Ten years old, brought in by Jeff Kenoyer. It is Mango, but plain in figuring. The chair is in our showroom so you may stop in and see it. Price? Its ten years old, in great shape, but the wood is plain. Jeff gave me discretion in finding a price, so in my laziness I say make an offer. We can sand the tiny scratches and dings if necessary. Leather seat is in excellent shape.
Call me at 360-389-2714 or email greg"at"nwchairs dot com.

 Back in the old days of the 90s and early aughts I always said I wouldn't stoop to doing farmers markets Then it had to be at least  two hundred miles away if not two thousand, shows such as The Philadelphia International Furniture Show, ACC San Francisco, the Western Design Conference in Jackson WY, Contemporary Crafts in Santa Monica and so on. Those days seem to be over. The crash of 2008 ended the big time and when the world regained its new normal I was too old for the twelve hour days and high wire tension of pulling it all together on a budget and a tight timeline. I find it strangely satisfying to eat crow and know I still am learning new tricks.

Walk down to the shop at 8am, load the truck, drive eight blocks to the Market Square, setup and be sitting in one of several rocking chairs in the 9:45 sun with freshly roasted morning coffee. Complete with Pep lying on the asphalt, begging from everyone with his eyes. Plus its an excuse to hang out on a sunny summer Saturday eating crowssants and visiting with old friends and new ones I haven't met before.

​Stop in! 10-3 (this is my last Saturday for the year but the market runs until November and starts again in March).

Amy Virta, the daughter of an old customer has this pair of cushion seat Brendan Rockers they would like to sell. Their asking price is $1000 each, and while I have not seen anything but the pictures they do appear to have scratches and wear. They would probably make a special price for the pair. They need some sanding and probably new foam and upholstery which I can quote you on. .Contact me with questions, greg@nwchairs.com or 360-389-2714.

The chairs are approximatety 15 years old.

We have a set in the showroom now.What would I do without customers ideas? Three nesting tables with three colored inlaid leather tops. Actually its recycled leather because I am able to get a wide variety of colors in small pieces, unlike genuine leather where I have to buy an entire cowhide of one color. The largest is 20" wide x 20" deep x 20" tall in Cherry wood. 

The bad news is out: Geek Chic has locked their doors. The chairs and barstools they sold? They were designed made by us. We did not receive any of the deposits on them and are stuck with money owed also. My heart goes out to all those who lost their deposits with nothing to show but frustration, and have come up with a formula to enable customers to get their (ours) furniture possibly at the same total cost. If interested contact me at greg"at"nwchairs, or 360-389-2714. We will be building a few reproductions of their Vanguard tables also.

Please remember, we never ask for more than a 50% deposit.

We refer to the standard seat height on our chairs as 18”. Just as a 2x4 is actually 1-1/2 x3-1/2”, our 18” seat height is actually 17 3/4”. Seat Height is always measured to the top edge of the seat as shown in the diagrams below.

Well designed seating has a slope into the chair so that the front of the seat is about 1/2” higher than the back. Without any slope, the sitter may feel like they are sliding off of the chair. We do not adjust this measurement.
​
Based on our thirty five years of designing and building chairs we have found that 1/2” or less difference between seat heights is not meaningful, which may be observed while measuring the thousands of differing chairs in our world.
 
Here is a more detailed breakdown of our height measurements:

• If the seat is wood, then this height is 17-11/16” +-1/8”, measured to the top edge of the front corner of the seat.
• If the seat is a cushion then the floor to top of cushion measurement is 18-1/4” +-1/8”,  measured to the absolute top of the cushion at the front. Do not measure the waterfall or round over edge. Sight directly across the top plane of the seat. The cushion will compress at a differential rate depending on the size and weight of the person, and compresses further into the webbing.
• Felt feet add an additional 3/8” the the seat height.
• Plastic Glides add an additional 1/4” to the seat height.

​When most people think about business owners they’re thinking about Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, or some other flashy high-powered CEO. This image of the high-powered CEO simply isn’t reality for the vast majority of business owners across America. Most business owners are people like you who took something they loved and ran with it.
 
Small businesses constitute 99.7% of all employer firms in the United States. These businesses make up over 66% percent of all newly created jobs. These businesses are run by passionate people who decided to pursue the things in life that they care the most about. Greg Aanes did exactly that in 1981 when he founded Greg Aanes Furniture.
 
I’ve only worked here for two months, and in that time I’ve seen and learned more about the reality of running a small business than I could have possibly imagined. Yes, once you choose to strike out and start your own business much of your time will be taken up with the actual running of the company; but there will still be time to pursue the passion which got you to this point in the first place.
 
For at least an hour every day Greg makes sure to go down into the shop and work on making the furniture he loves. It isn’t all fun and games of course. Without going into the shop and keeping everything running in the shop, the business simply wouldn’t operate as smoothly. He loves to do it, but it’s also necessary.
 
Most successful businesses aren’t run by people who sit in a high-rise office building disconnected from the roots of their business. Most businesses are run by people who still go into the shop and put together a rocking chair. Because it’s necessary, because they love it. These are the people who run the country. People like Greg, people like you, who have a passion and chose to pursue it. Chase after your passions, it worked for Greg, and it can work for you.

​Wood isn’t just wood; every wood has different properties. Every wood we use has been selected for its color, weight, and durability to make sure that we are using the best woods possible for our furniture.

​Mahogany
Sapele Mahogany is an African wood which has a fine interlocking grain. Similar in hardness to Cherry, Sapele is much harder than other variants of Mahogany, making it the best choice for making furniture. Almost completely rot and decay resistant, Sapele can be used in a wide variety of environments, holding its form and color in the toughest of conditions.

​Mango
This Hawaiian wood is one of the softer woods we sell. Its strongest feature lay in Mango’s aesthetics; the dark “lightning bolt” patterns coupled with the yellow, black, or even pink highlights on the golden wood give Mango an exotic look incomparable to anything else we sell. Dense enough to create long lasting furniture this wood is the ideal wood for our Brendan Rocker.

Throughout years of trying out every available wood, these eight are the ones which have worked best. Figuring out which woods make the best furniture has not been an easy process; we previously carried woods like Beech and Cascade Maple, eventually realizing that they simply don't produce furniture of the same quality as the woods we use today. Having top-tier woods is a necessity for us - we make the best furniture at Greg Aanes Furniture, and the woods we use have to reflect that.

We recently hired a new bookkeeper, and learned something surprising in the process. We found that most of the people applying to the job, an extremely detail oriented bookkeeping position, paid little to no attention to what the directions and description on the job posting actually said.
 
In the application instructions we asked that people send their applications in as a PDF - this wasn’t due to some technological restriction that prevented us from reading other file formats; we asked for this as a preliminary screening technique. Shockingly, less than a third of the people who applied to our position actually followed these directions. Not a single person who failed was asked to come in for an interview; we didn’t want our finances handled by someone who couldn’t carefully read a simple set of instructions.
 
Attention to detail is a skill which is vital to almost any job you might come across. A furniture maker without this skill would make sub-par furniture, a waiter wouldn’t get orders right, a journalist wouldn’t write quality stories. It’s one of the most vital skills anyone can have, and failing to demonstrate it during the application process is a huge mistake.
 
There are any number of reasons that someone could gloss over the instructions on an application, it could be due to the impersonal nature of applying online, or the sheer number of applications that someone is sending out, or it could be due to one of countless other factors. At the end of the day however, why applicants choose not to follow instructions is irrelevant - if someone can’t even follow the directions to apply to a job, why would an employer trust that person enough to work there?
 
Your job search is your business, but here’s a tip for anyone currently looking for work: pay attention to the instructions on the application. Take it from someone who has both been overlooked for positions because of this simple mistake, as well as seen what happens on the hiring end to people who fail to follow instructions. Pay attention and you’re already doing better than most of your competition.