Way with wood
For Brian Paulson, working with wood is not just a job, but also a creative process. His recently formed business, Paulson Built, offers a range of handmade kitchen items as well as varied custom wood products.
“I’ve always loved woodworking and doing projects with my hands and building,” says Paulson. “I got some ideas from my intelligent wife. I wouldn’t have come up with the kitchen line – that was her idea.”
With no professional training, just lessons from Cub Scouts, his father and junior high shop class, Paulson forms boards into gleaming articles of diverse colored wood. Although the final product resembles inlay, it’s actually solid hardwood, each piece of wood going the whole way through the item.
“My goal is to make the finished product look like one solid chunk of wood. Obviously it’s not – you can’t find a 24-inch diameter of maple,” smiles Paulson. “But you can choose the right wood, and manipulate it the right way, and get some pretty neat designs out of it.”
Paulson uses the four main domestic woods: walnut, maple, red oak and cherry. For accents he favors exotic woods such as purple and red heart, zebrawood and padauck. Although his main products are kitchen items, he has made desk and mantel clocks and trophy mounts as well. Other requests have been flower boxes and recipe boxes, serving trays, baby toys and gun racks.
“I like the lazy susans the best,” says Paulson. “I’ve really enjoyed building those, especially with the exotic hardwoods incorporated. It’s fun, and they usually turn out looking pretty nice.”
Paulson even has copyrighted his own design of lazy susan, the Maltese style. Square instead of circular, with its corners cut out, the name is due to its resemblance to a Maltese cross.
Most of Paulson’s items are of natural color. Only a few are stained, mostly the cherry and red oak, to bring out the grain and character of the wood. He prefers walnut, as it is fairly forgiving to work with and has a beautiful grain. His favorite piece includes this hardwood, and commemorates the start of his business.
“I have a lazy susan here I just did, called the anniversary edition, because it’s been a year,” says Paulson. “It’s in the style of a checkerboard in the hardwoods walnut and maple. It’s my favorite so far. It took a long time to do, but it turned out good.”
The lazy susans are the biggest seller, followed by napkin holders, of which he has four designs. One is named after his wife’s grandfather, who came up with its design, and the other three styles are his own named after his three children.
Paulson’s always thinking of new ideas, such as trivets, bookshelves and spice and wine racks. Each item is unique, as the wood, even if of the same species, has different lines and grains and colors in each board.
“My favorite part (of this business) would have to be when a perfect stranger gives you a compliment on something that you’ve built with your own two hands. That’s always nice,” says Paulson. “For someone to appreciate it enough to buy it, there’s a lot of satisfaction in that.”