Built in 1955 as facility for a printer. In that time the building has had four other businesses inside.
This is a very well made building, but the doors and windows were junk. We’ve nearly completed the replacement of all those inadequate. It’s a good place to see our work, our interest in materials and durability, and our respect for classic design
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Nice doors, handmade hardware, 3 1/2” thick.
Two loading docks, three forklifts, and an overhead crane gives us exceptional material and handling capacity.
Our current facility was built as a printing shop in 1955. I bet the architect was born in the 19th century. The natural light and ventilation are fantastic. The overhead crane can be just the tool about once a month. It’s a total of 23,000 SF i
Center of the main wood facility has a new use every two weeks. On this day nothing important then next week, maybe hundred year old doors from the halls of Congress.
For 20 years we worked in a large alley garage with little natural light. We are fortunate today our main shop is lit with solar power LED as well as large windows and clerestory.
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We carefully store moldings, new and old, this rack can be a real problem solver. Sometimes the profiles there sometimes a slight modification is just what is needed to complete a project on time.
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We can keep on hand over 20,000 board feet of hard wood with these fork lift accessible racks.
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The wood shop is a versatile space and constantly evolving. We have done thousands sash runs of reproduction sash and careful restoration of one-of-a-kind handmade sash with a variety of equipment we have here.
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A few of the harder workers here, myself, Steven, and the electric forklift. Sammy the shop dog just makes sure we stay in line.
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A favorite section of mine and always growing, there are fasteners here I collected as a teenager and everyday problems are solved because of this resource.
There are few old hardware stores left and I think this fasteners storage would better most.
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The main glass and finishes building offers ten easel tables for excellent light on the work at hand.
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This room in an isolated section of the glass facility provides storage for a bounty of salvaged historic hardware and occasional clean room for fabrication of insulating glass units.
This photo is from 2017, we recently completed a containment chamber for safer paint removal.
This glass is on fire. Low-e laminated glass is our favorite modern glass upgrade for historic sash. The fire softens the vinyl inner layer allowing the cut glass pieces to be separated.
Something we all love here is two meals a day. Keeps us going and keeps us together.
The small library from the old office is still an important resource despite today’s bounty of the world wide web.
The original Craftsmen Group, a horse barn built in 1905 before the rest of Petworth, in an alley off Georgia Avenue, we’ve worked in here for more than 20 years. Got to be one of the greenest buildings in Washington.
Old meets new, somehow this state-of-the-art five access CNC vertical mill got through the door and into the old building. An amazing machine, but not a vital ingredient in our work.
This is the second building in the alley off Fairmont Street. We sold the building as we expanded. It is now slated for redevelopment.
This was the wood shop for 20 years. We did projects like Postal Square and Eastern Market from this small and intensely efficient space. This is 1,200 SF, our wood working facility is now over 18.000 SF.
The original shop in the basement of an Adam’s Morgan row house, 7-ft. ceilings and access through the dining room were among the many challenges of producing work here. This photo is from 1983. The bench in the foreground is used to this day.