# Does your wood match



## RickB (Oct 20, 2009)

All:

Does the wood match in your house? Since I recently started woodworking, the wife has requested some pieces. Two in particular are a dining room table and a corner hutch (also for the dining room).

The kitchen nearby has stock wood cabinets made from red oak and finished with a golden/honey oak type finish.

So, as I consider these projects, the question is what kind of wood to use. I could use more oak, and that would be fine and look good. But I do have a well stocked lumberyard near my house. And Rockler has a sale on African Mahogany.

So, do your pieces in a room in your house all match? Do you feel they need to? Or do you just use whatever kind of wood excites you at a given instance? How do you choose?

Regards

Rick


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## papadan (Mar 6, 2009)

I try to match wood in the same room, but not throughout the house. I also use what is called for in special pices that don't match anything, like my wifes sewing center/dry sink.


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## bfd (Dec 23, 2007)

Hi Rick,

As a woodworker and having an interior design background I personally think it is fine to mix wood species in the home. I personally think that it would be boring and one-dimensional if you didn't. There are a few "rules" that you might want to consider to make sure everything is harmonious. You generally want to use the wood (or similar finish range) more then once in the same room. So in your example, if your Kitchen is the standard red oak cabinets with a golden honey finish and you want to use Khaya (African Mahogany) in the dining room I think that is perfectly acceptible. I would build both my table and the hutch out of the Mahogany and then perhaps introduce a third finish for the chairs.

Below is my dining/living room. In these two room I have an ebonize table and chairs, along with wenge, walnut furniture and some accents of red thrown in for good measure. The floors are pecan and it all pulls together in one harmonious ecclectic composition.



This subtle mix of woods are repeated throughout the house so that everthing flows nicely but isn't all matchy matchy. You can see that although my family room has a totally different feel to it then the living/dining room the furniture still all relates even though there are several different wood species and finishes going on.



hope this helps


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## sbryan55 (Dec 8, 2007)

Rick, I just bow to my wife's wishes since I am in charge of engineering and she handles design. The wood in our home is rather eclectic. For instance in the kitchen we have oak furniture, cherry cabinetry, maple flooring (stained cherry), pine baseboard and trim and brazillian cherry quarter round.

The other rooms are pretty much the same story. I guess my feeling is that as long as it is wood the species does not really matter.


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## RichinsCarpentry (Nov 28, 2008)

We mix it up quite a bit. My kitchen is Tennessee red Cedar. The trim throughout my home is Knotty alder. (clear lacquer) My furniture is a mix of Bamboo, Knotty Alder, Dark cherry and Black lacquer thrown in for good measure.


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## RichinsCarpentry (Nov 28, 2008)

We mix it up quite a bit. My kitchen is Tennessee red Cedar. The trim throughout my home is Knotty alder. (clear lacquer) My furniture is a mix of Bamboo, Knotty Alder, Dark cherry and Black lacquer thrown in for good measure.


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## scrappy (Jan 3, 2009)

I have NO sense of style so I use what I (the wife) wants for any given project. She leans towards the darker woods on most things and some of her older furniture is maple. So a lot of our stuff does NOT match.

Also be advised I HATE doing BIG projects. so I try to avoid these. It doesn't allways work.

Scrappy


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## roman (Sep 28, 2007)

no


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## mmh (Mar 17, 2008)

We happen to like classic modern style furniture. (I personally dislike Colonial and oak furniture, although I do have an antique quarter sawn oak rocking chair.) Our favorite woods are Tiger/Fiddleback Maple with Black Walnut and we've made several pieces to match such as the TV table http://lumberjocks.com/projects/10567, Dining Table http://lumberjocks.com/projects/10551 and a coffee table that were designed and fabricated by my husband. (I helped assemble, sand, finish, and made the handles for the TV table.)

The house is over 50 yrs. old and has oak floors which I love, but as for furniture and cabinetry I prefer other woods. The rest of our furniture is eclectic, a little of this and a little of that, which makes it more interesting than having everything the same.

I think the Mahogany would be beautiful and think you'll have fun using different woods to accent it. PLAY, experiment, have fun!!! If you don't learn to play and have fun now, when are you going to do it?


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## CaptainSkully (Aug 28, 2008)

I didn't read through the previous responses, but I think the most important aspect of wood selection is to make it appropriate to the piece. Houses come and go, but hand made furniture lasts forever (hence you'll probably have to bequeath it). I use quartersawn white oak almost exclusively for my Arts & Crafts pieces. Once in a great while I'll use mahogany or walnut as an accent piece. You hardly ever see a Stickley made out of pine. I think a nice, and appropriate piece will look good regardless of it's surroundings.


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## mark88 (Jun 8, 2009)

NO! HAHAHAHAHA man I was just thinking about that last night. I always tell my wife how i wish our furniture would match but I'm always experimenting with new styles and designs and different woods


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## dbhost (Jul 20, 2009)

No, but that's no big deal. However, I try to match wood within a room. So for example, the living bed room furnishings are Lodge Pole Pine with BLO / Wax, hard for me to get here, so trim / accessories I am building are from Southen Yellow Pine (as close as I can get here) with BLO / Wax….

That's what I get for imports…

Living room is a disaster in carried over furnishings that are going bye bye anyway… Looking for a nice walnut slab for a mantle. All the slabs I have looked at have large loose knots in them… Have a friend that is about to remove a Walnut tree on his property. Might just have to take that to a sawyer and get it slabbed and kiln dried…


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## huff (May 28, 2009)

Rick,
I believe at one time people tried to carry the same woods throughout the house, but not so much anymore. I'm not a designer, but over the years, I've seen the trend go more to a pleasant mix of woods and styles (even in the same room)....... And as far as my home goes, if the furniture is wood, I've made it…......and it's all a collection of different styles and different woods that I've wanted to work with. Personally, I love it. It's personal and everyone that visits, knows it's me. (not a package deal from Rooms-to-go).


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## toddc (Mar 6, 2007)

Woods commonly get mixed to some degree in a house. Clear pine is used in the construction of windows for the interior and oak is a common trim material. When it is all stained with the same color it all blends.

I work a lot in older homes and a common situation is to have a premium wood like quartersawn oak in the "public" part of the house like the entry, dining, and living room. A secondary wood like fir or pine is commonly used upstairs and in the bedrooms.

The interesting thing is that nobody really notices the difference. It all looks the same because it is stained the same color and in the day to day activities nobody looks critically at these things. Well… except for me

As a remodeling contractor it is interesting to find things in houses that are totally wacked in one way or another and nobody notices it until is worked on and has to be dealt with.


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## mtkate (Apr 18, 2009)

Exactly as Todd says… if the wood is nothing spectacular I just stain things to make them harmonize. Guaranteed, though… the wood in my house does NOT match.


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## WibblyPig (Jun 8, 2009)

I like to match things by the room. Our living room furniture is cherry, the dining room furniture is oak with painted cabinetry and the kitchen is maple. It's a relatively open floor plan and is all tied together by the spalted oak flooring.


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## RealtorJim (Nov 17, 2009)

I think you have already said the key phrase in your choice of lumber "the wife has requested some pieces". I would advise you get the cut-offs out, finish them up and say "What do you think, dear". I just finished 2 pieces my wife had "requested" - matching 30" X 88" bookcases. I was intending to build them out of walnut to match a writing desk and printer stand that I had built just a few months ago. NOOOOoooo… I didn't realize that would be too much walnut, so they ended up with a dark oak mission look. She is happy with the Light Oak (floor), Dark Oak, Walnut, room configuration and I happily added a walnut face frame to the bookcases (even though I had to blend the color with stain to even out the tones). My wife is a very nice person. She would have let me build the bookcases out of whatever, but the bottomline is, she would not have been truly happy with the outcome and I have to admit it now…. I think she was right. She may not say she has a preference, but I bet she really does!


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## ARTTdylan (Jan 6, 2010)

I agree with bfd - Anything goes as long as it works and looks good.

In my home my living room has mahogany trim and ceiling, bathroom is knotty alder, kitchen is oak and paint grade white, bedrooms are paint grade.

As far as the furniture in those rooms, most is maple but there are others and they look fine.


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