make buffalo unique. (part two of our interview with Rob Baird)
MB/J: Do you ever encounter other pickers when you are out?
Rob: I feel like we are all sharks. I feel like if I see something on the side of the road and if I don’t get it immediately, it will be gone in five minutes. Which is problematic because I have a tiny Subaru.
MB/B: Does Christian have a bigger car?
Rob: He does have a bigger car. If I’m lucky enough to swap cars with him, I will, but I do have a bike rack on my car and I’ve been known to strap some mighty pieces of furniture to the top of my car.
MB/B: Take it five miles per hour home, and you’re fine.
Rob: Yeah, I have strapped some ridiculously large things to the top of my car.
MB/B: We were in Nashville, and there were the American Pickers—they have their store down there. They do a really nice job of picking selection. I grew up with my mom being the garage saler of the world….
MB/J: What you are doing has been done for hundreds of years—making stuff yourself—do you think because you are doing it in the city and you are working with people that live in the city, that don’t experience places like East Aurora, makers in the country, do you think that what you do is valued differently? That it’s hipsterified? I know that’s not why you are doing it. Goat Cheese—the First Light guys—are good looking, they make great goat cheese, but it’s goat cheese, and people make it every day all across the country so they can have breakfast, lunch and dinner. And people make furniture so that they can have things to sit on—but because you are doing it here in the city, I wonder if people value it differently than if you were doing it down in Springville off of a back road.
Rob: I feel like honestly, the majority of the stuff that I’ve done so far—and I’ve only started doing this since last fall—the majority of people that I’ve done stuff for have been friends, or friends of friends, so I have some sort of a connection to them, so it hasn’t been my craft standing alone, it’s always been a friend asking me to build something for them. I do think there is a value in taking something that people are throwing away and seeing that it can be reused for something. Then redoing it, presenting it, and people say “oh my God”! For instance, someone was throwing away this antique desk down our street, and I literally walked down the street with it. Then, my brother and sister-in-law needed a liquor cabinet and so I redid it, ripped out the shelving and turned it into a liquor cabinet. We throw away so much stuff.
MB/J: It’s almost like the people that see you carrying that desk are saying “that guy is crazy”, but you, maybe we, are the ones that say you are crazy for throwing out the desk.
Rob: Totally. I get out of the city, but if I were in the ‘burbs, I would just drive around with a giant pickup truck. People throw away so much stuff. When I need something, I don’t go to Home Depot first, I go to Buffalo Reuse or the Restore first. When I needed paint, I went to Buffalo Reuse and found what I needed. Their paint is so cheap and you get tons of it. I feel like there is value in what other people are throwing away or donating.
MB/B: One day, we went down to Chandler Street and the stuff there is so overpriced! A vintage door at these antique places is hundreds of dollars. People are capitalizing on that market.
Rob: If people just took the extra step instead of going to the antique store where everything is super expensive, and went to Buffalo reuse, they could totally get a door for 75 bucks. And a sawhorse—I think a sawhorse is easy to make—I feel like if you watched a Youtube video, you could figure it out. I feel like we—and I’m just as guilty with this—we could make it, but it’s right there, so I’ll buy that. But if we went the extra step, you could probably do it and have a little bit of creativity.
MB/J: Do you know about the Foundry?
Rob: I’ve heard of it. I’m very familiar with the property—I stopped by one day, but they were closed.
MB/B: They do Second Saturdays where you can have a table for very cheap and I think they do workshops and stuff like that. So I’m looking around your workshop and I’m thinking—do you feel like woodworking is a whole culture of its own? I feel like you could be my interior designer, looking around.
Rob: In another life, I think I could have been an interior designer. Whenever I go into people’s houses, I’m just looking around and it’s just part of my thing. I’m always interested in how people decorate their house or how they don’t decorate their house. I think that would be a really fun job. Give me a completely blank room, give me a budget of 200 bucks, then I’ll have some good parameters. I think it’s more fun to have a super low budget because it encourages you to be creative. Instead of just ordering a bunch of stuff from Restoration Hardware. I feel like you can replicate Restoration Hardware by going to Buffalo Reuse.
MB/B: How do you do most of your research into what you want to do?
Rob: Pinterest is like crack. I’ve actually weened myself off of it quite a bit. Probably about six months ago, I had a lot of trouble sleeping and it was because I would get on Pinterest and like 3 hours later, I have to go to work in the morning! Through Pinterest, I saw some interesting ideas on refinishing furniture, so then I went from Pinterest to another website, then I went to Youtube to watch how to do it. I’d say Pinterest, Youtube, and Craigslist are the three websites that I go to the most to look at stuff.
MB/J: If you messed up a piece, would you say “fuck it” and start over or would you let that mistake dictate the next step and let it be organic?
Rob: The one piece I’m working on, I would redo. I know that the aesthetic of the hair place has is not rustic banged up, distressed furniture. They are very black, sleek, clean lines. If I fucked that up, I would redo it to meet that aesthetic. If it were a piece for my house, or a different client or a different store, then I’d say that we’d just organically make it something else. I always keep in mind who I’m doing stuff for.
MB/J: That’s important.
Rob: That’s the tension for any artist—having a vision of what you want to do but also making it marketable or what the client is looking for—there’s a balance in there. If you are doing only what you want, then people are going to think you are a nut job! With furniture—it can be beautiful, but if it’s not functional—who wants to live in a house with furniture that isn’t functional? Furniture has to be functional.
MB/B: Why woodworking?
Rob: Because I feel like woodworking is—here’s my completely honest answer—woodworking is the easiest craft to bullshit your way through. If I was going to paint a picture, you can’t just take something that someone else painted and kind of do some other stuff to it, whereas I can go to Buffalo Reuse and pick up a drafting table, strip it down, refinish it, add a new door, add new hardware, and make it my piece. Woodworking you can either bullshit your way through or you can just hone your craft and start making stuff that is really your own.
MB/B: What is your ideal—we asked Sara this question too—what is your ideal situation?
Rob: My ideal situation would be that I somehow found a niche that I could do this full time. I’m not business minded, I wouldn’t want a store front, I would want someone else to be in charge of the store front and I would just make the furniture and they sell it.
MB/J: There was this great store in Burlington called Vermont Farm Table and they had a store in the front that was very simple—cutting boards, rolling pins and tables—and in the back was what I think was a design studio where they were designing these pieces. Sounds like, swap the design studio with a shop where you are working and you just so happen to have the stuff you made on sale right there.