down at the furniture shop

i wanted to post something about the carpenters who are constructing the new furniture, because a) they are awesome! and, b) my dad has a friend in auburn who kind of works in a similar fashion, but his shop is a one-of-a-kind place (or, one of a few, at least), and yet this seems to be common practice in turkey, so i thought he'd get a kick out of seeing it.

ben and i first visited a.s. mobilya to give them the design we came up with for the new closet, and pick out the wood it would be constructed from.  they sat us down, served us tea (custom here in turkey), and then proceeded to replicate the design TO A T...  then brought it to our house in pieces and assembled it.  the crew who came to our place were friendly & respectful, and most importantly, QUIET, so our neighbors didn't complain, helping ben to relax a bit.

so we returned to the shop to talk to them about building our new living room furniture, and when i asked them if i could take some pictures of the place (with my iphone, hence the lesser quality of the pics), they were thrilled.  ben went over the designs with them (mostly pottery barn stuff we tweaked to fit our every need - because you can do that here), and i walked around and took some shots.  i think in the 2 pictures below the owner of the place (middle) was posing for me.  too cute.

when we had agreed on the designs, wood, and pricing, it was time to talk estimated arrival date.  the dude looked at us kind of concerned, and explained that this one might take a bit longer than the closet.  i'm thinking maybe he's got some other projects ahead of ours, plus this is a tv console, bar & shelving unit, so clearly it will take longer!  then he says it will take them 4 days to build, and a little extra time for the stain to dry.  i looked at ben in disbelief-- under a week!  cripes.  i love these guys.  then they let me take some pictures around the shop room.

below is the crew that was at our house on saturday, so they smiled and waved when they saw me come in.

you'd never know about this place if someone didn't tell you.  it's in a district of ankara that is entirely furniture-making businesses, one after the other, but this one is on a little alley way, as you can see.  good thing ben's dad knows a guy who knows a guy!