St. Regis resident hand crafts wood furniture

St. Regis resident, Kim Elledge is sort of a Jill of many jobs.

“My Dad taught me to be a pretty good handyman or a jack of all trades, master of none of course. He taught me a lot about carpentry, and I did repair work for his termite business. I worked in a lumber mill a lot of years, and it probably helped that I took wood shop and auto shop in high school,” Elledge said.

With an eclectic work portfolio including anything from laying carpet to being a seamstress for a T-bird and Mustang dealership installing upholstery, Elledge has always stayed sharp working with her hands and found joy in creating things. Ultimately that’s how she ended up establishing her own furniture business, Montana’s WoodRiver, making handcrafted, one-of-a-kind rustic wood pieces.

Elledge gleaned this skill and eye for woodworking from her first spouse.

“So the way it actually happened was one day I was watching my ex-husband work with these burl slabs and I watched him go from what looked like a really dull piece of wood and he transformed it into a beautiful clock," she said. "Then he made beautiful tables and after watching him do that I knew I could do it also.”

After her divorce, Elledge rooted herself in this new form of art and craftsmanship. She recalled, “I begin to do more than tables and clocks. I started making plant stands and chairs, and more it went from a hobby to a lifestyle.”

As time went on Elledge invested countless hours and effort into her venture. She shared, “Every piece of furniture that is constructed you wouldn't really think so but so much of you goes into it from the first stage of picking your piece of wood and I'm talking about like your main centerpiece and then you kind of build your vision around that and then every piece is carefully hand selected from the forests and the creeks and rivers around our beautiful, majestic, Montana.”

Elledge has built bed frames, chairs, tables, coat racks, clocks, shelves, and benches, all of them formed by intricate pieces of wood that she collects from the forests of Western Montana.

She expressed, “I've spent countless hours and numerous gallons of gas driving around everywhere looking for driftwood piles, down trees, uprooted trees, blow downs, beetle kill, or even the aftermath of forest fires brings a lot of beauty into my furniture.”

Other unique wood features she has unearthed in nature are trees that have been enveloped in vines, the process of the vine choking the trunk can produce fascinating shapes and burls.

The adventures of just going out and hunting for unique wood has turned into a family pastime. Her children and grandchildren always keep an eye out for tree treasures for her furniture.

Elledge said, “My sister and I loved to go out and spend the whole day looking for driftwood and uprooted trees with roots that grow around the rocks, so it's kind of turned into a family affair which makes it that much more special.”

After many years of wood hounding and furniture building on her own, Elledge was unexpectedly blessed with a new partner. She shared, “My wonderful fiancé who actually really surprised me he has got quite the eye for finding beautiful unique character wood, and I'm sure we can accredit that fine eye for detail to him being a veteran logger for many years so I've actually learned quite a bit from him.”

Some of the most exceptional wood pieces she’s discovered, and the fondest furniture projects she’s completed have been with him. Elledge stated, “I wish there could be more pieces like that, there so beautiful and unlike anything I have ever seen before. It just brings a whole new flavor into the art we are already making.”

As far as what makes a good piece for furniture, its most often the stuff you’d find in the scrap pile. Elledge explained, “The more imperfections, and the more knots, and the more damage that you see on a piece the more beautiful it's going to be when you get wood like that it's almost like the tree has a fingerprint.”

She added, “It's very unique you'll never find one scar like the other and that's what I like so much about this furniture is you'll never have two pieces the same no matter how hard you try everyone is individual and unique in its own way.”

The building process for each piece is extensive. A king size bed frame made of beautiful knots and driftwood pieces took Elledge around six months to finish. But she noted, “I didn't work on it steadily, I usually get a couple projects going at one time and jump back and forth. I wasn't in a big hurry but if I was pressed for time, I'm sure I could have got it done a lot sooner.”

Say Elledge was working on a new table, first she would rummage through her driftwood pile to find just the right wood for the piece. Then all of the bark is stripped off. For certain pieces of wood, it can take multiple days to remove that outer layer.

“Then I have to sand each piece down, I like to seal or varnish some of the pieces before I put them together because it's hard to get all the really tight areas, I put them together and then try to level them all out and then probably varnish them again but the steps of sanding them alone is a lengthy process,” detailed Elledge.

If you look around various businesses in Mineral County you might come across some of Elledge’s work. She said, “I made bar stools for The Bootlegger Bar in Superior. My previous husband and I made quite a large burl table for a bank. And there is a cute little hippie store in the Flathead that I've sold several pieces to. But the sale that really opened my eyes and made all this a reality, was when I sold four pieces to the Going to the Sun Art Gallery located in beautiful Whitefish, Montana.”

Elledge started selling her furniture to friends and local customers around 2016. She said, “That's about the time I got business cards and my daughter was selling them door to door at different establishments, I'm not really good on the computer so I didn't get much of a website.”

But she remarked, “I always knew that my furniture was a hit, well-built and it could go somewhere, so I continued building it all this time until I could find a way to sell it.”

In the past she has put her furniture pieces in the St. Regis Flea Market, but found that they didn’t sell well there. Her goal now is to create a Facebook business page. She said, “But mostly I just keep building the furniture, I have it stored in different places and I'll put some of it on Marketplace.”

Whether they sell or not, Elledge relishes a job well done and the chance to continue doing something she loves. She shared, “I really have a lot of fun building the furniture it's real relaxing for me I just love to watch it take shape or come to life, it is still amazing to me some of the pieces come out really good, and I'm proud of them.” Elledge guessed that she works on her wood pieces a little bit nearly every single day.

You can find Elledge’s rustic log furniture pieces on her Facebook page, Montanas WoodRiver.