Reclaimed Wood Relaxed Back Farm Bench With Armrests 1
Reclaimed Wood Relaxed Back Farm Bench With Armrests 2
Reclaimed Wood Relaxed Back Farm Bench With Armrests 3
Reclaimed Wood Relaxed Back Farm Bench With Armrests 4

Reclaimed Wood Relaxed Back Farm Bench With Armrests

$1,652

Come sit awhile! Our relaxed back porch benches are so comfortable, that sitting and talking becomes a natural extension of every gathering. Built from antique reclaimed barn wood, these solid benches will be a centerpiece of your home for years to come. Pictured here, the bench is a rustic Heart Pine wood with a light brown stain. Each piece is built by hand to your custom specifications at the time of ordering. DIMENSIONS - Approximately 70" L x 18" W x 32" H - With the seat 18" off the floor FEATURES: - Made from antique reclaimed barn wood - Relaxed and comfortable back porch benches - Rustic beauty of salvaged wood - Perfect fit for any setting - Made to order SHIPPING INFO: - Made by Mike Schmiedicke of The Strong Oaks Woodshop in Front Royal, VA - Make it yours by placing an order today - Custom sizing of woods and stains available upon order

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The Strong Woodshop

The Strong Woodshop

The Strong Oaks Woodshop

Front Royal, VA
Member since: 2011
4.7
80 Maker Reviews
  • Long-time member

    A Maker who has been a valued part of this community for several years.

  • Fast shipper

    Customers say that this Maker ships promptly after completing a project.

  • Great service

    This Maker has consistently demonstrated excellence in craftsmanship and customer service.

The Strong Oaks Woodshop specializes in refined country furniture hand crafted from reclaimed antique lumber. Whether it is Farm Tables and Rustic Dining Chairs or a Bedroom Suite from old Heart Pine, we can build your custom furniture in any style, including Shaker, Mission, Arts & Crafts, Primitive, Early American and more!

  • JM

    Jun Mitsumoto

    For Reclaimed Heart Pine Pedestal Table
    4.5

    Mike was very responsive and easy to communicate with. The finished table was exactly to spec and very well made. The turnaround time was also very good. There was a little timing hiccup with the delivery but his people we're flexible and brought my table into the kitchen. Overall, a good value for a great custom table.

  • KA

    Kristen Axel

    For Reclaimed Rustic Pine Platform Bed With Headboard And 4 Drawers
    5.0

    This was a very unique project and the seller exceeded all my expectations! They communicated with me through the whole thing and delivered in a timely manner. The finished project was amazing and I love it!! Will be coming back if I have any other projects like this!

  • Henry HeatlyHH

    Henry Heatly

    For Farm Table with Wheels
    5.0

    This is an unqualified positive review. I am very happy with my table and benches and with Mike at Strong Oaks Woodshop. The product is good and the process (with Strong Oaks) was also good. I will do business with Strong Oaks again. I have recommended them to my friends. I am impressed and happy.

    That said, in the interest of making this review as useful as possible to the CustomMade community, I want to detail several things. In the process of doing so I will point out many things that could not have been better and just a few small things that could have. (This is a positive review!)

    Also, before I get into it, I should point out that I have several projects in the works right now with various artisans through CustomMade and I am coming to be increasingly dissatisfied with the CustomMade interface in several ways (it drives me crazy). This has nothing to do with Strong Oaks. And I should note that of the four projects I have going right now, all were started at the same time with the same “3 Month” timeframe and Strong Oaks finished first. About 2 months. 9 weeks maybe. The Strong Oaks table was the largest project in terms of build complexity and size. (I have no idea when the other stuff will be ready. Maybe soon?)

    So… maybe the best way to do this is to approach the following categories:

    1. Project Description/Initial Desires (So you can see what I wanted and what I got)
    2. Pre-proposal & Proposal
    3. The Build/ Communication/Interaction
    4. Price
    5. Shipping
    6. Quality & Beauty

    1. Project Description/Initial Desires
      I wanted a simple large wooden table that could be rolled around. I wanted some kind of nice wheels and/or castors. I did not know what kind of wood or what kind of chairs or even style. I like Walnut but wasn’t married to the idea of having walnut. I wanted simple. I wanted it to be beautiful in some way. I wanted it 9’ or 10’ long and relatively narrow for that length.

    2. Pre-proposal & Proposal
      The pre-proposal process was the best part of Custom Made. I think I had 7 or 9 builders interested. There were some amazing ideas and suggestions. Some very grand and some very simple. There were a few builders who just sort of barely submitted.

    It seems to me that there must be a good number of buyers who use CustomMade to get very specific things built… that is to say they know exactly – precisely what they want and are looking to find someone to build it exactly – precisely that way. (Based on the few “nasty-grams” (even a very unpleasant phone call) I received from other builders after I’d made my decision to use Strong Oaks, there must be a great many people out there “looking to get a Pottery Barn table just cheaper.”) I am not that kind of buyer. I wanted to get something that fit my requirements but I wanted to learn what the artisans who work with wood all day long recommended. I want to know about tables from people who BUILD TABLES.

    (Also, if you start a project, you must be courteous to the bidders and respond to them, even if you don’t want to use them. Apparently many people don’t. The better we treat these people, the better people will available to us.)

    Anyway, I was looking at my all options (different style and wood recommendations) and all were more or less the same price (except for one that was 3 times more). I sent out a last email to everyone asking if there was anything anyone wanted to add because I was going to make a decision in the next 24 hours. I got the following message from Mike at Strong Oaks:

    “To be honest, I'm not much of a fighter and I know for a fact I'm not the best craftsman out there, but I dearly love the old wood, so I will just state my case and leave it at that.”

    That cinched it. He recommended some very old reclaimed heart pine he had. And benches. And some kind of penetrating oil finish “like they used 80 to 100 years ago.” And specific wheels (locking etc).
    I requested and accepted his proposal and let everyone else know that what I’d decided. There were some great proposals that I turned down. (I need to make more money so I can give all the great artisans here a chance.)

    I never thought in a million years I’d buy a pine table. Walnut? Chestnut? Probably. But Pine? No way. But I did order one. And I felt good about it. And then I waited.

    1. The Build / Communication
      I’d hoped to see some kind of creation story. Because I’d left so many decisions to the artisan, I was anxious to see what he’d decide at each point. How thick was the apron going look? What was the surface of the table going to look like (straight paralleled boards lengthwise or crosswise or both)? How strong was this thing going to be really??? (It’s very long… should I have asked for six legs? How is he going to build this?)

    There never was a creation story. And I was a little disappointed for time. But I trusted him and decided to wait.

    That said, Mike did email me three photos once, when the table was together (it is a big table and hard to photograph). Earlier he’d sent me a link to his facebook page to see a photo of the top being glued-up. All that that was good. I liked getting those. So… I did have an idea of what was being made… but I really didn’t know much more.

    It was fine.

    I should also note that I don’t facebook… so I had to signup to look… and I didn’t like that. But I completely understand why he would use facebook and not a CustomMade “creation story.” If the interface is as cumbersome for builders and it is us, I don’t blame him a bit. And the CustomMade emails are almost impossible to manage. The subject lines are all templated and the first few sentences are standard boilerplate. Even today I can’t easily put my mouse on a specific email… and I can’t do it at all on my smartphone because I can’t preview the CONTENT of a message (it all that CustomMade boilerplate).. Seven to nine bidders on this project; four simultaneous projects; plus all the standard automated emails that CustomMade sends… my mailbox is destroyed. I hope I haven’t missed anything… but I may have.

    This isn’t Mike’s fault.

    Mike and I just call each other now. It is easier… but I can’t do it late at night when I am traveling and dealing with such things in a hotel room.
    Bottom line: Mike is easy to communicate with and he tries to keep the information coming. I am very satisfied.

    One more note: I had the “clever” idea of asking for the benches to have casters on only one end so that I would be able to pick up the other end and roll ‘em. This means the legs on one end are longer (no wheels). I insisted on this and Mike built ‘em this way at my request. This was a mistake. I should have had wheels on all four legs or none. (These benches are LONG. If you pick up one end, the rolling end takes off… (good wheels),,, side to side wherever.) This is not Mike’s fault. It is mine… and it is a small thing.

    Another thing I’d like to have seen would be some kind of simple (photocopied would be fine) instructions for the care of this finish. (No doubt he’ll send me an email when he reads this.) Also, I’m a marketing/agency guy… if I could build and sell tables this beautiful from a reclaimed barn, I’d try to include a photo of the old barn from which it came (or… um… an old barn like it from the same part of the world and time frame). I’m getting lots of questions from my friends about this beautiful wooden table and I’d love to have conversational spice to add. But that’s no big deal.

    Mike’s shop is not a marketing business with all of his customer experience touchpoints perfectly conceived and executed, but that’s not why I hired him. He’s a builder of furniture and a worker of wood. Perfect!

    1. Price
      The price seemed a little (or a lot) low to me… and I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop… but it didn’t. I like that this was so affordable for me… and so do others because Mike is busy. And so if that means that Mike can’t hire someone to do creation stories all day long, fine. He always calls me back quickly.

    Mike doesn’t screw around with dollar negotiations. At least he didn’t with me. The prices were fair (or really I think unfair to him and favorable to me) and things cost what they cost. Am I going to send him more money? No. But I am going to send him more work and be open to whatever pricing he needs.

    1. Shipping

    This thing came in a LARGE CRATE which was bulletproof. I took it apart and saved the stuff (I’m remodeling). Taking crate apart took several hours. A magor deal. It looks like a whole large box of screws and many sheets of ply plus several 2X4’s. This must have cost someone a couple to a few hundred dollars in materials right there.
    The table top, legs and benches came out without a hitch. Beautiful.

    (I’d thought that maybe I was shorted one nut in the hardware bag and called Mike to get the size so I could get one at Home Depot ($0.50). He apologized offering to send me one. Not a problem though. Fifty cents. Also, when I returned home and got the thing together and the area cleaned up, I found the nut. Mike had counted correctly, it was MY MISTAKE. Not a big deal.

    Shipping went without a hiccup. Perfect.

    1. Quality & Beauty

    I am not sure how to judge the quality here. The table is heavy and solid. The wood is unbelievable… antique heart pine… fiery and warm… it glows. The wheels/casters are great… solid and smooth and nice. (The table wheels look like rollerblade wheels.) This is reclaimed barn wood. THERE ARE STILL NAIL HOLES IN SOME BOARDS! (How cool is that!) The wood is NOT pristine. But the wood is smooth and gorgeous if not precisely flat on top… some of the boards bow ever so slightly (which is actually lovely). I can see the saw marks. The joints are tight. The legs are solid. The boards have been selected with an artists’ eye… color contrasts and complements. The top appears to be buscuited and glued AND screwed together (underneath). (It is big 9’ X 38”.) The screws surprised me but you can’t see them… and I’m actually glad to have them there now that I think of it. (At first I was of another opinion but that changed after touching this table for 5 minutes.)

    This table is a thing of beauty. Mike made the apron relatively thin… and from boards where I can see the “tide” of circular blade marks (ever so slightly)… this may be on the original wood. The apron is my favorite part.

    I’ve stood on it. I’ve eaten from it. I’ve rolled it around. And I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time staring at from various points of view. Pine. Who would have thought it?

    I own and have owned finer furniture, but none more beautiful. This thing is delicious.

    Five stars. I am very happy.

    [Please forgive the photos, this table will look better when I get my concrete floor polished and re-stained.]

    I am happy to offer a more detailed positive reference for Strong Oaks any time. They know my email.

    Hank

  • DM

    Dennis Mullins

    For Antique Wormy Chestnut 3 Drawer Sideboard
    5.0

    Mike and his team are incredibly talented woodworkers and very easy to contact and communicate with. The sideboard they produced for us was even better than the pictures we saw online. Piece was delivered early. Will definitely think of them first as we need new pieces for our home.

  • SR

    Sally Rao

    For Reclaimed Wood Bar Stools With Industrial Rebar Legs
    5.0

    The bar stools for our kitchen island are superb in terms of design and quality. They will last a lifetime! There was excellent communication every step of the way. I would highly recommend The Strong Oaks Woodshop and will use you for future projects.

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