Tv show ‘Property Brothers’ shines a spotlight on W.Va. woodworking small business | Lifetime

“To me, it’s like, ‘Alright, how can I get on nationwide television?’ … I even wrote an email to the Meals Network, to Bobby Flay. … I was keen to make them a cutting board and send it, you know, just so they could have a thing they can communicate about,” explained Doug Gerwig, a business contractor by day.

“Nothing. Received no response back. … It is form of a bummer, you know?”

Never ever mind that he and Bobby Gunnoe experienced only been in organization for a handful of months, that they only achieved due to the fact their small children were being close friends or that their tailor made furnishings corporation, G2 Handwerker Patterns, was a element-time gig that arrived in addition to their demanding working day careers.

They arrived at out to HGTV and the well-liked “Property Brothers” exhibits starring authentic estate and renovation professionals Drew and Jonathan Scott who, as the community suggests, “transform common residences into long lasting relatives desire homes” in advance of tens of millions of viewers.

“I was specially pitching instantly to the ‘Forever Home’ series since what much better way to kind of immortalize your name in something is to make anything for someone’s forever household, that that’s their desire home. That is what they’re going to reside in forever,” Gerwig mentioned.

This time, present producers did react — swiftly. It took a even though to get ultimate network approval, but it did appear. And what’s happened since then has been “hard to consider,” Gunnoe explained.

The factor is, most people appear at a table and see a table.

Gerwig and Gunnoe seem at a chunk of wood and see a operate of artwork in the producing. A piece of background. A tribute to ancestors they in no way knew, but to whom they sense connected.

And so this is a tale about heritage. About sacrifice. About historical past … and two males who convey all of people factors together in a way that’s the two purposeful and attractive.

Gerwig has been working with wood all of his grownup life.

As did his father right before him. And his father prior to him. And a extended line of predecessors dating again at the very least 250 yrs.

“There have been a few brothers that arrived above in this article from Germany in the late 1700s. … A single settled in New York, a single settled in this place and the other a single form of went further more west. But if you go again and appear at each and every group of them, this is kind of what they did, making household furniture,” he explained.

“It’s bred in them additional or significantly less. … They would have been like my great, terrific, fantastic, good grandparents and grand uncles or something together individuals traces.”

On his dad’s side, even though.

“My mom’s side were basically a bunch of outlaws,” he added with a grin. He’s happy of that, much too — but particularly very pleased of the woodcraft traditions.

“I indicate, I search back again at things that my terrific, wonderful, wonderful granddad designed. … My father has a upper body that he designed that has so much intricate element and lays in it. And you glance at it and you are like, ‘Alright, I know what I have to function with currently.’ I signify, we have, you know, the wonderful desk saws, the moveable CNCs, the joiners, the planers and things like that. And you are like, alright, they made use of hand planes on this things.”

He looks at a credenza they are doing the job on, a piece that will almost certainly consider shut to 300 hrs of operate in advance of it is concluded, even with all that extravagant devices.

“I imply, can you consider … imagine how lots of several hours it would’ve taken to make a thing like this.”

He owns a professional contracting firm, but has created custom made home furniture on the side and felt a pull to return to those roots.

“My vision for it is that every single and every single piece that leaves this store, I try for it to be some thing that you could go to a museum and see on screen in 200 many years. I want it to be that form of quality and that element on it to wherever, you know, they’re like, ‘How in the entire world could they do that?’”

So when he arrived throughout a piece of purple coronary heart wood — known for its deep eggplant shade — he believed of generating a shadow box for his good friend Gunnoe, who experienced acquired it the difficult way.

“The element was awesome,” Gunnoe mentioned. “That’s a extremely, quite hard wood. Like … it’ll burn up drill bits and saw blades like very little, truly. So the intricacy do the job is amazing.”

It was the fantastic location to exhibit his very own Purple Heart.

“I was airborne infantry. I was a paratrooper” with the 82nd Airborne Division, he mentioned.

“It’s all I ever desired to do as a child developing up,” he extra.

That was it’s possible because of his individual ancestors. Gunnoe claimed his grandfather was a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne Division and his uncle was a Korean War veteran, who was also in the airborne infantry.

“I went in June 2001. 9/11 transpired. We went to Iraq in March of 2003. … I was part of the invasion,” Gunnoe stated.

About eight months in, “I bought strike by an [improvised explosive device]. Dropped 50 percent my calf on my remaining leg.”

He turned down a army desk position — “I could not be airborne anymore, couldn’t be infantry, so I was not heading to do it” — and then observed it virtually difficult to land a position, any occupation, when he came again home.

“I used to almost 60 employment before I discovered just one, paying clinical promises,” he said.

It was a considerably cry from the heady, urgent hurry of war.

At some point he grew to become a registered nurse and these days is a nursing supervisor for Summersville Regional Clinical Middle.

He also appreciated what he observed searching at the shadow box. There are no nails and no screws. Just box joints lower with these types of precision, equipped collectively so snugly, that it is unlikely to ever appear apart. It was produced with the sort of discipline and interest to depth he’d identified in the Army.

“We were being conversing one working day, you know. It was like, ‘I take pleasure in the intricacy of that.’ We started off comparing some notes and stated, ‘Why really don’t we just start off performing this?’”

So these two adult men have their own one of a kind histories. And so does the wooden they function with.

“You see that piece right there? It’s from Harewood Mine in Fayette County. … A piece of Brazilian teak,” Gunnoe mentioned, pointing to a rectangular slat of wooden with 5 holes in it, a little bit off heart.

“My wife’s grandfather died in that mine,” he reported. “I’m creating that for my father-in-law, due to the fact he’s the only individual alive that I know that labored at Harewood Mine.”

“You see that beam up there, that form of unsightly beam that’s slash in half? That is Douglas Fir from a magnesium mine in Nevada that was employed in Entire world War II.”

He gestures all-around the old garage that may perhaps under no circumstances be a garage once more — a cement function house now crowded floor to ceiling with items of wooden that have endured anything.

“We have redwood more than in this article from a vineyard in Napa Valley that burned down very last 12 months. And that proper listed here is purple oak which is local. They have been all cut up in excess of a hundred decades in the past.”

There’s something to the concept of applying a piece of wooden that has its very own history for an heirloom undertaking intended to serve potential generations

“You can just come to feel it. There is a heat about the wood anytime you function with a thing like that,” Gerwig claimed.

“Like that black walnut slab over there. … We’ve obtained it, and we want to do anything with it. But it has not at any time just seemed at me to be like, ‘Hey, this is what I want to be.’ We’re just ready for the ideal issue to do, the ideal point to occur together.”

Plenty of matters have occur alongside, while.

Presently two of the assignments by Gerwig and Gunnoe have been showcased on “Property Brothers: For good Home,” such as a black walnut eating table shown on the Dec. 2 present, segment 406, titled “Honoring Lola.”

“And in that area of the display, there was like 15 or 16 however shots of that table ahead of they ever showed it to the householders,” Gerwig said.

“And then when they confirmed it to the house owners, you know, for us just standing there seeing their reaction. … They had been like, ‘Holy cow. Look at this desk.’”

He paused and shook his head.

“That factor was in the shop a several months ago. We manufactured that and there it is. And there is millions on millions of people viewing it appropriate now,” he mentioned. “It’s sort of 1 of people moments.”

“Hard to believe,” Gunnoe claimed.

Not seeking to get any chances, they individually drove the closing solutions to Las Vegas for the show. They also look in the credits of the clearly show, which ended up obtainable enough that orders have been coming in, like from many well-identified designers and consumers throughout the region.

The next episode they made a piece for is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 10.

“And we have obtained some more points coming. We’re operating with some designers in Las Vegas, people from D.C. have contacted us,” Gunnoe mentioned. “It’s been blessing over blessing.”

Not terrible for a pair of guys and a part-time gig.