A Conversation with Kerf Design

Are you familiar with Kerf Design kitchens or bathrooms or wall mounted shelving units? If you've ever been on mid-century Pinterest, the odds are that you are. And if not, close your eyes and imagine the world's most elegant and simple, yet playful modern plywood box built-ins.

To quote Kerf’s website, “Good joints should be admired. Construction should be simple and honest. We tinker, we improve, and we consider every detail. We love plywood.”  Well, I do too. 

In Today's Episode You'll Hear:

• What a “kerf” is exactly. 
• How Nathan got his start. 
• When is the best time to start on design (hint…it’s early!)

Get the full show notes with all the trimmings at https://www.midmod-midwest.com/2308

Like and subscribe at Apple | Spotify | YouTube. Want us to create your mid-century master plan? Apply here! Or get my course,  Ready to Remodel.

Transcript

Della Hansmann  00:00
Are you familiar with kerf design? Kitchens or bathrooms or wall mounted shelving units? If you've ever been on mid-century Pinterest, the odds are that you are and if not, close your eyes and imagine the world's most elegant and simple yet playful modern plywood box built ins, 

To quote Kerf’s website, “Good joints should be admired. Construction should be simple and honest. We tinker, we improve, and we consider every detail. We love plywood.” Well, I do too, and I love Kerf designs. I've been delighted over the years to recommend them to clients to see a kitchen of theirs installed in a ready to remodel students home. It's stunning, and today I'm super excited to share my conversation with the owner of Kerf studio, Nathan Hartmann.
 
Della Hansmann  00:43
Hey there. Welcome back to mid mod remodel. This is a show about updating MCM homes, helping you match a mid-century home to your modern life. I'm your host. Della Hansmann, architect and mid-century ranch enthusiast. You're listening to Episode 2308. 

Now, before we get fully into the conversation, let's define our terms, a, kerf, K, E, R, F is the width of a cut made by a saw, a blade or a cutting torch. In effect, if you cut a piece of wood in half, the kerf is the missing material between those two halves.
 
Della Hansmann  01:13
A kerf kitchen or bathroom or shelving unit or divider wall is simple, minimalist and elegant. It's made out of plywood, and the cut edges revealed by that kerf cut are used as a feature of the design. They're exposed right on the end. They don't have a little bit of veneer put over them. 

Now, as I said up top, if you don't already know what a kerf kitchen looks like, you are in for a treat, because as soon as you hit their website, kerf design.com or bop over to our homepage for a selection of some of my favorite design projects on the show notes page that's going to be midmod-midwest.com/ 2308.
 
Della Hansmann  01:48
You are in for such a feast for the eyes, the exposed plywood edges are an art piece in themselves, and the way that they notch into each other create elegant, strong joints. They also often play with colored laminate to, as they say, add some joy to your project, and the most gorgeous grain match of the near finishes in maple and walnut. 

So if you're in the market for a Kerf kitchen, or if you're just in the mood to learn a lot of interesting background on the construction of veneer or plywood materials, where they are manufactured, how they're sourced, different woodgrain types, and how this kind of minimalist, sleek, modern cabinet blends in perfectly with the traditions of mid-century history. You're in luck.
 
Della Hansmann  02:30
I'm in luck because Nathan perfectly articulates for me why all of the different members of a design construction team are really valuable and does a better job than I'm ever able to articulate for myself, of talking about why it works so well for his group to work with a designer on one end and then take in the project at a certain level and figure out a lot of the details themselves, and then hand off to a construction team, or in some cases, do the install themselves. 

So if you've ever wondered about the process, this is going to give you some insight into built ins and kitchen design and cabinets generally. It's also wonderful insight into the specific process that Kerf uses to create great kitchens that make their homeowners so happy.
 
Della Hansmann  03:12
And I hope you enjoyed this conversation just as much as I did. I think you're in luck again. Hit the show notes page, mid mod, dash, midwest.com/ 2308 for links, for the transcript, and for so many pretty pictures my favorite projects off the Kerf website. So without further ado, let's get into it.
 
Della Hansmann  03:33
Hello. Welcome. Nathan Hartman of kerf designs, I'm so tickled to have you here, because I am a huge fan of the work that you do and that I've seen across the internet, and I would just love to know more about it. And I know that everybody that listens to mid modern model is also going to be really excited about it. Can I put you on the spot right here at the start? Can you tell me what is a kerf design kitchen or a Kerf design production in general? What sets it apart from other interior finished spaces?
 
Nathan Hartman  04:00
Well, it's, it's great to be here and to meet you like you do a really interesting podcast. I'm happy to, happy to be here and answer some questions. What makes a Kerf design kitchen, um, I think that we take a really design. I don't know it's, going to be a little self-referential just to say we take a design centered approach to designing our spaces, but the reason that the things that we make look the way they do and why they have this kind of unique approach to the style that we've created. It all comes down to a long kind of investigation into using plywood and building things in a really sensitive manner to the materials that we like to use.
 
Della Hansmann  04:55
Yeah, well, and just for people who don't know, kerf is a technical term. Refers to a kind of cut that obviously informs what you do. Can you tell me a little bit more about well, maybe we'll just maybe we should start from the beginning. How did you come to be making this kind of kitchen? And then we'll get a little bit more into what it looks like now and what you produce.
 
Nathan Hartman  05:15
Well, I started industrial design in school. I'm from New Hampshire, so pretty far removed from mid-century modern style. Yeah, not something that is very popular there and that I admittedly didn't really have any appreciation for when I got started. Although my parents were both designers and artists and kind of had a unique approach to life there in New Hampshire. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't very traditional. But I don't think you see that when you're growing up, you just, it's just your environment, right, right?
 
Della Hansmann  05:55
Yeah, it's mostly built up. I feel like a bunch the mid-century centers are the places that boomed during the mid-century years. And so much of the east coast was already built, was filled, already buildings that people were living in, right?
 
Nathan Hartman  06:06
Well, I ended up, I went to art school. I went to Rhode Island School of Design, and studied industrial design and learned a lot about, you know, just RISD, specific sort of approach to studying craft and actually having your hands on stuff and building things and trying to design things with an understanding of how things actually Got produced, right?
 
Della Hansmann  06:40
Yeah, yeah. And that, I think maybe, is a flaw in the educational process of architects. We are not necessarily always encouraged to think about practical details or certainly hands on approaches to details. One of my favorite parts of my own education actually was to get to go down after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 I was down with a group of students who were there for a semester rebuilding as part of our grad program. And that experience of actually like drawing something and having to put it together was very informative. Of my later
 
Nathan Hartman  07:14
makes you understand why your
 
Della Hansmann  07:16
career, yeah,
 
Nathan Hartman  07:17
understand why you're drawing these details. Because it's really important when you're thinking about how some intersection happens, that you know no one's gonna see it when the building's done, but, or maybe every, or maybe everyone sees it. And that's, that's what makes it interesting, right?
 
Della Hansmann  07:33
Yes, exactly. Or no one sees it until there's a failure, and then everyone sees it. So, yeah, how it's done really matters.
 
Nathan Hartman  07:41
So I got this, I got this education and design. Moved to the West Coast immediately afterwards, just kind of on a whim, and I was very much out of my environment, right? Suddenly, I was surrounded by all this mid-century stuff in Seattle.
 
Della Hansmann  07:59
Yeah, tree is big out there. Yeah.
 
Nathan Hartman  08:04
And so this was the 90s, and I was, you know, working jobs that I could find, and playing with some ideas of my own. And I had a friend who was still living on the East Coast, and he was, he had started a little furniture studio, and I visited him, and he was working on a project for the Crate and Barrel, and they had said, oh, we need a we need a side table or something, and, and here's how much it needs to cost.
 
Nathan Hartman  08:36
And that was kind of the only parameter they gave him. And, and it had gone so far from like, from what I had taken from school, where it seemed like, you know you're supposed to design and think about like, the meaning of what you were doing and your childhood, or your beliefs or whatever, and embody that in the way something looked and it was kind of surprising to see that industry was like, We need this. This is how much it costs. Get us something,
 
Della Hansmann  09:02
right? An object, it functions, it has
 
Nathan Hartman  09:05
a price. Yeah, it has a price, right? And I don't know, I just, I thought it was an interesting challenge, because it wasn't very much money. And so I came back and I was thinking about it, and I made these little tables that were really simple. They were really easy to make because the budget was so small, it had to be something that I could build really quickly on my own and not spend a lot of money on materials.
 
Nathan Hartman  09:29
And so that's why I started working with plywood and plastic laminate. Yeah, they were also around, you know, I could just grab them off the shelf of the shop I was working at and put things together. But so the very beginning of the idea was thinking about like, how you're going to build something, what it's going to be made out of. Before I was even thinking about what it was going to look like. Now, I kind of took what it looks like as the result of those, those earlier, you know, criteria. Yeah, well,
 
Della Hansmann  10:02
that feels very tied to sort of a modernist idea of honest materials and the thing that's made of informing the esthetic. And that, maybe not mid-century specifically, but very much in the kind of very
 
Nathan Hartman  10:15
modernist though. And I think that at that, at that point, something for me clicked, and I was like, oh, you know, I guess this is what you know Charles and Ray Eames were doing, you know, 50 years ago. How interesting that I've that I've rediscovered this thing that people have already done and moved on from.
 
Nathan Hartman  10:31
But I don't know it, just it kind of opened my eyes to what, what the interesting things were about that that work beyond just like how they looked, right? They weren't just abstract ideas. They were really about manufacturing. And they were filling needs right, like they were. They were building out this post war explosion. Everybody needed housing. It had to be a certain scale and size and cost, and they were all really important.
 
Della Hansmann  11:05
Yeah, fast, yeah, those things.
 
Nathan Hartman  11:07
And at the same time, some of these architects were building these things, and not in spite of all those constraints, but because of them. They came up with some things that were really beautiful, you know? And I kind of learned to appreciate them with that fact, and I started to look around myself. Around myself in Seattle and go, Wow, you know, there's, there's a cool one over there. I never would have noticed it.
 
Nathan Hartman  11:29
So I was developing this furniture. It was really hard because, you know, it's hard to make a living building furniture, anyone will tell you that. Yeah. And people started hiring me to build cabinets, which made a lot more sense. And it was actually something that something it was something that somebody needed. It was a happenstance, and it's it had already been my career for five or 10 years before that was just working in cabinet shops, and that's what people use table saws do
 
Della Hansmann  12:03
right experience in more traditional, well, more conventional formatting, conventional cabinet, you started to take your furniture approach into the cabinet world, exactly.
 
Nathan Hartman  12:15
And, yeah. And, and what I found was, because of the way that I had approached it, and by coincidence, the materials that I had chosen, all the stuff I was doing, fit really well into these mid-century homes that at the time were all just beginning to really get a lot of focus and be renovated.
 
Nathan Hartman  12:34
Yeah, like in the in the 90s, in the early 90s, I think if you turned on the TV, the example I always use is you turn on the TV and you see a car commercial, and the guy drives his Cadillac, and he pulls up in front of a big McMansion, like in 1994 but by the year 2000 they pulled up in front of an Eichler house in California, and it's like the whole trend Of like, what, what was cool changed in that period. And it was just great timing, because I was doing this thing that fit into those places, esthetically, but also kind of conceptually and everybody needed it right then,
 
Della Hansmann  13:17
and hit the moment well, and it's so appropriate, because even though you're right, advertising was shifting, and there was a new niche appreciation for mid-century, what most people were building into their kitchen remodels in the 2000s was nowhere near as appropriate as what for a mid-century house.
 
Della Hansmann  13:36
It was very much like we're going to take the sort of the honey oak cabinets and with the ornate detailing and the Formica, or like, going up to, like, the like teal of it all, the pink of it all, and then coming into, like, your black granite countertops, none of which is informed by the house itself, but your designs really work well in a mid-century house. And there are mid-century houses all around you, so yeah, and they work well, but they're also mid-century
 
Nathan Hartman  14:02
lover, yeah, exactly. They work well, even though they aren't reproduction, right? Like, we aren't designing cabinets that are supposed to imitate those, those things, you know, it's not a time capsule. And so I think that that's another reason that that we've been successful is because you're doing something new, but it still uses the same, well, the same materials and the same approach,
 
Della Hansmann  14:25
although, I mean, there are a lot you're right, a Kerf design, especially with the lovely, exposed plywood edges and some of the color choices that you make, doesn't look like a time capsule mid-century house, but your modest builder grade house in 1952 this one, for example, has a lot of plywood in it.
 
Della Hansmann  14:41
The doors of my kitchen cabinets are plywood with router. Day Exactly, exactly. This is, you know, ply. I was actually wondering, I pulled out this book to ask, are you familiar with Mario del Fabro, how to make built in furniture was published in, I think, first published in the early 50s. And it's filled with all these DIY instructions, yeah, how to make exposed edge plywood pieces. The book, I'm
 
Nathan Hartman  15:08
not, I'm not familiar with that book, but I know the stuff,
 
Della Hansmann  15:13
also not what you see everywhere in a mid-century house, but the ideas were floating around and that this sort of the I think it's one of those ideas that comes back again and again, and again. Like you say, you rediscovered the Eameses’ process by practicality, by using practical machine materials in an efficient way.
 
Della Hansmann  15:31
And I'll send you the information for that book, by the way, if you want to track that would be great. Yeah, I got mine. It's actually a copy from a library in Canada that was published in England in the 60s, but it was also available for publication in the US, and sort of also, like the Popular Mechanics approach to, like, finish your own basement with plywood details, yeah, just make
 
Nathan Hartman  15:52
some and unfortunately, unfortunately, a lot of that stuff. It's, you know, if they did it in the 60s, it's now 60 years old, right, right? And maybe it's kind of worn out, it's falling apart. And maybe, maybe it was your grandpa building it in the garage, you know, maybe it wasn't a professional shop. So, I mean, that's great for me, because we make cabinets and we love going into replacing them, but,
 
Della Hansmann  16:19
yeah, well, actually, this is not even on my list of questions, but I'm curious, in the houses that you end up working on, do you haven't do you get to know what was there before? So how often are you replacing, like, original, not, not very cabinets, versus coming back and taking out, like a 90s remodel and putting in a new, more Kerf design? It's both, yeah. I mean, I get the same with
 
Nathan Hartman  16:39
my clients, yeah, yeah. Like, I feel kind of bad sometimes when we're tearing out the old stuff. I mean, there's some really neat old cabinets that we've removed that's been a shame. But, you know, they've outlived their lifespan. So yeah.
 
Della Hansmann  16:53
I mean, there's, there are, after 70 years, there are going to be some failures of performance. And then also, does the original setup fit the needs of the current owner, which is the question that I'm always asking with my question, yeah,
 
Nathan Hartman  17:07
and, and, and, there's also a difference in who the owners are. Now, like a lot of work we do down in the Bay Area, you know, the South Bay, there's a lot of money there. Now there, there wasn't one when they were building these Eichler neighborhoods. But now, you know, they aren't modest, middle class housing.
 
Nathan Hartman  17:28
They're all owned by very wealthy people who are buying, you know, when they, when they're buying the real estate for a couple million dollars, it's, it's no longer appropriate to have a kitchen that your grandpa built in the garage in that right? Like there's a certain level of finish that has to match the new the new client, right? And so, yeah, yeah. I mean, not that I'm proud of that. I kind of prefer the modest projects myself. But, you know, I honestly
 
Della Hansmann  18:01
feel the same. I mean, I love it when we off, if we get to work on a house that was, you know, designed by an architect back when, and a lovely post and beam structure with glass screen walls, it's delightful. But some of the best challenges are how to fit a great design into, like, a really tiny footprint, and how to figure out how we can really improve someone's life by changing pulling as few strings as possible, which is, you know, that's part of the challenge of design. I sense the kindred spirit in you there. So how did you go from a couple of people wanted you to maybe do some cabinets for them while you were making furniture, to now you are kerf design, and everybody knows your name.
 
Nathan Hartman  18:39
Oh, well, it's, it's just been kind of a long, gradual process. It's all grown very organically. You know, I hired someone because I needed some help building things, and then I hired someone because I needed some help drawing things. And we're still not a huge company. I think there's 14 people working here now. So, you know, we're still a small business. But it's really, it really has kind of just been a really steady development over 26 years.
 
Della Hansmann  19:19
Well, that is, yeah, it's the journey. And I think when you ideally, the world doesn't always reward quality the way it ought to, but ideally, when you're doing good work, then you get word of mouth people hearing about it, knowing about it, yeah, finding it exciting, wanting to try it for themselves. I'm curious about, well, actually, maybe we want to talk a little bit more about the mid-century of it all. You probably don't only do designs for kitchens in mid-century, built houses or No, no,
 
Nathan Hartman  19:50
primarily, not only, I mean, that's, that's definitely the bulk of our work. But we've done stuff for all sorts of different houses, you know, from brand new. Of really modern builds to, you know, 300 year old, you know, New England farmhouses and stuff like that, like it's just, we'll do, we'll do whatever anybody needs, as long as it's, you know, made out of plywood.
 
Della Hansmann  20:19
Actually, I've got some questions I wanted to ask because I was poking around on your FAQ pages, and you obviously are an expert in what can be done with plywood, and I was noticing that you were talking about veneers and different options. So you have a maple and a walnut and then a fresh I forgot how you described it, but a fresher and aged version. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?
 
Nathan Hartman  20:43
Well, the plywood, it has a face veneer on the outside, and that's the decorative veneer. And because we're because the product we use is being custom made for us, we have to the plywood itself. Well, I mean, not entirely. It's the core of the plywood as an import, and it's just a standard thing that lots of different companies use. And then they name it different things depending on who's producing it. But the core comes in. And then there's a factory down in Oregon that puts the decorative veneers on the outside. And then they do a finishing process for us down there too on the faces. So we're specking what you know, the quality and the type of wood that we want on the outsides of it,
 
Della Hansmann  21:44
beautiful every time I've seen an image,
 
Nathan Hartman  21:48
brain quality, yeah. So we had to choose. I decided we're going to constrain ourselves. We're just going to have a light wood and a dark wood. So we chose maple and walnut, partly because of just needing space to store all the inventory that we need and the cost of that, and just the fact that we weren't going to be able to have a custom veneer for each different project, right? So the aged versus the new looking stuff, we made a point of showing that on the website, because that veneer on the outside of the plywood.
 
Speaker 1  22:22
It's wood, it's a natural material. And like any other piece of wood, it's going to change over time, you know, and exposure to sunlight and air and things like that. And so it can be kind of a dramatic change. Like walnut, when we first get it, has this really dark brown, almost a blue tone to it. And after a couple of years, it gets a lot lighter, and it turns to a really orange color.
 
Della Hansmann  22:52
So the aging process happens in situ. It's just like, after a time, just naturally, okay, yeah, I was wondering about that, because it felt like maybe it was two options you could choose. But I was really drawn to the aged product because, yeah, for me, one of the defining visual qualities of mid-century woodwork is that it has that warmth to it. Yeah. And then I feel like a lot of modern wood products, even if they're have the sort of search term mid-century applied to them, feel cold or blue in a way I don't know that that changes over time. They may have some finish applied to them that prevents them,
 
Nathan Hartman  23:29
or they may not. They may not be wood either, right, like some kind of print, like, like the I always have to, well, not always, but I often have to explain to people that that it's wood and it's gonna, you know, the cabinet they get might not look like the same picture of another one they saw because it's came from a different tree.
 
Della Hansmann  23:49
The green is different,
 
Nathan Hartman  23:50
the crane is different, and it's gonna change color over the years. You know, that's kind of a problem when it comes to like, if we have to replace a door on someone's cabinet that we built five years ago. Like we can make a new door, but it's not going to look the same, not for
 
Della Hansmann  24:06
eventually. It will right,
 
Nathan Hartman  24:07
eventually, eventually,
 
Della Hansmann  24:09
yeah, this is such a digression, but my parents have not mid-century at all. They have a property where they built an oak timber frame barn, and the it's raw oak, and it should just weather it, but when they put it up, it up, it was very like honey, warm colored. And they put the, it's a, it's a board and batten barn.
 
Della Hansmann  24:27
So they put the boards on one year, and then they waited three years to put the battens on because they were, I don't know, distracted or something. And when they put the battens on, it was pinstriped because the boards had faded to gray, which they love, and then the battens were the light honey color again. And they hadn't actually noticed that fade process happening until they put them on and they had to wait three more years for it all to kind of become uniform. But in the time span of that barn, it should look the same for decades, once it's all faded
 
Nathan Hartman  24:54
in, right, right, hopefully for the life of that barn,
 
Della Hansmann  24:58
I was also curious about. What, what is the I don't even know the terminology, but there's a bunch of different kinds of veneers. And I hear a lot of talk about a rotary cut versus like a rift sawn versus quarter sawn. And I think that also makes a difference a lot, particularly when I'm advising clients. It makes a big difference to how mid-century versus contemporary something ends up looking what the cut of the veneer is and yours? Yeah, whatever it is, feels mid-century, appropriate to me. How is it?
 
Nathan Hartman  25:27
Yeah, well, the maple veneer is rotary cut. So they, they take a log, and they put it on a giant wave, and they put a great big knife next to it, and they just peel the log down, like, I don't know like you're peeling, I don't know what you're feeling like you're peeling a carrot, but in the wrong direction, right?
 
Della Hansmann  25:47
Yeah, it's wild. I've seen videos and so
 
Nathan Hartman  25:50
that the near it, the grain pattern, is kind of a really random it almost looks like a topographical map,
 
Della Hansmann  26:01
exactly what I always think, yeah,
 
Nathan Hartman  26:03
it feels, well, that's actually what it is really, because it's cutting through the different growth rings of the of the tree, and you're seeing the lighter and darker, yeah. So that's what you're looking at. I mean, that's all the wood grain is really the walnut we get. It's a it's a plain sliced walnut, which means they just take the tree and they start slicing. It's not on a layer. They just slice it lengthwise. And is
 
Della Hansmann  26:30
it a Is it harder to do a Is it impossible to do a rotary walnut, or is it just a happenstance of
 
Nathan Hartman  26:37
I honestly don't know if I've ever seen rotary walnut. I just don't know if people get that, yeah, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it doesn't cut us well, that way, yeah,
 
Della Hansmann  26:47
doesn't sheer off in little slices. Fascinating. Well, I mean, people love people in the mid-century space. Think of walnut is really high end. It's lovely. There's a lot of walnut mid-century original furniture, but you're much less likely to see it for like, big panel walls or things like that. Maybe that's because of the it. It isn't rotary cut. Maybe that means it doesn't rotary cut well, in the mid-century era, door behind me, absolutely rotary cut, but it's pine. But of course, today, we don't have the same kind of old growth pine to work with so you wouldn't work in line under any circumstances.
 
Nathan Hartman  27:25
I wish, actually, I would. I would love to introduce in the new you know, in the last few years, finding plywood has gotten a lot harder and a lot more expensive. All of our product used to come out of Russia, and when they invaded Ukraine, that whole supply chain got disrupted, and it already been in trouble because of covid. So now it comes from various Eastern European countries. I think Latvia is our current supplier, and so I would love to find a domestic source for, you know, really high quality, nice wood, you know, if I could, if I could have a rotary cut for panel that that would machine, as well as the stuff that we're using now, I would use it in a second. But we just haven't found the right product yet.
 
Della Hansmann  28:19
Something out of Washington State. Are we? I have not actually thought about this. Are we cutting down the original old growth forests of Latvia for our pretty plywood right now? Or do they have, why are we sourcing it there?
 
Nathan Hartman  28:31
Well, I don't, I don't know that it's old growth, but that's, that's where the birch trees grow, and a lot of them, you know, trees. It's, it's climate, it's climate. But I don't think that cutting, how do I put this? Cutting down a tree doesn't, doesn't, doesn't hurt that the climate, or the environment, you know, the carbon that the tree has captured to grow into a tree and produce all that wood that it's, you know that that the carbon in the air used to be, it's, it's that's cut down, and then we cut it up, and we build a kitchen out of it, so there's the there's the climate, right? And then grow another tree, don't set it on fire, and then you grow another tree in its place, right? If you're not replacing them, that's a problem. But all of our stuff is, is sustainably harvested, meaning they go and plant, you know, when they cut,
 
Della Hansmann  29:25
nice, interesting. Well, that took me into a whole now I know more sourcing and the supply lines apply them in the US. These are things that as a as an architect who focuses on the schematic. End of things, I'm not that involved in, but I am always fascinated by it. So thank you for a little side direction into plywood supply lines and veneer process. So actually, no, I have a follow up question. So you get your the wood finish comes from the place in Oregon that's putting on nice veneers. What about if you're going to do a color? Do you apply that in house, in your shop, or is that also sourced from somewhere?
 
Nathan Hartman  29:59
Yeah. So applying the colors that's usually in the form of plastic laminate. Okay, so the veneer is the veneer. We don't have an opportunity to stain the wood or anything. You just kind of have to use what you get. But all the bright colors that you see on our products are plastic laminate, and we do that in house, in the shop.
 
Della Hansmann  30:25
Do you put it right over the same veneer, or do you put it onto a different quality of or a blank? Well, it's
 
Nathan Hartman  30:31
it's actually a little. It's a little, it's a little complicated. We don't really use laminate in the way that most places do. Usually, when you build something with plastic laminate, you Well, first you'd probably be using particle board or MDF, because it's a nice, flat, stable surface, right? And in the end, you're going to be covering it with laminate anyway, so you're kind of trying to make something look like something else, right? We're using laminate in in a way that still shows its laminate. Like, we'll use it, I don't know, two dimensionally, right? We're, we're not trying to make a door with laminate on it, like, right, right. We're not trying to make it look like something else. It's just a door and then a layer of laminate on the surface of it. Oftentimes in our cabinets, there's multiple colors, or there's a mix of laminate and wood veneer parts next to each other, and so oftentimes, a piece of wood, one of our panels, will need a small patch of green laminate in one spot, and then some wood, and then a little white spot somewhere else. And so we're not laminating full sheets and then cutting up parts out of a pre laminated sheet. We're taking an entire sheet of plywood, we draw all of our parts on the computer, and then we nest them on the plywood so that all the parts use as much of the wood as we can. And then the first step when we're building stuff is we use a CNC router, a computer controlled router, just this big machine has a big flat table. You lay the plywood on the surface of it, and then it comes and the first step that we do is we mill some very shallow pockets in the surface of the plywood. That's where that laminate needs to go, and the laminate is, the laminates in exactly so the laminates about 40 thousandths of an inch. So we'd mill a 40,000 inch deep pocket, we cut a piece of laminate that fits it exactly on the router as well, and then we glue it into that spot over and over, right and then. And then you cut all the parts out, and then you put the cabinets together, which is great, because normally building with laminates kind of a miserable occupation. You know, there's, there's a lot of mass, there's glue everywhere, right? Trimming stuff is really tough.
 
Della Hansmann  33:09
So when you end up cutting out, like the little drawer panel, that's laminate, are you cutting through the laminate at all? Are you basically cutting exactly around the finished edge of the laminate?
 
Nathan Hartman  33:19
We cut through both parts. So we'd make the to get a neat the piece we put on the Yeah, yeah, exactly. Interesting.
 
Della Hansmann  33:27
I was thinking about the last time I was involved in any kind of, like, planted on the computer and then have it cut out. Was grad school. Everything was done with the laser cutter, but it always had that ugly, burned edge, which is maybe why you're not doing anything with laser cutter. You using the CNC, which is, is it slicing? Is it or it's a router edge? What is it's, it's,
 
Nathan Hartman  33:50
we just, we just lost half your audience. We
 
Della Hansmann  33:54
go to the history deep dives and we do this. So
 
Nathan Hartman  33:58
it's a router bit. So it's that, it's like a cylindrical cutter. And, yeah, yeah. And it's just, it's, it's, we, it wouldn't work with a laser. It would be too much, too much cutting and burning and also, we cut to different depths. So you know, our joinery, our plywood panels all fit together. So the panels fit into slots that we cut into the into the other parts, you know. So it all fits in like a puzzle. Yeah, yeah.
 
Della Hansmann  34:30
So, yeah, fabulous. So, okay, that actually leads very organically to the next question I wanted to ask, which is, how things get assembled and then delivered? Because this isn't the sort of thing where a bunch of flat pack pieces go to site, right? You put the boxes together and then ship those Right, right? Maybe that's jumping the gun on the design process, but let's just actually talk about the delivery process, how a cabinet comes from your shop and goes into somebody's house.
 
Nathan Hartman  34:57
So we do, we build everything here. I. You know, we actually did do some flat pack stuff back in like, 2007 2006 2007 Yeah, as an experiment, and it turned out to be more work, in some ways, than just building the cabinets here, we never gained any of the efficiencies that we thought we would in the production and it turned out that the shipping didn't really come down in cost either, because it's all the same weight. And so if the shipping company is charging by the pound, it doesn't matter if they're shipping a big empty crate or a little heavy crate, right?
 
Della Hansmann  35:45
I wonder there might be slight differences, but maybe there's a more of a volume pricing for international shipping. Is that why we're getting back furniture? Well, there are abroad,
 
Nathan Hartman  35:53
there are efficiencies, but you need to, like, be packing containers full of stuff. Like, when you're paying for a container, it's going to be the same price one way or another. You know, for one kitchen, it's not a container, yeah, but a container full of errors, yeah, not going to be worth it.
 
Della Hansmann  36:06
And doing it yourself allows you to control for quality and in the shop.
 
Nathan Hartman  36:11
And then that was the other thing is, since we weren't building things from start to finish, it was hard to know when we were done, like when we had hit every detail and every drawer was working right, and it was much easier to forget stuff. And so Mistakes were made, and we found it was a lot easier to just do quality control when we could build things from start to finish here and then break them down and pack them up and send them out. Interesting.
 
Della Hansmann  36:42
So who does it take to install a kerf kitchen for someone like in the Midwest who might want to hire or design and then have it sent here?
 
Nathan Hartman  36:50
Yeah, usually it's a contractor. Like, normally, if you're working on a kitchen remodel, it's kind of a big project, so you're likely not doing it yourself. There's going to be plumbers and electricians and tile guys and cabinet people and all that, and there's going to be a general contractor that's running the whole thing, and they're most often, they're going to be qualified to install the cabinets, or they'll even hire a sub to install the cabinets. It's not to say we don't have customers that do it themselves. You know, some people are just love it and they want to do it themselves, but usually it's a contractor.
 
Della Hansmann  37:30
So it's potentially DIY able, but it's probably something that
 
Nathan Hartman  37:33
potentially, I mean, there's definitely some, there's definitely some, some skills that you need. You have to understand what scribing is and how to get things in level and square and things like that. I wouldn't want to do it for the first time and expect it to come out well, right?
 
Della Hansmann  37:52
That's always the thing about DIYing on your own. But yeah, I could figure it out, but then my figuring it out would be the lesson that you could kitchen for, and then the next
 
Nathan Hartman  38:01
time, it'll look really good, but that first time it's going to be tough.
 
Della Hansmann  38:04
Yeah, yeah, that's the it's the challenge of all DIYers. And there are many of whom Listen, listen to mid modern model, but, but, yeah, okay, so maybe let's go to the beginning of the process. So if I, if I had a master plan client who said, Hey, what we really want is Kerf. Where would you begin? Do you ever coordinate, coordinate and collaborate with designers? I know you have in house design teams, and you work the design of kitchens, but where do you do a handoff if you're working with an architecture and interiors person, when you do that's a good question.
 
Nathan Hartman  38:36
I think, like, especially, you know, doing the kind of work that you do, it's really, it's really a good lead into the work that we do, where it's great to have an architect on a project. Like an architect, they do a lot of things really well, and they can think about the space and how things should be laid out and set up and just make a lot of decisions that maybe you don't even realize you need to make before you get started or give you ideas that you may not have considered. Right? The perfect handoff point, though, for an architect working with us is if they've done that space planning, and they've blocked out the kitchen and said, This is how we see it going together.
 
Speaker 1  39:27
And we think, like, the fridge should be over here, and this is how we want the island to be used. And then they give us that, and then we do all the detailing. We say, Okay, well, this is how we're going to build it. Here's where we think you should have this drawer in that drawer, and maybe you want to be over here for something, you know, and usually that's a, that's a process that we'll do with the with the actual client, rather than the architect, because they're the ones that are going to be living with it, not all the time, but usually, well that so, so the general outline is a great place to start coming to us is how. An idea of, like, having already thought about a lot of that stuff, of you know, how you plan to use the space
 
Della Hansmann  40:05
and everything that dovetails perfectly with our process. Because what I'm most interested in with my clients is thinking about the major are we shifting spaces? Is the kitchen going to stay where it is? Is it going to grow out into different areas? Are we opening up walls? How are we working within structure? And my sketches always include like, we'll try to put in drawers versus cabinet doors if that's what we've heard from the client and think about things like that. But we are not micro detailing how every element of storage should work.
 
Della Hansmann  40:31
Honestly, even if I had all the time in the world to give to a project, I'm not as expert in that as you are, or as any cabinet shop is going to be, so I always feel like we're kind of giving the concept of kitchen use to a person who's going to then detail. And we do try to keep in mind, like drawing, I don't know if it's even obvious in the outcome, but we were thinking in like, sort of like three inch increments, trying not to design unreasonable spaces, but, but we're not sort of detailing down, like, Where does one cabinet box and where does the next one begin and that, and
 
Nathan Hartman  41:05
that's perfect. And, I mean, it's and it's not like sometimes we'll have an architect that's working with us, and they have a client that's excited about us, and the architects excited, and they kind of give us their vision of what it should look like based on how they how they think our stuff looks. And so they make a Kerf design, and they lay it all out, and they do all this work. And I look at it and say, Oh, we can't do this. It doesn't work that we can't those joints don't work in real life. You know, we have to do it all differently. And that can be a tough conversation sometimes.
 
Della Hansmann  41:43
I bet that takes some work. Well, that's an interesting question of sort of precision versus accuracy in information processing, and it's something that I keep us entirely out of in our process, because we're so often working on remote projects where we have relatively accurate, dimensional information, but not perfect, and so I don't want that's why we stick to sketches.
 
Della Hansmann  42:06
I don't want to be messing around with eighths of an inch in AutoCAD that are not reality, and then handing it off to someone like build from this which they can't so I can hear how that might happen if someone's if they design in Revit, or if they design in CAD and they're just sort of like placing things around and thinking about, I've got my three about, I've got my three quarter or my three eighths, yeah, plywood thickness here, and that's not how your shop is going to put it together. So then there's an overlap and a double, a double, yeah, yes, yeah. It's not capable.
 
Nathan Hartman  42:35
And sometimes it can, yeah, for sure,
 
Della Hansmann  42:40
but, and I also think it is a nice thing. I want to be very one on one with my clients while we're thinking through the schematic layout of places. And then I feel like in in a different in a different format, if you're going to be the architect that does construction management, I think it can make sense to keep a handle on the process, but the less, the less cooks in the kitchen. Of the kitchen design at each individual space phase is probably wise, because then you can really work with someone on, like, I don't know, how detailed do you go about like, where do you want various types of what's going to be stored inside of the drawers or cabinets or things like that. What are you thinking about when you're putting together a design to build?
 
Nathan Hartman  43:20
We don't. We don't really have any rules about our services. We basically do whatever it takes to make sure the client's happy with the design. And sometimes, you know, sometimes we'll have someone come to us with a project, and we do one drawing, and they're like, Oh, that's perfect, right? And, and we just build it, and everybody loves it. And then other times, you know, it's like, we'll go back and forth for months, just, you know, working out the details and saying, oh, you know, I realized I have this, this weird spoon that's not going to fit in that drawer.
 
Speaker 1  43:57
Can we make a different place to store that? You know, it's all great, and we just, we just, we try not to worry too much about the time of our designers and just that process, because it's really about understanding what people need and just listening to the clients and trying to give them back something that they're going to be happy with.
 
Della Hansmann  44:26
So, well, it's hard to it's hard to put a time limit on design, but it's so valuable. And if you don't get the design right,
 
Nathan Hartman  44:33
not for kitchen, because they don't have a kitchen until it's done, right. So, right. So there is a time limit for us, and we can say, hey, if you're expecting to be cooking in this place in July, we need you to decide these things by May or whatever. So you've
 
Della Hansmann  44:48
got some lead time parameters that are right in there, right? But I guess my point was, if it's not there, if it's not designed to a place that's going to make them happy, then the most precise. Perfect, beautiful build will ultimately frustrate, yeah, so there's, there's so much value in that. Do you build your design time into overhead, or do you charge for that work? It's just overhead. It's interesting to think about how it falls into different parts.
 
Della Hansmann  45:14
You know, like contractors will if they have an insider's internal designer, a certain way, an architect. Yeah, we are the design, like, that's what we charge for. So it's curious to think about how it falls into the structure of different things.
 
Nathan Hartman  45:27
That's my least favorite part of the whole business, is, how much should we charge for this?
 
Della Hansmann  45:33
I mean, yeah, and it's honestly something I really struggled with, and it's why I ended up going with like, a fixed fee package product, because I just hate haggling over, how many hours did I think about this? Well, I don't know. I was thinking about it while I walked my dog in the morning, and I was thinking about it before I fell asleep at night, and I was thinking about it while I coached dinner, and then I drew on it for four hours. And it's just impossible for me to run a timer
 
Nathan Hartman  45:55
on that. So instead, I'm like, we it was this many weeks. We pretty much for us, it all comes down to how many square feet of plywood a project takes, you know, and we've been able to, like, we've been able to come up with pricing. I mean, not entirely that, but pricing based on what the actual design is.
 
Speaker 1  46:15
And we know well enough, like, how long it takes to build that. And we know more or less how long it takes to design a kitchen of that scale or something like that. So, so the calculator that we use is all it all comes down to square feet of material and how many drawers there are and things like that, well.
 
Della Hansmann  46:35
And I can see how that probably reliably informs the person time and the sort of complexity of it and all those things. Well, you had wanted to talk about somehow that your favorite projects are sometimes the modest ones. Do you have? Can you think of like a favorite project off the top of your head? Could you send me a link to your portfolio or a picture after we're done talking to be like, This is my favorite, or these five or like, a kind of project.
 
Nathan Hartman  47:02
I think it's the kind of project, you know, it's, it's when, when the client's really involved, it's great, you know, when we're not working through an intermediary. And, you know, more often than not, this, this is the way that it goes, right? We're working with the homeowner. They're doing it for themselves, like that was something that you were talking about recently, is like, oh, Should I, should I think about the resale value of my home, or what the next owner is going to want? You know?
 
Speaker 1  47:30
And I always try and discourage people from thinking about that, because it doesn't matter, and maybe they're going to want exactly what you come up with because it's so cool. You know, they might choose the house. Maybe they're not sure, yeah, that might be why someone buys the house. Or maybe you'll never move.
 
Della Hansmann  47:49
That's, I don't know that you find this, but I think one of the luxuries of the business model that I've created somehow happened into walked towards, is that we're usually working for people who think of themselves as being in their forever home. And so when we think about the house, I mean, one of the challenges of the design, then, is to look like a young family who's just having their first kids. To be like if you want to age in place in this house.
 
Della Hansmann  48:12
What will it be like to be in these spaces with teenagers? What will it be like to be living these spaces as empty nesters? What will it be like to have accessibility issues in these spaces and look forward to all those things. Yeah, I love that. But I think for you in your kitchen, work like you, this is a specific choice to choose kerf. It is gorgeous. It is thoughtful and detailed and lovely, but it's not, maybe for everyone's taste. So you're making that choice for yourself because you love it when you choose a Kerf, yeah, yeah, yeah.
 
Della Hansmann  48:43
So the idea of, like, a spec Kerf kitchen, just it kind of makes me giggle, and it also makes me roll my eyes, just like, why would you why would you do that? Yeah, I can definitely see how when you get to work with a specific person or people, then, yeah, that's the fun of it. That's the fun for me, too. Yep.
 
Nathan Hartman  49:04
And I just, I mean, personally, I really appreciate the smaller houses. And, like I, people often build too much for themselves, right, like too much house. And I think that right sized houses are really appealing to me. And I just, I just find it very satisfying to make those places work right, right,
 
Della Hansmann  49:25
well and good built ins are the key to living well in a smaller space. You know? Sure, I think, yeah, it's easy to be profligate with square footage when you can just sort of like, always throw a closet somewhere and then not care about things. But when you're when you're trying to fit into the dimensions of a classic mid-century house, for example, you do need to have the right kind of storage handy, out of sight, but close to where you're going to be the right
 
Nathan Hartman  49:51
that's great. It's great to like relating to that is when people are thinking, when they go into a property. Project, and they think about the way they're living and you know that you like to keep stuff out on the counter, so let's make sure that there's a place for that, right? Yeah, let's make sure that the counter is designed to have toasters and coffee makers and all that stuff that we that they don't just end up there, right?
 
Speaker 1  50:23
Or, you know, think about your house and the way you're living, and maybe you thought you have habits that you want to change, right? Like, if your entryway is always, like, cluttered with a bunch of stuff, let's, let's design that entryway to declutter it and make that part of your life better, right? So you're either, like, trying to enhance your life as it is, or help you change, right?
 
Della Hansmann  50:49
Yeah, and I that's really fun. My design attitude is generally like, Let's lean into your predilections, because I don't think you're going to be a better human being when you're exactly finished. But you know, if there's a clutter hotspot, you can try to make it go away. Sure. Yeah, I'm a
 
Nathan Hartman  51:04
very My desk is a mess, right? And for years, I thought I felt really bad about it, because I have piles of paper and, you know, screws and pieces of hardware and notes and just everything all over the place. And I clean it up, and then a week later, it looks the same again. And, and I finally just had to, like, give myself permission to have a desk like that, because clearly it works for me. I've been living like that for a long time.
 
Speaker 1  51:33
And maybe I feel more creative in that environment, you know, maybe it's how I like to live instead of the other way around. And so, you know, it's a choice, right? And it's not a bad choice, just because it's not the choice that you see in a magazine.
 
Della Hansmann  51:51
You know, it's a personal quality. But that might mean that you like to keep your desk in a room with a door that closes, rather than, like, exactly, living area, yeah, exactly. There you go. These it, yeah, well, this is exactly the kind of question that I asked my clients in the first meeting of like, are you clutter people? Where do you keep your clutter? Where will it be? It's all it exists. No one lives like a magazine. So like, where are we hiding it?
 
Della Hansmann  52:13
All right, I have two more questions I want to ask you. One is sort of like highbrow architect-y, designerly, like, who you mentioned, a couple of key influences in in the message you sent before we chatted. And I love into that a little bit more. And then also, I just want to put you on the spot. If you've got any good tips for kitchen design, how do you design as counter space for a toaster? How do you sort of think about what's gonna what are some of your best favorite things to surprise a client with and say, Oh, well, what I suggest is, okay, doing either one of those
 
Nathan Hartman  52:46
first, sure, well, I guess the second question like, like, little tips, or little things I try to do to, you know, surprise a client. You know, when we're doing an initial proposal or something, it's really not rocket science, right? It's not complicated. It's only cabinets. It's only a kitchen. So I'm not going to say we're inventing anything, you know, that's going to change their lives, but we're going to try and be helpful, right?
 
Speaker 1  53:16
And so, you know, if I have a little open cubby in some spot, you know, I always try and include a little spot that's a place you can put some cutting boards, you know, so that they have a house, but they're easy to get to. They're handy. Or we do a lot of on a lot of our upper cabinets, the very lowest shelf on them is, usually, is oftentimes open, and it's a little shallower than the rest of the cabinet, so it's a little it's sort of stepped back from the countertop. If it's a place where you're going to be working, it kind of opens the area up a little bit, and then you just have stuff to grab off of that, you know, if it's spices or, you know, coffee cups or that kind of stuff.
 
Speaker 1  53:57
It's just trying to make things like that convenient, making sure that all your dish and glasses storage is very close to your dishwasher, so when you're unloading, you're just not walking back and forth across the kitchen, you know, just simple things like that. So it's like I said, it's not complicated, but it makes a big difference when you consider those things at the very beginning, just in how to enjoy using things, not a rocket
 
Della Hansmann  54:27
science, but very practical, and things that you learn from experience that, like we were saying, when you install it the first time, you're going to make mistakes. The second time will be better. But when you're designing a kitchen, the first time, you're going to overlook things. But you have the experience to know what to suggest, to help people avoid those pitfalls and come up with practical things. That's great. Okay, so now I want to talk about so as far
 
Nathan Hartman  54:48
as inspiration designers, you know, as far as styles go, I think the one thing I've learned by being immersed in this. This mid-century, modern stuff for a while now is how regional it can be, yeah, and also kind of understanding why the houses are different in different places like the California, you know, Eichlers and ranches are different than they are in the Midwest, because they don't have to heat them in California so they can have those big walls of glass, yeah.
 
Speaker 1  55:25
And then in the northwest and the Pacific Northwest, there's a really neat era of modern design that's, that's, I'm not exactly sure how to describe it, you know, it's very handmade and wood, you know, present, but really, you know, modern, open, interior spaces and maybe some Japanese influence. I think that's
 
Della Hansmann  55:54
definitely true, because there's a big sort of cross cultural, yeah,
 
Nathan Hartman  55:59
and it's, you know, I couldn't exactly put words to it, but, but there's definitely a style that emerged here that's unique and they'll find it really beautiful.
 
Della Hansmann  56:09
There's a delicacy to the mod the mid-century of the Pacific Northwest. There's like, I think of like a an iron staircase with concrete free like floating steps that have just like, a little bit of a curvature. A curvature at the bottom, and they just feel so elegant. And I don't see that in California, and I certainly maybe you can write it in the Midwest, where it freezes and it's just
 
Nathan Hartman  56:31
or the comfort of, like, the ease of putting, like using driftwood to as your as your supports for your porch, you know, things like that, where it's like that doesn't look like me. Sandra would have designed that. It fits right in here. So I don't know that stuff's been really interesting.
 
Della Hansmann  56:53
It's fun to pull from. Do you feel like that? Do you get to infuse any of that into thinking about where you're shipping a kitchen? Or is more like contributing? Contributing? Is its own self?
 
Nathan Hartman  57:05
Our stuff? No, it really doesn't change.
 
Della Hansmann  57:09
It's informed,
 
Nathan Hartman  57:11
yeah, yeah. It's informed by its own thing. And we try and when it comes to the actual installation of the cabinets. We try and make them their own thing within a within a building like, you know, to small details, like where they where a cabinet comes up and touches a wall, rather than having it sit right against a wall.
 
Speaker 1  57:40
You know, it's based in from the wall, and there's a little gap, right? So it's kind of, there's the building, and then next to it is the cabinet, and they're, they're their own things, right? And one has a beginning and one has an end, interesting, yeah? And so, like, that's another thing is, like, there's no trim or molding or anything that's trying to make it a piece of the house, right? They're their own thing. So, yeah, we don't just, we don't really change them for the place, which, I don't know, it's kind of pretentious to say it that way, but that's just what we do.
 
Della Hansmann  58:12
It's an intervention. I think it makes a lot of sense for them being the way that they are. They're clearly not site built. They're clearly a concept that has been inserted and yet. Well, actually, this is an interesting question. How much when you find someone comes to you for like a Kerf kitchen, are they seeding Kerf ideas anywhere else in the house, or are they typically just doing one piece that way?
 
Nathan Hartman  58:37
Usually it's, it's more than one place, you know, it's, um, I love it. I mean, usually it's a kitchen, some bathrooms, and maybe an entryway or something. I mean, there's only, there's a few standard places in every house that there's cabinetry. But I love the projects.
 
Speaker 1  58:56
We've had some projects where it's just been everywhere in the house, and it's been really interesting and fun to just think about every space and every little detail, you know, from the hand railings to the well, even if it's not a built in just like the other details, or the window frames Kerf for the, you know, handrails or other, yeah, and it's a little harder to do long distance like projects like that, are usually a little more local to us, because we can work right on site and know, what do you do the install yourself? If it's local?
 
Speaker 1  59:37
We used to, I used to do most of the installs until just, really, just a few years ago, and now we have a few contractors in town that we sub stuff out to, or it's people's own contractors
 
Della Hansmann  59:53
already, right? And they know how to work because they know, you that
 
Nathan Hartman  59:57
doesn't mean we don't run out to job sites all the time. You know? Know, bringing a thing that somebody needs or, you know, so there's a difference between local and long distance when it comes to, like, really, just like, doing a whole place, yeah, still,
 
Della Hansmann  1:00:13
though, I think with a little bit of planning, I mean, it's one of my favorite things. When I'm thinking about putting new details into a mid-century house, I'm always thinking about, how are we going to tie a pattern or a material throughout the space so it feels connected, even if you can't see from one room to another? You know, it's the same kind of wood grain and stain, for example.
 
Della Hansmann  1:00:31
And so that idea of like, it's there at the entry, it's in the entertainment center. When you get into the living room, it's in the kitchen. To me, that's maybe more important even than it showing up in a bathroom as well. Although, of course, a Kerf bathroom sounds delightful. And then if you're going to be in the bathroom, then it should be in the bedside tables in the bedroom, you know. And sort of thinking about how those pieces kind of speak to each other, it's all just more.
 
Nathan Hartman  1:00:56
And if you go to my house, it's, it's, if you come to my house, it's, all the furniture too and the light fixtures. Well, speaking of Frank Lloyd Wright, that's a good opening to your next your other question about like, who that my heroes were? I've always just been blown away by Frank Lloyd Wright's work, and whenever I have a chance traveling, and I'm near a place that you can go into one of his houses, you know, I make a point of visiting it, just because the detailing is just so thoughtful and thought out and considered and he has a lot of really grand projects and stuff, but, but My favorite ones are the Usonian houses.
 
Speaker 1  1:01:41
Which are, are his modest like, I think the first one was designed for a teacher, maybe professor, and he said, Look, you know, I can build you this little house, and I can, I can hit this budget for you, but you're going to have to make some sacrifices. Like, you can't have a garage. We're just going to put a roof over the driveway, and you're going to have to live with that. And that's, that's how the carport was invented.
 
Della Hansmann  1:02:08
That one house is actually a neighborhood.
 
Nathan Hartman  1:02:12
Oh, here you go. I'm telling you,
 
Della Hansmann  1:02:15
tell everybody they cannot be talked about enough. And Franklin, there's a Franklin not afraid of plywood as a no material either.
 
Nathan Hartman  1:02:24
There's an interesting house here in in Washington. We only have a couple houses of his here, and one's this tiny house south of Seattle, on a beautiful piece of property on a bluff overlooking the Puget Sound. But it's a, it's a, it's a concrete block house. Oh, interesting. And the people that built it, think were teachers, also, college professors also, and they cast all the blocks themselves on site to save money.
 
Speaker 1  1:02:55
And so Frank Lloyd Wright designed and got the molds made, sent them to Burian, and they after work every day they'd go cast a dozen blocks until they had enough. And it's a cool, cool little house. I understand
 
Della Hansmann  1:03:12
how much work. I don't understand how much work that is. I think I can understand how much work that is, but that's so freaking cool.
 
Nathan Hartman  1:03:18
It is cool, yeah. And then, of course, you know that the thing that's interesting about it to me is that, you know, the house looks like it's made out of those concrete blocks, like it's, again, it's the materials being the materials that they are the best way that they can, you know, right? That's one of the things I love about his stuff. There's, a, let me see John proof,
 
Della Hansmann  1:03:47
a, have you made it out to Taliesin in Wisconsin before? No, no, if you get the chance, it's gorgeous. And if you get the chance, you should go not just to the Taliesin building, like the residence proper, but also to the hillside school, which, when I first encountered kerf kitchens, I thought, Oh, I've seen this kind of exposed edge plywood detail before it's in the beautiful bathrooms at the hillside theater of his school at Taliesin. And that was an instant connection with Frank Floyd, right?
 
Nathan Hartman  1:04:20
Yeah. I mean, that would be, that would be a dream project, although it might be too intimidating to work on a Frank Lloyd Wright house. You know, without restoring it might be,
 
Della Hansmann  1:04:31
I feel like that. I've never, I've never had the opportunity to work on a Wright house, and I don't know what I would do if someone offered, but when I do work on, like an architect to design house that's in great shape, I'm like, yeah, do I want to suggest a change here? Maybe we should just live with it. I don't know, it seems fine, but do you want to hire me? Yeah.
 
Nathan Hartman  1:04:52
So Frank Lloyd Wright, there's another. There's a French designer named John per day that that has another. It. Yeah, I heard someone describing his work as, you know, you look at this, this detailing, you know, how, like, he framed out a window or something on a house, and it's like, it's so simple and practical, and it's uses only the necessary stuff that needs to do it, and it's all about how it's made. And that's all you see that like, just because it's this efficient manufactured thing, it's like, beautiful because of that, like, he did it in a way that's just, like, so gorgeous, you know, yeah, and that's, I think that's what, that's what I aspire to. It's pulling that kind of work off. It's the
 
Della Hansmann  1:05:40
magic of modernism, which is that it's not easy because it's simple. It's sometimes much harder because it's simple, and every joint and every detail is exposed not to knock I mean, I like…People sometimes think I hate other styles of houses. I don't. I love all the other eras of houses. I just only ever talk about mid-century. But there is a kind of a Get Out of Jail Free card, to ornateness in molding and to multiple layers in your detailing, because you just cover up all of the connections with piece of wood on top of piece of wood on top of a piece of wood, yeah.
 
Della Hansmann  1:06:13
And then, you know, you can, then you paint it all white and like, treat it like gingerbread. But if you are just focusing on wood grain on a simple piece of something, and if it has to meet another piece of something perfectly, it's hard, you I don't have to tell you that's challenging to do that, right? You have to get it perfect. Yeah. Well, this has been so much fun, and I we've run over our time, but I promise, no, it's good. It's really good.
 
Della Hansmann  1:06:41
I'm gonna put, I'm gonna maybe tag you for sharing any photos that you would particularly like us to share, but I'm gonna put loads of pictures of Kerf projects onto the blog post that goes along with this podcast episode. This is something people need to see listening to. This is not enough. But where can people find you if they wanted to, if somebody wanted to engage with you straight, or if they wanted to ask me, in the master plan context, to work with you, what would be step one in sort of getting
 
Nathan Hartman  1:07:08
in touch to set up whatever? Well, our website is probably a great place to start, yeah, and try and answer a lot of questions there and show some pictures and stuff. And there's a if you're ready to start on a project, there's a form on that that you can fill out that just walks through a bunch of kind of beginning questions and, and, and you can upload plans and stuff like that, and, and then we take that and usually Turn out an estimate fairly quickly. So that's a good place. That's how you get started.
 
Della Hansmann  1:07:44
Yeah, great. Oh, people need to know about lead times. How much before they want to be in a Kerf kitchen? Do they need to start talking to you about a Kerf kitchen? It
 
Nathan Hartman  1:07:56
takes, I would say, on average, it's maybe a four month process
 
Della Hansmann  1:08:02
that's better than
 
Nathan Hartman  1:08:03
I thought it can be. Yeah, and that's just because we need to kind of get to know each other and talk about the project and come up with some plans and then we need to refine those plans and make sure all the decisions are made. And then for our part, like we'd like to get signed off on everything maybe six weeks before we're ready to start working on it. Like the actual like construction. You know, building a kitchen might just take a week in the shop, but we want to be ready a little ways in front of that to make sure that everything's lined up and ready to go
 
Della Hansmann  1:08:40
right last minute. Yeah, wait. I thought of something. And also just, yeah,
 
Nathan Hartman  1:08:45
good work. Oh, we can't get that color, yeah, and that workflow, yeah, absolutely, well. And sometimes there's other things scheduled, so we have to, right, we have to work around everyone's schedules. It's a constantly shifting thing.
 
Della Hansmann  1:09:01
Yep, I was just, I was just recording a podcast about, you know, FAQs that we get when people work with us. And I was thinking about lead times, and I was like, Well, how long it takes us to do a project? It's not how long it takes us to meet someone and do a project, because how many other people are in line ahead of them really determines how long it's going to take
 
Nathan Hartman  1:09:18
us to I mean, it's never really too early to start you?
 
Della Hansmann  1:09:24
Yeah, absolutely. Architects are helpful. It's never too early
 
Nathan Hartman  1:09:32
if you haven't built the house yet, it might be too early, you know, if you haven't started building the house, if, if you haven't bought the house yet it's too early. Both of those come up. You know, people are saying, Oh, I'm putting an offer in on this place, and I want to design the kitchen. And we usually say, well, let's wait until, you know the money's changed hands, and then we'll start working on that.
 
Della Hansmann  1:09:55
Fair enough. So that's basically the limit. Do you have the house? Yes. Thank you. Yeah, oh my gosh. Well, this has been amazing. It's so good to meet you. We will put all the information that we need on the website, and everyone should go look at it there. All right, great. Thank you. Well, that was great. I particularly enjoyed it when Nathan described his preference for working on a project that has an architect involved in just about exactly the handoff sequence that our mid-century Master Plan provides a homeowner has a chance to really think about their needs and goals.
 
Della Hansmann  1:10:30
They've had a designer on hand to help with space planning and blocking and major questions, where there should be an island where we can open up walls, what materials are to include, and right then it gets handed off at the schematic level to his team to coordinate the perfect craftsmanship and all the details that are going to make that kitchen fit in every nook and cranny specific to this family, to this household. Also, can I just shout out his opinion that it's never too early to start a design I promise I did not coach that I'm having a total LeVar Burton Reading Rainbow moment about this. You don't have to take my word for it. Listen to Nathan.
 
Della Hansmann  1:11:04
Okay. Anyway, thanks again to Nathan for both this great conversation and the entire concept and business of kerf kitchen. I can't give enough of them next time, we'll be digging in on a recent project that I just completed with my primary partner on that project, the homeowner herself. And I'm really looking forward to sharing this story with you. I just did a case study video for YouTube on this and it's got so much more than I was able to share in that format.
 
Della Hansmann  1:11:30
She's going to talk about her tragic house fire origin story to a fairy tale ending of finding the perfect new house from across the country and then coming back to Wisconsin, in this case, to make it the perfect home for her future. I'll be back to share that story next week, but for now, don't spend too much of your day Doom scrolling the Kerf, kitchen website. But you know, you be the judge of how much is too much.
 
Della Hansmann  1:11:57
Have fun doing that. Maybe, maybe email me and tell me what your favorite project is or email Nathan and tell him, because I really can't make a winner. Okay, catch you next week.