- Wood Work

Biz Tips
Wood Work: Cole Valley furniture maker
builds alternatives to Ikea

By Heather Smith

IT'S A TOUGH prospect to find affordable furniture in San Francisco, and even more difficult to track down inexpensive furnishings that are made locally. City dwellers who turn up their noses at coffee chains and buy their groceries at the farmer's market will nonetheless swallow their pride and motor over to the Emeryville Ikea, wallet in hand.

Largely this is due to the fact that space for manufacturing in the city is so expensive, and ordering from overseas is obscenely cheap in comparison. San Francisco has no shortage of amazing woodworkers and artisans, but often they don't come cheap.

In the "for flush pocketbooks" category of Bay Area furniture manufacture, Propeller (555 Hayes, SF. 415-701-7767, www.propeller-sf.com) in Hayes Valley carries furniture by local artisans. Jason Lees both designs and builds sleek, modernist furniture, which he sells out of a storefront in Oakland (1577 E. 38th St., Oakl. 510-482-4321, www.jasonleesdesign.com). David Pierce, another woodworker-designer, has a showroom for his furniture line named Ohio in the Lower Haight (136 Fillmore, SF. (415) 863-6446, www.ohiodesign.com) that's built in his Inner Mission workshop. Other artisans, like Matt Bear of Union Studio, make and sell furniture through Web sites (www.unionstudio.com) and word of mouth.

Fortunately the crafty and insolvent have found a few alternatives to designer prices. One is the ever trusty practice of trolling well-to-do neighborhoods on garbage collection night.

Another alternative is Cole Valley's Stumasa, (515 Frederick, SF. 415-759-1234, www.stumasa.com), which sells sturdy but inexpensive unfinished bookshelves and custom-built storage units made in an Oakland warehouse.

Stumasa's origins lie in the simple wooden record cubes ($20 each) and CD racks in a variety of sizes ($13 to $133) that Gregory Stukuls began making when he moved to San Francisco in 1999. He would pile them into his truck and drive around town, selling them to Amoeba and other music shops. His wife, graphic designer Maybelle Imasa-Stukuls, recalls it as a frenetic life punctuated with much double-parking.

In 2003 Stukuls received an interesting proposition from his client Ron Lehmer. Lehmer, who ran an antique and furniture consignment business out of the building he owned, wanted to retire. Hoping the space would continue as a furniture shop, he asked Stukuls if he would be interested in taking over the storefront.

The furniture maker and his wife accepted the offer. The couple combined their two last names to form the word "Stumasa" and opened in Sept. 2003 with nothing but a bunch of bookshelves, a few plants, and newly painted walls.

"We added things to the store as we got a sense of what the neighborhood wanted," Imasa-Stukuls says. "Fortunately Cole Valley is very supportive of local business."

Cole Valley has a history of locking out chain stores. After Starbucks tried to get a lease on a local storefront, the Board of Supervisors passed a 2004 ordinance forcing any business with more than 11 outlets nationwide and "repetitive characteristics" seeking to open a location in Cole Valley to go through a lengthy permit process through the city Planning Commission.

Labor at Stumasa is split down the middle. Gregory and one employee do all the woodworking. Imasa-Stukuls and another employee run the shop and order the readymade furniture and stylish housewares that fill the rest of the storefront. Furniture not made by Stumasa is purchased from John Greenleaf, Maywood, and Maco, all located in Oregon.

The store also carries nontoxic paints for finishing the furniture, as well as the usual array of flamboyant tote bags and fancy salt grinders more typical of neighborhood tchotchke shops.

Signs of Cole Valley's baby boom are evident everywhere in Stumasa's merchandise. An unvarnished wooden crib that converts to a twin bed ($399) is lined with somber-looking felt cat dolls, and the tiniest little wooden workbench ($99), complete with denim tool apron, is tucked neatly into one corner

"Everyone is having a baby," Imasa-Stukuls says. "But we also continue to have a lot of business from UCSF." Students want furniture that's nice enough to keep after graduation. DJs dig the record cubes and bookshelves.

Stumasa continues to take on custom work. Their strangest commission was for a faux dresser intended to conceal a landlord-forbidden washing machine. When neighbors learned of the arrangement, they all began ordering their own versions of the dresser.

Yet another thing that Ikea has yet to provide denizens of San Francisco.

Heather Smith is a local writer with a fondness for people who nail things to other things.