Kentucky beach seats

Southern Living, Jul 2002

Find furniture perfect for enjoying a pina colada at this Louisville store.

Seats shaped like sharks. Signs painted with palm trees and favorite phrases. Chairs dressed with brights scenes from some faraway tropical beach. Jessica and Scott Ferguson's Louisville business is definitely not your parents' furniture store. Funky, quirky, and oneof-a-kind, their colorful creations have even earned Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville seal of approval.

WoodButchers, Inc., resides in a rather nondescript building, but it's what's inside that counts. You smell sawdust the minute you enter. That's Scott in the process of making another Adirondack chair, the item for which the company is best known.

What began as a modest business of making and painting chairs has reached all the way to Margaritaville. They now make signs, chairs, and other furniture, some of which are sold at Jimmy Buffett's stores.

In business for eight years now, the Fergusons have 3 sons, 17 pets, and a staff of 5. "It's a family," says Jessica, "and we all love animals. We're just a bunch of old hippies." That low-key lifestyle extends to their customer service. Jessica emphasizes the custom nature of their business. "One lawyer wanted his furniture painted purple," she recalls. "Another customer, a biologist, wanted his Adirondack chairs decorated with amoebas."

The chairs-still the most popular item-start at $199 each and can be ground shipped anywhere for $75.

So look around WoodButchers. Take home a tropical chair, a pirate chair, or a Beatles chair. Or maybe pick up one of the first signs that was such a big seller for the Fergusons: "Life's a Beach."

WoodButchers, Inc.: 11214 Bluegrass Parkway, Louisville, KY 40299; (502) 261-1336,1-888-656-2711, or www.wood-butchers.com.