Woodfields Furniture on 100th Street in Urbandale made several moves before landing in its current 6,000-square-foot space June 1.

The company has been reinvented since Myron Corron started building furniture in his garage about 17 years ago.

Today, he’s specializing in the sale of unfinished furniture and custom finishing with paints and stains.

He answered these questions.

Q. What is the history of your business?
A. I started building pieces of furniture in my garage about 17 or 18 years ago. A lot of people remarked on how neat it was and I started making it for retail stores. Then I started building for customers. An opportunity came up at Village Square Mall in Johnston. I had 1,100 square feet near the front door. The manager allowed me to line the hallway with furniture and the business just took off.

I got more space when I moved the business to Clive, south of Hickman Road on 94th Street. Then I went across the street from here. I moved here because this space has more visibility.

Q. How has your business changed?
A. I was focusing on custom building and finishing. I’ve slowly gotten out of that. Now I work with manufacturers who allow customizing. I display mainly unfinished furniture and my goal is to roll into unfinished furniture with custom finishing. We can individualize furniture with color.

Q. What’s most popular in finishes now?
A. The painted look. Black is most popular, and antique white and brick red. Also linen – a dark off-white – or millstone – a taupe.
Most of the time we’ll distress it. We can also do a glaze over paint.

Q. How do you do that?
A. We sand the edges and do it in a way that looks weathered. We have rub-through colors, so the underneath color comes through. Cherry stain under black paint works well.

Q. How many colors of paint do you have?
A. We have 20 stock colors. People even bring in their own paint – colors they have at home, or any paint color from a paint store.

Q. What about stains?
A. Dark colors are popular. Especially the antique cherry, java – a dark reddish brown, and espresso. We have 17 stock colors with the ability to mix stain colors.

Q. Do you have more people wanting paint or stain?
A. I’d say 30 to 40 percent are going to be painted. The rest is wood-stained. Some is two-toned – the base of a chair or table may be painted and the top stained.

Q. Do you only finish furniture that is purchased here?
A. A lot of people have a nice old set like a table and chairs and matching buffet. We’ll buff it out and prep it for painting, then I spray paint it. I’m not set up to do a lot of stripping of furniture, however I can do a table top or a chair top and paint the base.

Q. What’s popular in furniture?
A. The counter-high pub table and stools. People can take the stools over to their counter, or if they have company, they can pull the stools from the counter to the table. Plasma TV stands are also real hot.

Popular styles include French country, Shaker and Mission styles.

Q. What are some of your furniture prices?
A. We have special buys now. They’re all solid wood and most are already finished, so they’re all set to go. They range from $700 to $2,600 – most have four chairs, some have six. Some are made by the Amish.

A lot of people come in for a chair. They range from $80 to $150, depending on the wood and quality.

Q. How much does it cost to have furniture finished?
A. It’s about 40 to 50 percent of what the furniture costs. So if a chair is $100, a customer would pay $40 to $50 for a finish.

Q. What furniture customizing do you do?
A. Adding shelves to a unit, keyboard pullouts on desks, cutting the table size down, adding a TV or computer pullout to an armoire, changing door styles on some lines. The biggest customizing is the plasma TV stand to make it the right style, size and color.

Copyright © 2006, The Des Moines Register.

Tags: Antique, black paint works, Cherry, Color, Des Moines, French Country, Furniture, Hickman Road, Java, MYR,