmosphere. Otherwise tree services have to pay to dispose of firewood-cut logs which typically get mulched or burned, essentially disposing of the time and water equity it took to grow the tree.
In contrast most commercially produced furniture found at popular stores is the equivalent of fast fashion or "fast furniture" for your home with a very short term life because of the poor construction, inferior materials that are more glue and plastic than any form of wood. Most of this furniture is full of "forever chemicals" that leach plastic fumes and supports a supply chain of bad business based entirely on max profit at the expense of their exploited labor and non-sustainable practices.
Q: Why are live edge slabs so expensive compared to other wood?
A: Urban trees are not felled and processed in the same way as the big box lumber thats done through a large automated commercial operation. These trees are growing in yards near homes and other structures which makes removal complicated. Milling and preparing slabs to be used for furniture creation is a lengthy process that involves time, specialty equipment, and knowledge.
Once the log has fallen it has to be air dried for a long period before it can be cut on the saw mill. The slabs are then stacked & stickered and go into a kiln which removes remaining moisture in the wood through careful heat & humidity regulation. Each type of wood has its own drying regimen. After its dried in the kiln the wood must be carefully flattened before its ready to be sanded and finished into furniture. Each slab passes through a number of hands before its ready to be worked into furniture.
Q: Why is the furniture so expensive, why do I see such a wide range of prices from artists?
A: Custom furniture is expensive because everything is done by hand with the assistance of expensive specialty tools. Most furniture in stores is mass produced over seas using imported wood which means it can be made cheaper - less hand labor, less time, made in mass quantities by the 1000s instead of 1 of a kind. Prices vary for custom furniture with different artists because each one has their own costs depending on region, supply & demand, and overhead. Prices vary a lot depending on the type of piece and the components that go into it as well. We build all of our tables with utmost attention to detail with intention of this piece lasting you a lifetime and can be passed on to your children. This often involves hidden reinforcements or cleat systems that help insure the slab stays flat during seasonal wood movement. Yes, even kiln dried stable hardwoods move and this should be accounted for. Amateur builders and "hairpin" table builders that just screw legs on the corners of any slab will certainly charge less because it costs less and takes less tools, less time, etc. I've seen some of these pieces that aren't even sanded or sealed. Each project has its own needs depending on intended use, type of wood, and leg design and this requires experience and knowledge to know how to preserve the wood and build pieces that last longterm.
Q: Whats different between imported "live edge" that I see in stores and what you make?
A: Live edge furniture has become extremely popular and with that, the furniture importers and over seas builders have cut costs by faking it. How do you fake slab wood furniture? Well, I've seen molded plaster made to look like big tree root stump tables, I've seen laminated particle board digitally printed to look like a tree ring slice. But most commonly they glue up random boards into a panel and grind a waney edge back to make it look like a natural live edge. These are the "live edge" tables you see at places like West Elm, Copenhagen, Pottery Barn, Costco. They are the same tables they've always sold, but someone took a grinder to the edge if it wasnt a veneered/laminated top.
The imported live edge slab and root/stump furniture that are real solid wood slabs with natural edges sold "wholesale" to store owners at Vegas World Market and Atlanta Market are of questionable origin and quality. The majority of these come from countries like Costa Rica and Thailand. Only a handful of these shops source slabs in a responsible nature or produce furniture in a thoughtful way. Their top priority is filling a shipping container quickly with as many tables they can turn out. This means wood is not dried slowly and carefully, if at all. A lot of the trees are cut down green in tropical environments, milled and sometimes immediately put into a vacuum kiln to speed up the drying process. The slabs are typically rough sanded and sprayed with a high build lacquer top coat.
I average 3 callers per month from people who have bought these import live edge tables from stores and now want them rebuilt because theyve warped, cracks are opening as the wood dries, the finish is cracking and peeling or they want the cracks filled with resin, or the top isnt physically attached to the base and it wobbles. Only 1 out 15 of these callers ever proceeds to having their piece rebuilt because of the cost being more than what they paid for it to begin with.
Why? Because they essentially paid for raw green materials and none of the labor or time to carefully dry the wood, reinforce with C channel or patches, CNC flatten, resin fill cracks, properly secure to table base, finish with natural oil that can be detailed and allow the slab to breathe.
If a boutique is retailing a 4x10ft live edge slab table for $2500 at their store in Scottsdale, you can easily assume they paid less than $1000 for it wholesale. So this 700lb table was built in Thailand, shipped across the Ocean,sold at wholesale market, and resold at retail store in the desert. The guys who made it were paid about $200 a week. I cannot even buy a raw slab this size for what they are paying retail for this table. My 4x10ft dining tables start at $10,000.
The pay ratio for skilled labor between USA and Thailand is about 8:1.
This type of furniture is not meant to be rushed, or scaled in a production environment to make 100s of tables a month, it's not possible if taking necessary precaution and care to preserve the wood for long term.
Q: Do you have a price list?
A: Every finished piece in our inventory has a price listed and available for purchase in the SHOP area of our website. We provide individual personalized quotes for every custom project because each has different needs and we get so many different types of requests that vary in material and labor cost. Some of the pricing variables include: type and size of wood slabs, amount of resin fill and patching required, metal legs and framework, glass, installation fitment/labor, and shipping.
Q: How much is shipping?
A: We are based in Phoenix, Arizona and provide free local delivery for most orders. We do ship nationwide within the US but please keep common sense in mind - shipping for a 900lb river table with hand cut glass inlay is going to cost a small fortune. Please don't be shocked when we can't offer free next day shipping like Amazon. Shipping costs are determined by the size and weight of the item, how fragile it is, where its being shipped, packing materials required, etc. We us white glove delivery services for larger items that cannot be disassembled like large coffee tables, dining tables, or console tables. Most smaller items ship in parcel via FedEx.