When you choose a piece of Hartford House furniture, you will know that it has been crafted with care by skilled tradesmen to our detailed specifications.

We start with the wood. Every piece of Hartford House wood furniture is built from top grade lumber. Primarily, we use Eastern white pine, but we also use maple and oak for many of our pieces, especially dining tables and chairs. Occasionally, we use other hardwoods upon customer request.

After each piece is built, its hand sanded. The sanding process is very important to the look of a piece of Hartford House furniture. The craftsman who sands must have a gentle touch to ensure the furniture is smooth for staining, but doesn’t have any unnecessary dips and bumps.

The next step—staining—we truly believe is an art. Stain must be applied evenly to each piece of furniture, but that’s not always the most challenging part of the job—the trick is often in the blending of the stain to an existing piece of furniture. Because wood is a natural product, each piece will take the stain differently. So, we know we can’t perfectly match a stain, but we can blend very closely.

In addition to stains, Hartford House also offers painted and crackled finishes as well as decorative painting. Each piece is then accented with hardware, the “jewelry” of furniture. Hartford House offers a large selection of knobs, pulls and hinges to make our pieces unique, and we also purchase vintage reproduction hardware for many of our pieces.

The final step in our finishing process is hand rubbing. We carefully rub each piece of furniture by hand until it achieves a rich, warm glow we call “The Hartford Finish,” a finish unique to Hartford House products.

This engraved maker’s mark is found on each Hartford House furniture piece.