My fascination with wood began over 40 years ago when I started working as a carpenter's helper.  I loved working with my hands.  It gave me a great deal of self-satisfactioin to be able to stand back at the end of the workday and physically touch the product of my labor.  It spoke to my soul to take a pile of wood and render it into something useful that would potentially last for generations.

Fast forward to today.  My reverence for history and my passion for building merged and eventually led me to form Grau General Contracting, a company that specialized in historic preservation.  Over the last 20 years we have performed restorations and preservations on hundreds of historic structures throughout middle Tennessee, with many of them being listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Our work in historic preservation required us to locate and obtain vintage materials so we could have them on hand for our preservation repair projects.  During my 20 years of restoration, I accumulated an entire barn full of such material andl as I neared retirement age, I began thinking about the fate of all that vintage reclaimed wood.  With this material being 200-300 years old, its age gives it more character than today's lumber.  The trees were larger and the timber was taller and grew straighter.  The hundreds of years of purposeful use gave it a rich color and beautiful patina.

I found that by re-purposing this material, I was giving that original old growth timber a new life.  Old hand hewn roof timbers from an early log cabin, that had spent a century or more providing a pioneer family with protection from the rain and snow, are now being re-born into a dinner table, where a new family will gather and sit down and share a meal together.  I love giving this old wood new life.  Each piece has a story to tell, if we only take a moment to listen.

In an effort to be environmentally aware and earth friendly, the material we use to build our tables has not been commercially logged.  We re-purpose, reclaim and recycle.  We use material that was destined for the landfill or the burn pile.  We use parts of trees not considered usable by the furniture business or global lumber trade.  We obtain our material locally.  A walnut tree that was struck by lightning.  A large cherry tree blown down in a storm from a local farmer's fence line.

Our tables have a unique character.  Each one is built by hand and is one of a kind.  In a fast paced homogenized world where production and volume is the focus, our tables represent the other end of the spectrum.  Thoughtful in design and craftsman build with intention.

Sincerely, 

Gary Grau

Call Us Today!

If you have an interest in your own custom table please feel free to call us at 931-682-0099 or email gary at  zydecogg@bellsouth.net

Please contact us anytime! We look forward to hearing from you.