What is Custom Furniture?

We often get asked how much custom furniture costs.  Every piece that we make is customized because you choose the wood, the style and the stain that best suits your home.  However, our solid wood furniture can also be reconfigured, resized or redesigned so that it better meets your needs.  Unlike other stores that offer stock products in a small choice of colours, our furniture is made-to-order.  Whether you are ordering a new dining table, bedroom set or TV stand, your piece(s) will be handcrafted by expert Amish or Mennonite builders and stained to suit your home.

Custom pieces are easier to design and price when using a standard piece as a guide.  We’ll use the style of your choosing, and then make whatever changes you’d like.  Whether you are adding drawers, changing to glass doors, or simply rounding the edges, we’ll have our builders accommodate.  We can also work with you to design a piece from scratch.  These pieces would need to be quoted, but we can shop the quote across our various builders to get you the best price. If you have a picture, that makes it easier to design and price.

How Much Do Customizations Cost?

Without knowing the customizations, it is almost impossible to say what it will cost.  As a general rule, to adjust the cost by making a piece larger, simply divide the cost of a standard size piece by the measurement you wish to change and multiply by the new measurement.  For example, starting with a 60″W TV stand that costs $1,000, to get the TV stand made 66″W you would divide $1,000 by 60 and multiply by 66 to get $1,100.  Making pieces smaller also costs more, as builders will have to reconfigure their drawings and cut sheets to keep everything to scale.  Fine Oak Things does not pass this cost on to our customers, but the smaller piece will be the same price as the closest standard size.  Certain pieces, like dining tables, will automatically be charged the next size up when going larger.

Changing the wood will also change the price.  Each builder has a different cost between the different woods, so while the difference in price will be similar across builders, it is not the same.  Similarly, each builder will have different costs for building doors, drawers and their time.  For this reason, we prefer not to give “ballpark” estimates.  However, we do want to be as up front as possible.  For each step up in the wood, expect a 10% price increase; pine to wormy maple to maple or oak to cherry.  Adding drawers will be approximately $150 per drawer and doors will be roughly the same.  Each situation is different, so please remember that these are estimates not hard and fast rules!

Impact on Stain Costs

The overall cost of staining will be more when adding doors and/or drawers to a piece or making it bigger.  Each door or drawer needs to be removed, stained, and put back on the piece.  Save for a few exceptions, we don’t charge extra for different stains.  Certain finishes (e.g. two toning, and glazed or antique finishes) cost more because of the extra work involved (between 5-15%).  Colour matching is another service that is an extra 10%.  Some of our builders do their own staining and have set costs for premium finishes and colour matching.

Our Custom Furniture Success Stories

Quotes from some of our customers about their custom furniture:

“After purchasing two custom bedroom sets from Jon, the results exceeded our expectations that we decided to also purchase a custom dining room table, chairs and sideboard. Jon was extremely helpful in helping us decide what would work with our visions. From the custom legs to the finished details I can’t say enough about the quality of each piece. The quality far exceeds anything you’ll find in the retail chain stores. Definitely will be back in the near future.”

– Michael A.

“The benches are perfect, they look amazing with the table.  We’ve made a lot of new purchases while renovating our house but by far our dining room furniture is my favourite.  It’s truly a show stopper in our house, we get compliments by everyone who comes over.  Thanks for getting back to me so promptly every time I’ve emailed you with a question or a request for an update.   It is so worth the wait for these pieces of furniture, I’m sure our kids will fight over who will inherit them!  Even your delivery guys are so nice and professional. Sometimes I just look at the table and smile, which is weird, I know.”

– Pam & Andrew H. (cover photo of their table and benches)

“Excellent product, price, and service. You really do get what you pay for and we had checked out all the off shore furniture from area furniture stores with little that excited us. All the furniture offered through Fine Oak Things we found exciting. We purchased a sixty five inch credenza that we matched colours to our other wood furniture and it looks beautiful. Thanks Jon!”

– Jim B.