Hello and welcome to episode 156 of Design Curious Podcast.
I'm your host and mentor, Rebecca Ward.
Today on the podcast, I have the pleasure of interviewing Michael
Brinkley of Brinkley Furniture. Let me tell you a little bit
more about him. He's the owner and master
Craftsman behind Brinkley Furniture, a nationally
recognized custom furniture studio based in Redding, CA.
Since relocating to the area in 2022, Michael has continued to
build a reputation for creating one-of-a-kind, handcrafted
furniture that blends timeless design with the natural beauty
of the Northern California landscape.
Each piece is thoughtfully designed, meticulously built and
finished by hand, earning the attention of clients and
interior designers across the country.
We have a great conversation. I think it's really important to
know about custom furniture builders and for designers to
use them because they can make completely.
Unique. Pieces for your client that no
other client is going to have. That is the beauty sometimes of
hiring into your designers to have those custom pieces.
And so I think you're going to enjoy the conversation today.
Let's get into it. You're now listening to Design
Curious, the place where you, Creative One, are here to learn
about what it really is like to be an interior designer, and I'm
your host and mentor, Rebecca Ward.
If you're worried about how to succeed in a creative career, if
you're ready to learn your next steps to become an interior
designer, and if you want the satisfaction of doing something
you love every day, you are in the right place.
Grab a coffee, a notebook, and let's dig into today's episode.
Hi, Michael, welcome to Design Curious Podcast.
It's great to have you here. Today.
Thank you. It's good to be here.
Yeah. I think this is going to be a
fun conversation for our audience because it's a little
bit different. You are a custom furniture
builder and I would love to talk a little bit more about who you
are, how you got into the business, first of all with
custom furnishings and then a little more about Brinkley
Furniture. Absolutely.
So my name is Michael Brinkley and I have been building custom
furniture for probably about 32 years combined with cabinetry,
and we've been focused mostly on furniture for about the last 10
years. The way that I got into it was
pretty funny, actually. We had a friend of mine that did
remodels and invited me to come work for them, and what I didn't
know was that they had cut a house in half, moved it across
town and then put it back together.
They did everything from the electrical, plumbing, all that.
I had no clue, no experience, nothing.
When we got down to the final details of this trim work, that
was a part that I fell in love with and it sparked something
that just started from there. Wow, that's a really fun way to
get into it that you just discovered a passion for the
trim work. So you did a lot of.
Cabinetry starting out then. Correct.
Honestly, whenever I got onto the job site and I saw the shape
that this house was in, I should have just got out of the
construction at that time. But yes, through the years we
picked up trim work and different things and I
eventually transitioned over to where I was building bookshelves
and cabinetry. And then we got into full fledge
cabinetry and I started my own cabinet shop.
And so I had that going on for many, many years.
I always had a vision that one day I wanted to build furniture.
I just wasn't exactly sure what the process would be or how I
would go about it. So how did you?
Transition from doing the cabinetry.
Into custom pieces of furniture. I actually had people that was
looking for specific pieces. One of the things that I've
learned is that when you go into showrooms, you have all these
vast pieces of what I consider production pieces because you
can buy a multiple pieces. We would have some interior
designers that would invite me in there and say, look, we've
got this product right here that the customer absolutely loves.
However, it's the wrong color, the wrong size or what have you.
And they would just say, can you build it?
And I'll say, yeah, absolutely. So it's sparked as just
basically one piece, one small bookshelf or something like
that. And then after it happened that
way, then we started picking up and doing more and more pieces.
So and it just kind of evolved into something bigger than I
could have anticipated. Yeah, that's fine.
So you. Basically partnered with a lot
of designers. Initially they brought designs
to you, so then do you now design your own pieces of
furniture that you can build out and sell?
We do actually, a lot of what I do is what I consider one of the
customer brings in a design. I mean, you're into interior
design, so you understand a customer can have a design in
their mind, but for them to put that out there, you've got to
try to interpret what they're looking for.
Sometimes it's hard to do that, but through the process I've
learned how to do that. And then I said, you know what,
I'm doing this for all the other people.
I would love to build something that I can consume.
They're my own. I mean, we build all kinds of
pieces, built insurance and dining tables and bookshelves
and you name it. But in the back of my mind I
always have something like a platform bed or I'm drawn to mid
century modern. Absolutely love that feel and
that's part of the things that I want to do.
So yes, we do have some neat things coming up.
Are you familiar with the Sundial Bridge and Ring writing?
Yes, I've seen pictures of it, Yeah.
So we're actually designing a piece of furniture, think kind
of like an Adirondack chair chair.
It's going to have the inspiration from that sundial,
the back portion of the chair itself and the back leg will
have that look. And we're in the prototype phase
right now. And so it will come together.
We'll do a few iterations of it, and then we'll actually go into
production. Wow.
Fine, so are you going to make multiple pieces then?
Yes, we will. We've actually are already
starting to take pre-orders. We've had such great.
We actually started as a indoor chair.
I was thinking, I want to do something that's mid century
modern but has this theme for indoor.
And so many people were looking at it and going oh, out, out,
out. And of course we live here at,
you know, near the Sacramento River near the Sundial Bridge.
So it just kind of turned into that.
And so yeah, we've we've got a lot of interest in it.
It's just pretty exciting. Really fun.
Yeah. Maybe because it kind of lend
itself to a little bit like the Adirondack chair and people saw
that similarity and was thinking outside.
But I like, I would like to see it also in an interior
application. I think that that sounds like it
could be really interesting, like to sit alone in a living
room or something and have a really interesting look to it.
Yeah. Exactly that is my goal.
I'll build a couple of the quote UN quote Adirondack style, but
ultimately I'll do an interior and see how it looks.
Great. So when it goes through the
process and it starts with a sketch and then you're doing the
prototypes and then you have the finishing work, what is it your
favorite area of that process? Do you like the beginning,
middle and? I think I let's take it like is
if IA customer comes in to me, I think taking their idea and
putting it on paper, they'll come in and they'll have like
Pinterest post and different things would be like, I like
this, but I want to do this. I like this.
And so I take that design and I hand sketch it real quick and
say, OK, or is this about what we're looking at?
No, let's change this or no, let's change this.
So when we finally get it pinpointed, then I go into a 3D
sketch and and then you build it from there.
So I think the most favorite part that I like is just trying
to implement all the details together to make an actual
functioning piece of furniture. Nice.
So I know that you're in Northern California.
Do you sell a lot to just this area or are you do you branch
out and sell across country where's most of your clients
come from? We are nationally recognized for
many years we did mostly the area of Florida.
I have a lot of clientele in Florida.
We've got some pieces that are in celebrity neighborhoods over
there, but we have got pieces that are in like Texas and
Tennessee, Mississippi. We've got, you know, obviously
pieces here in California. So we've spread out.
We we haven't hit two terribly many States and being in
California sometime it's a little harder to ship out.
So we try to confine it more here, but less.
We have got pieces all over. And do you find that it's direct
consumers that are finding you or is it more interior designers
that are wanting to work with? You it has been a big mixture.
So a few years back, I would say it was probably more B to B or
more direct to like interior designers and showrooms.
But here lately I've been having a lot of customers just finding
me a lot because they're looking for specific things.
Yeah, so. Do you go to furniture shows and
things like that or are you just stay mostly in your shop?
It's been hard to do anything like that.
We've talked about it, but a lot of times it's just you stay so
busy. I'll get so busy on building
things and I'll look up and go, oh there was a furniture show
happening 3 weeks ago. Sometimes it's hard to.
I'm sure you can understand when you do a lot of running around.
So take us. Through the process that if a
designer wanted to come to you and work with you for creating a
custom piece, what is the information that you would want
to have ideally from the designer from the get go and
what kind of process would it be to work with you to get
something custom made? I think the biggest thing is
trying to find out what the pain point of the customer is.
I try to sell that as the biggest thing that drives me is
because if you think about it, when customers go to look for
furniture, their pain points are always, it's the wrong size,
it's the wrong color. And I know I kind of hit on this
little bit earlier, but if we, let's say you contacted me and
said we've got a customer that has a piece, they already know
what they're looking for. We just see it designed and
built. Then I would take your
dimensions and your ideas and go from there.
And then like I said, we'd get onto a sketch, see what we can
come up with, see if the customers happy with that, and
then we'd go to a 3D design. I like going to the 3D design
because I can personally build it to exactly what is expected.
So you as an interior designer or the customer themselves may
not understand the engineering portion of it, but like I don't
understand what you guys do when it comes to interior design.
I can build anything out of furniture, but you guys can work
magic with interior design and stuff.
So kind of the same concept. I take those ideas and I put
them into a drawing, but then I engineer the portions into it.
So that way we can say, OK, if we do this, then this product
will stand the test of time. And then once we do that and get
the approval on it, then we start, you know, we'll get like
a deposit and we start getting the materials ordered and it
would go through. I pride myself on communication.
That is the number one thing I've heard through the years
that people have had a complaint about communication.
So we pride ourself on that. And we try to make certain that
the interior designer or the customer, whoever we're dealing
with, knows every step of the way.
They're welcome to ask questions, they're welcome to
swing by the shop and see their project in process.
That's great. Yeah, communication really is.
Key to. How a successful project from
start to finish. I know you talked about the the
chair that's inspired by Sundial that you are currently
producing, but is there any other really fun projects that
you might have worked on that stands out to you?
Like. Custom piece.
Yes, absolutely. So in Windermere, FL, there is a
celebrity neighborhood there and this particular customer loved
their wine. They had many different brands
that they like. They commissioned us to build a
table. They didn't know what they were
looking for. They just said we want a table
that's going to show these wine lids or these wine crates.
And so we started looking and sourcing these.
They're different brands. Once we got them and we created
what I call a wine crate table. It's literally just cutting
those crates up and we reduce those pieces on top of the
tabletop. So think like your actual dining
table as you put your dinner plates on or you're leaning
against, you would normally have a solid surface there.
This was still a solid surface, but it was produced with all
those lime crate tables. So as you're sitting there
eating, it makes for a perfect conversational piece.
Or if they're sipping wine, you know, they can sit there and
look and see all the different brands.
It's there. And then of course, we added
some brass and different things in there to make it look really,
really nice. So that to me was probably the
most standoff piece that I've done.
That sounds like a lot of fun. You mentioned that you
incorporate some brass, so do you use other materials besides
wood in your furniture making then?
We do I primarily. For me, it's all wood just
because that's how we're set up. But I do have sources.
We try to locally source everything.
I am a small business and I like to try to do the best that I can
for my clients. And so we bring in the local
sources as well so that we can all work together.
So metal fabrication, if it's something small, I can typically
handle it, otherwise we will sub it out.
Same thing with upholstery, same thing with even powder coating
stuff sometimes won't some color, you know, integrated into
their metal work and so we can do that as well.
Yeah. And sourcing locally is always
great, especially with the current situation.
You know, tariffs might, yeah, might not be happening right
now. Is there any?
Effect on sourcing your wood that might be affected by
tariffs? Or does your wood come locally
as well? So far it's been good.
All of the wood is sourced locally.
Now whether this fire that I get it from gets everything locally,
I'm not certain on that. I think for the most part they
do. I think it's all actually comes
out of California and we haven't seen any tremendous price
increases yet. I'll see if these things kind of
fluctuate, but all in honesty, even throughout the years, the
material always fluctuates depending on the demand.
So you know, one season it might be walnut and then the walnut
pricing will go up and down. There has been a lot of scare
about the tariffs, but so far we've been pretty good.
And I feel like that we're pretty competitive as far as
producing. Some of the things that I've
kind of had to fight against, I guess is when people buy stuff
from overseas because you can get it for cheaper over there.
And a lot of times that's what it seems like to people here
locally is Oh well, it's cheaper.
But the fact is, is we can offer a much better warranty.
Our quality and craftsmanship is just superb.
And we really, like I said, our communication is excellent.
And then we also try to do a very close timeline.
Most furniture pieces you probably see 1012 weeks or plus.
And for us for the most part, we're usually about 3 or 4 weeks
out. Sometimes it goes a little bit
higher, sometimes a little shorter, depending on the the
demand. That's a really good turn
around. Yeah, sometimes custom can take
longer. So I'll tell you, sometimes we
can get a piece all set up or start design, you know, with
design process is over with anyway.
We start to build it and then a customer might say, hey, can we
change this or that. If they catch us quick enough,
we can. Sometimes we don't.
We have to make some modifications.
But yeah, for the most part we can usually turn around pretty
quick. Yeah.
So you mentioned you love mid century modern looking furniture
and I'm sure you've done all different kinds.
You know, since you've done cabinetry and you've done
furniture, is there anything in particular that you really love
making like a furniture piece or really don't like, but do you
have like a favorite and like one that you really kind of shy
away from? That is a really good question.
Sometimes it's hard because like right now we we're actually
physically building a, an exterior door for a customer out
of Hickory. I'm building some pretty decent
sized arm walls, dining tables and a ton of different things to
say that I have something that I just, I don't know.
I'm, I'm really thinking what I would just not want to build.
It's funny that you bring up the Mercury bands because we
actually built a few of them a few years ago and then it was
kind of a, it just stopped, you know?
And then all of a sudden this last year I probably built six
or seven. Just a matter of fact, I just
got an order for one yesterday. So right now they're kind of
coming back. I like doing Murphy best because
a lot of times they're quick and easy, but you can also add that
touch for each individual customer.
Yeah. And I just think it's probably
you're working on something different every day.
Like you never know what the client's going to bring you.
They might need like an entertainment console or some
kind of console to house their sound equipment.
So you need a certain size on their subwoofer and then all the
components that go into and then you have like the mesh and all
the ventilation and things like that to go with it.
So do you feel like you're always learning something new,
or has anything surprised you lately?
That actually brings up a perfect segue into one of the
most, you know, I said the wine crepe table was probably one of
the most iconic pieces and it still stands that.
There's a second one, though, that I would say was absolutely
amazing and it falls alone and in lines.
The client had a condo that they were building in Destin, FL and
they had people from Sony were actually there setting up their
house and doing different things.
They wanted to incorporate ATV into a barn door.
So this was not something even Sony themselves said that they
have never seen one and it was pretty interesting.
So I said, well, I'm up for the challenge.
I said as long as you guys can wire it, I can handle the wood.
Yeah. And so we did.
We actually built a barn door to mimic, I'm sure you're familiar
with Restoration Hardware. You got a lot of clients love
their furniture and this particular client had bought a
few pieces of that they wanted to match that.
So we actually built them 5 barn doors in that house and match
them to the Restoration hardware finish.
But one door had the TV in it and it covered the pantry.
So it really was really nice. You could have the door closed,
recovered the pantry up while they're cooking, they're
standing at their stove physically looking at the
television. It's just straight ahead of
them. But then they can open it up.
It's still working. There's, you know, you no wire
need to be unattached or anything.
And then I built the door in a way that if Sony had to come
back in to repair it, they could pull the door down, go to the
backside of it, unscrew a panel and pull the whole TVD out and
put a new one right in its place.
So we made it to where it was very maintenance friendly.
Yeah, that brings up a good point.
Like with Smart. Homes coming to be.
Smarter and smarter, like for sure.
Do you find that complicates thing or because a lot of it's
wireless, maybe it doesn't? Is there anything that you've
been considering or asked to do that's kind of unique or
pertains to smart homes? I think there's always
complications that you have to learn from.
You've got people who want to raise the bar, but somebody has
to be the one that actually raises the barn.
I think sometimes that falls to our department because, for
instance, the arm walls that we're building, the client wants
to have lighting inside of it. So when I open the doors up,
lights come on automatically, but they have to be in a
specific spot. So there's a lot of engineering
that goes into this stuff and just a a learning process once
you do it once is typically not too bad.
But the flip side of that is once you do it once, you
normally don't ever do it again. Right.
Yeah, but you do learn from those things and you can use it
in the next project for something different.
Yeah, for sure. That's really interesting.
OK. Yeah, I love that.
Thinking about that. There's always something to
innovate. I love that you are actually
local to me. So I'm definitely going to be
looking to take advantage of some of your resources and if
anyone else wanted. To.
Reach out and get to know your company.
And because I know that you do service all over, how would they
get in touch with you? Sure.
They can actually just go on to our website.
It's www.brinkleyfurniture.com, but they can also look up for
Facebook and Instagram, all under the same thing and it's
got all my information on there. I have e-mail, phone numbers
they can contact. They can also just do a Google
search for custom furniture in this area and we should pop up
on Google Maps. We've been working pretty hard
trying to get that implemented perfectly.
Nice. OK, great.
We'll. Make sure that's in the show
notes that people. Can get in touch with you.
Is there anything else you want to share?
With our audience today. About your offerings or advice
just working in the industry. Well, I was probably say at this
point in time, I know this this show will air probably a little
bit later, but when it comes to stuff like tariffs and different
things, you know, don't sweat it.
We as business owners try to work the best way that we can to
help the customer everywhere possible.
Our whole idea, just as well as interior designers, a whole idea
is to make the process better and easier for a customer.
But we would never, ever want a customer to think negatively in
those respects. Just get with us and we can
usually work within a budget for a few years.
We've done some really high end stuff and sometimes I think when
people look at our website, they might kind of like, oh, I don't
think I can afford that. So you, you really can.
Custom furniture is not really that expensive.
It's an investment. It's not really, you know,
you're not blowing money. You're doing something that we
create. It's an heirloom quality that
really literally can be passed down to your family.
Yeah. I think that's good to know is
that you're getting so much more for what you're paying on that.
Absolutely, yeah. I used to tell customers for
many years, when you're doing a remodel, especially a remodel,
customers come up and say how much do you think it's going to
cost? We've got X amount of dollars
put down and I'll just use a round #30,000.
And I've told the customers before, look, if you're
expecting to spend 30,000, you really need to plan for 60.
That way if there's anything that you see, you're never going
to see it coming. There's going to be something
that's going to change, something that's going to
happen. And if you doubled that amount,
then you were prepared for it. Yeah, it's kind of like that
with furniture. I mean, obviously furniture is
not going to cost 60 grand unless you're just, you know,
say that we did a client's house that we did half $1,000,000
worth of furniture for, you know?
So it is possible, but if you are looking for something and
you have a tight, tight budget, we typically try to work with
those as best as we can. We can usually tell customers
where we can scrape a little bit or change up a little bit or the
material. You know, some people want to
come in and they won't walnut not knowing what walnut costs,
you know. And so that's where we try to
steer as best as we can and just help pull all the pieces
together. Yeah.
And that's great, especially for maybe even if working with a
designer who might be new to the business and not really familiar
with like the cost of walnut, you might help them value
engineer it to steer them in a different direction, maybe a
different wood, but with a stain that can make it look like
walnut or something like that. I'm sure that kind of
collaboration would be very beneficial.
Oh, big time. I mean think about this.
You're probably your lowest piece of wood, probably cost
like $3 aboard foot, but walnut is around $10 aboard foot.
And when you start putting those amounts into a full size piece
of furniture, it could be the difference of several $100 to
several 1000. Yeah.
We've got ways around making things look just like the
customer envisions and still trying to help save a little bit
as we can. Yeah, and you do all different
styles of furniture too. I know you love mid century, but
like traditional transitional. Yeah.
We're not dead set on mid century.
That's just my personal preference.
We, we have built traditional, we've built historic.
I mean we've done historic homes.
So we've done things that went into that.
We've done mid century modern, we've done farmhouse.
I've actually got a farmhouse piece now that we're working on.
So we can do a wide range of styles.
Well, great. Well, thank you, Michael for
coming and sharing your expertise.
I'm sure a lot of people are going to want to partner with
you on their custom furniture, so I'll make sure that
information is available. Thank you for coming and sharing
today. Absolutely, thank you for having
me. This was really fun, I enjoyed
it. Yeah, likewise.
So I have the privilege of being able to meet with Michael in
person. He's come by my studio because
Reading is not terribly far away from Sacramento and he comes
through once in a while. So he stopped by.
We got to meet in person. Such a lovely guy and we are
actually going to be working with him for a client.
We needed a piece for an entry that is like the height of a
telephone table, which you can't really find those anymore, but
wanted it to look a certain way. And we kind of needed, it's just
a really small area. And so it definitely was calling
out for a custom piece. And it happened to fall right
around the time I was doing the podcast interview.
So it's very serendipitous. And so I'm looking forward to
working with him and I am sure I will be showing the final
product on Instagram. So stay tuned for those
beautiful photos. I hope that you guys enjoyed
that conversation. I would love to hear from you.
Leave me a message. Don't forget about all the great
things in the show notes and the Thrive retreat coming up.
If you're in the Northern California area or if you want
to travel to Granite Bay, CA, the Thrive Retreat that I'm
putting on with Sierra Collins and Kathy Tonks is November 13th
and 14th. You can sign up now.
I have a link down in the show notes.
I really would love for you to be there.
The space is limited, so the sooner you sign up the better.
We're going to be talking about all of that next week with
Sierra and Kathy, so be sure and TuneIn next.
Week for that as. Well, that's all I have for you
this week. Next week we're going to have
that great episode about the Thrive Retreat.
And until then, stay creative. Thanks for listening.
If you love this episode, please leave a rating and a review.
This helps me reach other curious creatives like you.
If you have a topic request or would like to contact me, simply
head over to my website ourawarddesign.com or e-mail me
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