Normally, I patiently wait for photos from our clients of our finished pieces in their home. I couldn’t wait on this one. This is a really neat piece. It’s a wood countertop, well actually a woodbartop, with a wine barrel stave leading edge. The edge is accented with original square nails from an old granary. The center hosts a wine barrel inlay where you can still see the red wine stains. Finally, an end-grain block rests in the center of it all. The wine barrel staves come from California and the wood came from an old corn crib in Minnesota.

This was a fun, iterative process with our client. The initial conversation ended with “something interesting in a 5 foot wide wood counter with an arc peaking at 24 inches and starting at 16 inches on each side.” We played with SketchUp to mock up many different variations. We played with pickle vat wood, plain old white oak, an inlay here and an inlay there. This is the result. Turns out that the natural bend in the barrel staves was nearly a perfect fit for this 16 to 24 inch arch over 5 feet. What beautiful stroke of luck. An of course, what better way to enjoy a glass of wine than on a neat piece of reclaimed wood like this?