Born Again in the "Big Easy"
Antique wood finds new life as furniture for today’s lifestyles
By Brooke Baldwin
As the Bible verse John 3:7 ordains "Ye must be born anew," so follows the fate of the resurrected antique cypress doors, panels and lumber from the "fallen" houses of old New Orleans. These "transgressors" have found redemption with the help of Charbonnet and Charbonnet, manufacturer of beautiful reproduction furniture that captures the aura that is only "New Orleans." For 29 years, Millicent Charbonnet not only has given rescued antique wood its salvation, she also has given it new life in the form of beds, tables, cabinets and entertainment centers.
"In the beginning, I only handled English country antiques," says Charbonnet. "Gradually, I began including reproductions made of antique white pine. We don’t have any white pine here, but we have something very similar - cypress - which is native to New Orleans." This, combined with its customers’ needs for furniture more suitable for today’s lifestyles, inspired Charbonnet and Charbonnet to begin making its own reproduction furniture. "People were looking for 8-foot tables that they could get their knees under, king size beds and even entertainment centers. Of course these things are not available in antiques. With the old cypress wood we have saved, we build those very pieces and they look like antiques.
"We probably sell more beds than anything," she said. "We have to have a matched set of antique doors. The doors we use for the king size, we can’t use for the queen, so we have to have a lot of doors to pull from. For every 40 doors I send off to be stripped, it’s not unusual to get back only 30 that I can use. When a door is stripped, we might discover that it has burn marks or some other damage, so we can’t use it. We have stockpiled doors - there is no longer a plentiful supply out there. Once we have the doors, we wrap them with moulding, do a lap joint on the legs and beef it up by putting a strip of wood down the side. We can set the side rails at any height of course."
Custom built cabinets and entertainment centers are also in great demand from Charbonnet and Charbonnet. Entertainment centers are made out of old door panels and old crown moulding with beaded board backs. Arches can be added on the inside and height is not a problem. "Here in New Orleans, we have high ceilings so we need tall pieces of furniture to show them off," says Charbonnet. "And you can’t go to a furniture store and buy anything that is 7’ 6" tall."
"Kitchen units are designed to look like several old pieces that we just happened to fit together perfectly," she explained. "I even find old hardware to use - different for each piece. Ten panel windows are used for the cabinet doors. You can see the old wrinkle in the glass with the base piece," points out Charbonnet. "The large unit is in three sections and then crown moulding stretches across the top. We’ve designed the electric to go into it without being too obvious. It is a lovely, lovely look. Most of the back pieces and foundation pieces are made of new wood. Anything you can’t see will be made of new wood or the price would be astronomical."
For tables, old porch posts become table legs with the help of a lathe. Sometimes old gingerbread trim that has been collected is incorporated into a design. "We do a floating table top," says Charbonnet, "which means that we do not attach the top directly to the apron. Instead, we use table clamps that attach the top to a groove on the inside of the apron that allows the top to swell and shrink, and move in and out of that groove without splitting. All wood holds moisture of course, so if you put a piece in central heat and air, it can split. We noticed that our antique tables with floating tops did not split, so we started doing our own tables that way."
All of this is accomplished with only one table saw, one 15" planer, one chop saw, one joiner, an air compressor, a plunge router and a lathe. "We do a hand rub finish on everything - waxes and stains," Charbonnet added. "If we spend 14 hours building a piece, we spend 14 hours finishing it. The finish makes the difference. We do not spray on finishes."
What is the toughest problem working with antique wood? Clarence Joyce, one of Charbonnet’s craftsmen, says, "Blades are ruined. As much as we try to go over the old wood with magnets and everything, we are always hitting old nails. Run them through a planer - run them through anything - and the blades will just get torn up. We are constantly having to sharpen blades or replace blades."
Charbonnet is proud of her eight-man work force. "Everyone of my craftsmen came to me with little or no skills," she said. "They have worked for us for years and I can’t say enough about them. They have been trained on the job." The office staff consists of seven people including Millicent’s husband, Sid, who is a retired attorney and two of their daughters, Mona and Millicent.
Pick Out Your Own Antique Wood
"We have a terrible storage problem," says Charbonnet about the shop’s lofts filled with stacks of rescued cypress. "People like to come in and pick their wood. See this piece marked ‘sold?’ A customer came in and fell in love with that particular piece and gave me a $500 deposit. He said he knew he wanted the Charbonnets to build him something, but his house won’t be ready for another two years. So we end up storing sold lumber!"
Charbonnet and Charbonnet is also well known for its furniture made from "barge-board." "Back in the late 1700’s, barges were built all along the Mississippi River, many as far north as the Great Lakes area," explains Charbonnet. "People would fell the trees right there on the river banks, build huge barges, load produce, animals, people and all sorts of cargo onto them, and float them down the river. That was our railway. When the barges got to New Orleans, that was the end of the line. Barges couldn’t go back up the river since there were no steam engines or anything, so they were disassembled and the wood was used to build houses all along the river. So these boards are not native to New Orleans. They are usually poplar or sugar pine."
When a customer orders a furniture piece, Charbonnet says a "cartoon" or sketch of the piece is drawn to determine the height, width or depth of the piece and also details like knobs, an interior arch or where a drop down keyboard should be placed. "We work from these cartoons. Since we are using old material however, we can’t do an absolute drawing to specs because we don’t know what the specs will be as far as the size of the panels and how the panels are going to line up."
"We do very little advertising," says Charbonnet. "Most of our business comes from word of mouth and we stay very, very busy."
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