Wood Stores

What does your desk say about you?

2010-03-26T04:46:00.000-07:00

What does your desk say about you?

You might be very surprised, and at the very least it will make you smile. I prefer to think of mine as the artistic chaos, rather than the whirlwind....

How will it end? March I mean.

2010-03-21T05:09:00.000-07:00

Maybe March will go out like a Lamb, but it certainly came in like a Lion. I had a busy January catching up on orders, then February was very quiet, but it did give me time to indulge my other interests, wood turning and wood carving. In fact my wife decided to build another website for some of it, take a look if you have time woodtablelamps.co.uk.

Now March has again brought daily orders, mostly for bespoke Log Stores, so it is back to the workshop for me, and just as the sun was starting to come out too!

It seems some people need a much smaller depth but still want a long width and height to fit in smaller spaces. For these orders we have adapted the design slightly by adding one thicker back board then drilling pilot holes so the Wood Store can be screwed into a wall giving extra stability.

Middle of Winter and still busy making Log Stores

2010-01-31T11:54:00.001-08:00

It has been a very long winter, and a very busy one at Wood Stores. We have talked with and met some lovely people. I think we are all hoping for Spring to come soon, because it is rather cold working outside in this weather, brrr, even Jake the dog keeps going indoors regularly for a warm by the fire.

Sales took us by surprise as Autumn started, hence the blog not being updated very regularly! At one point, we had to close the website to new orders for nearly 3 weeks in November to catch up with the backlog. When each item is made to order, and often to an individual design, you just can't rush things, and we did not want to compromise quality for quantity, so putting sold out for a few weeks enabled us to catch up.

Orders started to come in, and again we quickly got a waiting list, and had to keep a 4 to 6 week wait on the website. This was not helped by the big freeze and the snowfall that affected the whole Country for 3 weeks. At one point we had 8 Log Stores just waiting for the snow to clear so the Lorry could get out delivering. And then on Christmas Eve we had the Pallet Company out on two deliveries, and we were out ourselves morning and then afternoon delivering another two! Can you imagine? Father Christmas would have been proud! A bit colder than this day in the summer, where we loaded the lorry and had a nice warm day out!

So, we took 2 days off for Christmas, then got back to work, and haven't stopped since. We do have the waiting list down to about 3 weeks now though.

I have been dressed up like an Eskimo to treat the Logstores, and in that cold snap we had I looked a bit like the Michelin man on a bad day. But I didn't care, it was too cold to care. Tomorrow is the start of February, so we are wondering what sales will be like for Feb, March and April, by which time we will have a whole year to look back on.

Save money on winter fuel bills

2009-08-23T10:26:00.000-07:00

There is nothing nicer than the flames of a fire in winter, making us feel warmer just by looking at them. But did you know that using Logs as fuel is a cheaper and more eco friendly way to keep warm in winter? It is cheaper than coal gas or electric heating, and is a renewable and sustainable source of heating.

Tips:

Buy wood as dry as possible.

It is very simple really, Dry (seasoned) logs will burn longer and give more heat out, and will therefore work out cheaper.

Buy as early as you can.

Spring if possible, for cheaper 'wet' wood, and let it air dry over summer and Autumn. It is fine to buy later than Spring, just make sure it is seasoned by the time you burn it. Check with your supplier what you are buying, while burning 'wet' wood is still cheaper than other fuels it is much better to burn 'dry'.

Keep the logs in a log store

They will air dry. This is very important, and will make wood fuel even more economical. By storing under cover in a wood store the logs will not reabsorb the water they have lost being seasoned.

Bring some logs inside

to house dry for a few days prior to burning, try to always have enough ‘house dried’ logs ready for your fire.

You can burn unseasoned (wet) wood, but it will burn quicker and with less heat, and will leave more sticky soot, meaning you need the chimney cleaned more often. But it looks just as nice, smells just as nice, and is still cheap.

A coal grate is not really suitable for wood, so cover it with a metal base plate for best results. Reduce the area of the lowest part of fire with sloping fire bricks to deepen the ash and charcoal bed but leaving more space for logs above.

Busy Summer

2009-08-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

Well, here at Wood Stores we had a lovely uptake on the offer to preorder our Log Stores for Autumn. Customers were thinking well ahead for storing their winter fuel. Always a good idea to buy logs in advance for good seasoning, because 'dry' wood burns longer and warmer so is very cost effective.

We are all very busy working to fill current orders, and delivery dates for new orders are into early September now.

I like to ask customers why they chose our stores for their homes, and the answer we get is that they are attractive, competitively priced, and come ready constructed. And, Jake our dog helps, he often gets a mention :) So I made Ginger George pose too, and he shows off the small Chimnea log stores to purrfection (oh yes, and my sense of humour was mentioned a couple of times too).

The smaller logstores have proved very popular too, but we found the one drawback is they are still a size that needs Pallet delivery, so is the same cost as the big woodstores. So, we are in the process of looking at having another smaller size that can be sent by courier instead of pallet.

Sadie

Order now for delivery anytime up to October, pay on delivery

2009-06-27T08:26:00.000-07:00

Setting up the website in April, and then getting indexed so quickly, was a nice start to selling online. In all honesty it has been a whirlwind experience. We didn’t expect people to be thinking of their storage for winter fuel in Spring and Summer, and it has been a pleasant surprise to find that the design is well liked and sales keep happening. It hasn’t been 3 months yet, but we have far exceeded the orders we expected for 6 months. I think this is because we have a good design at a good price, but having been so busy have not really had time to look into this properly yet!

We are now ordering wood in at this years prices for what we predict will be the amount needed, so, if you are planning to have a log store in future, the offer is on for ordering now and not paying until just before it is delivered. This way we both win, you get the log store you need at current cost without having to pay till you need it, and we know better how much wood to order.

The start of summer

2009-05-18T04:52:00.000-07:00

It has been a busy couple of weeks since the Bewdley Show, with log stores steadily going out to customers and more orders coming in. It is very satisfying when we hear from a customer that they are happy with their order. At the moment we have a 3 to 4 week waiting list, which for early summer is very good indeed.

Hopefully by the autumn when things get even busier we will have moved to a new bigger workshop. Plans are being made now to build a larger workshop, with the aim to be in by early autumn.

Timber prices traditionally rise in late summer, so earlybirds are getting their orders in at the current price and getting a bargain.

New Recycle boxes wood store Special Opening Offer £79

2009-05-06T03:39:00.000-07:00

We have at last added the Recycle Boxes Store to the items we have on offer. This was delayed a little by doing the Discover Bewdley show at Bank Holiday weekend, which took a fair bit of time to organise. It was a very enjoyable weekend though, and has resulted in alot of interest and orders. The Recycle box store went on public view for the first time and thankfully met a very favorable reception! They are on at a special opening offer price, so act now, they will only stay this price for the next few weeks.

Google Indexed

2009-04-15T01:38:00.000-07:00

Am very pleased that my website is now indexed in Google search! What a lovely Easter present to discover that the site can now be searched for. Daily visitors to the site are increasing, and I even got a phone call for an order on Good Friday!

Seems to be alot of people want to order my dog. Now this has to be stopped. I have told Jake he is not to talk to strangers, unfortunately he views every stranger as a potential ball thrower, what to do is the question!

Just starting out with log stores

2009-04-07T13:05:00.000-07:00

Hello and thank you for reading my blog. I wanted to tell you how I started making Wood Stores, and how the website came into being.

We have an open fire in our living room, and a morso in the front room, so have been using logs for fuel for about 10 years. We have good friends who have a business in wood, so have a good source for logs.

In the depths of winter chipping ice or snow off the logs to bring inside is no fun, and having piles of logs at front and back of the house was starting to irritate my darling wife. She keep busy most of the time with her business, Heavenly Soaps, but found plenty of time to mention the logs. I told her, Logs can't be stacked neatly, they need air circulating to keep them dry and season them. But in the end it was a case of "make a log store or the heating is going on and logs are banned"!

So I made a log store. And it met with her approval. So much so she asked me to make one for someone else. Then someone saw the log store and wanted one. And the rest is history as they say.

When we moved to our home, 10 years ago, I built our kitchen from reclaimed wood. The local council had introduced recycling bins, and Mrs Heavenly Soaps requested a store for them, so the first recycle bin store was made way back then. It is only now that I am working on a prototype to sell as a flat pack, as Sadie says, she can't be the only one who hates the site of them and wants a nice hidey hole to put them in.

Anyway, best get back to it, these wood stores don't build themselves. If you have time take a look at the new website, credit for that has to go to Mrs Heavenly though, I'm just the man who makes them.