Roots Furniture Studio

Home
United States
Andover, NJ
Roots Furniture Studio

ROOTS Furniture Studio LLC - Handcrafted Furniture and Functional Art

10/26/2026

Recently finished and delivered this custom solid black walnut dining table for a wonderful couple settling into their new home in Bridgewater, NJ.

The design features a beautiful black walnut top with a modern style walnut base. I haven’t done this style of base before, but I love how it came together. The simplicity of the design really allows the natural grain and character of the walnut to shine through.

The table is finished with Odie's Oil to keep that natural look while still protecting the table from daily use.

One of the most rewarding parts of what I do is meeting my customers and revealing the finished piece. It never gets old! This couple was kind enough to leave a great review afterward, sharing that the table was exactly what they had envisioned. Love to hear that!

I hope they enjoy many years of family dinners, celebrations, and memories around this table!

Handcrafted in New Jersey by Alex DiIonno of Roots Furniture Studio

10/04/2026

The lake room is finally finished!

This room came with the house as a tropical-themed bedroom, which we’ve used as a home gym for several years. We decided to relocate the gym to another room and turn this room into a lake-inspired guest bedroom and playroom for the kids.

It started with tearing out the old tiki closet, reframing the wall, drywalling, and some fresh new paint colors. Then came the fun part — filling the room with things I could build myself.

I made the ambrosia maple dovetailed queen-sized bed, a live-edge black walnut TV stand, a hard maple sliding farmhouse door, walnut doorway trim, canoe paddle wall hangings, and even a fish coat/towel rack. All of these pieces were finished with Odie's Oil. Nothing I’d rather use in my own home!

The three prints above the TV were made by a friend of mine who owns a graphics business The Graphix Spot . We worked out a good old-fashioned trade- I built a fireplace mantel for his house, and he made several custom prints for ours.

My wife Jillian Merrell DiIonno deserves a ton of credit for this room coming together so nicely. There were some spatial challenges to making the room function as both a playroom and guest bedroom, but I love the layout! She also helped choose the paint colors and pulled everything together with the rug, bedding, pillows and decor. The room finally feels like the cozy, inviting space we were hoping for.

09/15/2026

This review really means a lot to me.

I started working with this customer about 10 years ago, back when my business was still Alex’s Wood Works. Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to build quite a few pieces for him and his family, including walnut stairs and railings, countertops, desks, coffee tables, closet shelving and more.

One of the things I’ve always appreciated is how much trust he’s put in me and my work. A lot of the time he’ll come to me with a general idea of what he’s looking for and give me the freedom to figure out the design and details from there.

It’s pretty cool to look back at all of these projects and realize how much work I’ve done for one customer over the years.

Repeat customers have always meant a lot to me. There’s really no better compliment than someone being happy enough with your work to keep coming back.

I really appreciate the kind words and, more importantly, the trust over the last 10 years. Thank you!

09/12/2026

Here’s another project I did at the Poconos lakehouse. I built 14 solid black walnut shelves and brought them with me when I delivered the coffee and end tables I recently shared. I installed 8 of these shelves in one of the upstairs bedrooms about four years ago, so this helps bring that same stunning look to the downstairs bedrooms.

Because these were being fitted between existing walls, every shelf needed to be custom fit on site. For the rectangular shelves, I made a simple stair-step jig that allowed me to capture the angle of the walls and transfer it to each shelf. The corner shelves were a little trickier, so I made templates from plywood strips before making the final cuts.

Each shelf was then mounted on solid wood wall cleats for a simple, clean installation that keeps the focus on the walnut.

It’s always satisfying to come back to a home years later and continue adding pieces to work I’ve already done. At this point, there’s quite a bit of my walnut projects scattered throughout this beautiful lake house!

09/11/2026

There’s something really rewarding about building for the same customer over the course of many years.

I’ve been working with this client for about 10 years now, and over that time I’ve had the opportunity to build quite a few pieces for him—including desks, custom stairs and a railing, a countertop, bar table, closet shelving, and now these two tables.

One thing I’ve always appreciated is the amount of creative freedom he gives me with each project. He has an idea of what he needs and where it’s going, but trusts me to work through the design and details.

For this latest project, I built a coffee table and matching end table for his lake house in the Poconos. Both are built from solid black walnut with exposed joinery and were designed to feel at home in a house sitting right on the lake.

Projects like this are a good reminder of why I enjoy custom furniture so much. Every piece can be designed specifically for the home it’s going into—and it’s even better when you get to keep adding to that home over the years.

Built in my one-man shop in Green Township, NJ.

09/01/2026

Installed this custom white oak fireplace mantel today!

I started with some locally sourced white oak, including one especially wide board that measured just over 19” across. That gave me some really nice, wide sections to work with and helped keep the color and grain consistent.

I built the mantel using mitered construction so the wood wraps around the corners, creating clean, seamless-looking edges without exposing end grain.

Early on we had talked about possibly using one of my reclaimed barn beams, but building it this style gave us much for flexibility for sizing as I could build it to whatever height and depth they wanted.

To give the new oak a little more character, I raised the grain on the surfaces with the Restorer tool before applying Aged Wood Accelerator. It brought out the grain and gave the oak a natural, slightly aged appearance without making it feel overly rustic.

The mantel was installed using a French cleat, keeping the mounting components completely hidden and giving the finished piece a clean, solid appearance on the fireplace.

I really like how this one came together. It’s a fairly simple design, but the grain, mitered corners and subtle texture give it a lot of character.

08/28/2026

This white oak console table was a fun one to build.

The customers reached out to me after seeing a white oak dining table I built a few years ago. They really liked the design of that table and asked if I could come up with a console table that had a similar look.

I used the original table as inspiration and scaled the design down to work as a console, while keeping a lot of the same details in the base.

The entire table was built from solid white oak and finished with Odie's Oil to bring out the natural color and grain of the wood.

I really enjoyed getting the opportunity to revisit one of my older designs and turn it into something completely different. Most importantly, the customers were very happy with how it came out and how it fit into their home in Summit, NJ.

Scroll to the last photo to see the inspiration, which was a dining table I built for my friends!

08/26/2026

A few pieces of custom woodwork made for this office in Morristown, NJ.

I was commissioned by butter&velvet DESIGN • HOME to build a solid Black Walnut butcher block countertop for a coffee bar, along with a pair of live-edge floating shelves for an office space.

For the countertop, individual strips of walnut were milled, arranged for grain and color, and glued into one solid top. The butcherblock was scribed to the wall during installation for a nice flush fit.

The floating shelves were both cut from one live-edge board, to maintain color consistency. I installed the shelves with Sheppard Brackets, who I truly believe make the best floating shelf brackets you can buy.

These pieces were all finished with Odie's Oil, for a natural and durable finish.

I always enjoy seeing rough lumber transformed into functional and beautiful fixtures in a finished space.

Grateful for the opportunity 🙏🏼

Designed by butter&velvet DESIGN • HOME
Built by Roots Furniture Studio
Morristown, NJ

08/25/2026

A look back at a pair of black walnut butcher block countertops I built for a home in Scranton, PA this summer. The smaller top measured 55” × 27”, while the island was over 10 feet long at 126”× 51”.

The tops themselves are 1.5” thick, but the outer edges were built up to give them the look of a full 3” thick slab. For the ends, I saved the offcuts and used them to double up the edge so the end grain would continue naturally through the 3” thickness.

Definitely one of the larger glue-ups I’ve had in the shop, but it was pretty satisfying watching all that walnut come together — especially once the Odie's Oil went on.

Built, finished, delivered and installed by Roots Furniture Studio.

05/30/2026

Just delivered this custom dining table and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out!

Swipe through the pictures and you can see how it all came together. The table features a race-track shaped fluted pedestal base. Yes, I cut, sanded, and routed corners on every one of those 130 Cherry strips! The soft radius corners on the solid Cherry table top draw you right in and eliminate hard corners which will make this table safer for the little ones. Every detail was crafted by hand in my New Jersey shop before making its way to its new home in Nutley, NJ

There’s something special about creating a table that will be at the center of family dinners, celebrations, conversations, and everyday moments for years to come.

Thank you to my client for trusting me to build this one.

Interested in a custom dining table built specifically for your space? Send me a message to start the conversation.

Address

Andover, NJ

Telephone

+18622230859

Website

http://www.rootsfurniturestudio.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Roots Furniture Studio posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.