Are your products made in the USA?
Yes. Everything is handmade, finished, and packed with TLC by me, Peter Bultman, and shipped from the purpose-built factory I built myself here in Oceano in southern California.
What comes standard?
All entertainment cabinets have vented backs and adjustable shelves with space behind each shelf for airflow to prevent overheating. Hidden dual wheel casters on stereo cabinets offer easy mobility for cleaning and maintenance. Choose between clear finish on natural oak or maple, or unfinished. Everything gets a scratch-resistant clear satin topcoat.
What finish options do you offer?
A variety of Minwax Wood Stain Finishes, or custom acrylic latex solid colors, additional shelves, sliding shelves, and glass doors in clear or gray tint, with or without keyed-alike door locks, are also available for an additional charge.
What kind of wood do you use?
Our furniture is constructed from formaldehyde-free ¾-inch oak or maple plywood made by Columbia Forest Products in its state of the art mills in the United States and Canada. It’s lighter and less expensive than solid wood, and we like CFP because they use heat, pressure, and non-toxic soybean glue to bond the plywood layers. It’s an eco-friendly process that results in an emission-free product, and that’s important because most plywood is bonded with glue that contains formaldehyde—a known carcinogen that will off-gas for years in your home. Not CFP plywood, though. Plus, CFP’s plywood is moisture-resistant, extremely stable, and virtually void-free. It’s a real joy to work with.
Adding icing to the cake, CFP’s plywood is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, meaning chain of custody is documented from forest floor to us, guaranteeing the wood in our furniture is harvested from forests that exercise responsible forest husbandry. We're proud of the FSC designation!
Here’s another great eco-fact: The chemistry behind the soybean glue was inspired by mussels, which use a protein glue to bond themselves to rocks under water. With this as inspiration, scientists figured out how to modify the amino acids in soybeans to mimic the adhesive mussel protein. When CFP switched from glue containing formaldehyde to soybean glue, it reduced emissions in some of their mills by 90 percent!
If you want to know more, here's a great page with photos and video about Columbia plywood panel production.
All this means that at Decibel Designs, we work with pure lumber and produce simple sawdust, giving us a safe and enjoyable working environment. And you get Meanwhile, a beautiful, eco-friendly product that will give you decades of worry-free enjoyment. It's a real win/win!
Can you see the plywood layers in the finished product?
No. All exposed edges are banded with solid wood and finished with our signature rounded edge. You’d never know it was plywood. View the closeups of any of our products to see how awesome it looks.
What’s the story on your optional glass doors?
Our tempered glass doors, made by Glasswerks in Los Angeles, are five times stronger than regular glass. The tempering process is a simple one, but each phase needs to be precisely controlled to maintain consistent quality, and Glasswerks is a genius at it, producing a flat pane with no visible warping or curves. They cut the glass to size, polish the edges, and roll it into an oven where it’s heated just short of melting. Then, it’s blasted with refrigerated air, which transforms the large random crystals in the regular glass into the matrix of tiny ordered crystals characteristic of tempered glass. It’s hard to break, but when it does, it doesn’t shatter into dangerous shards but breaks into thousands of pebble-like pieces with semi-rounded edges. To protect the doors when we ship them, we sandwich them between furniture panels. We haven’t had one break in shipping for years—we’re that good!
Can you fit them with locks?
Yes. We can also fit optional keyed-alike door locks.
Do I have to do any assembly?
Yes, and it saves you real money, because it’s far less expensive and safer to ship disassembled furniture than pre-assembled furniture. We make the process as simple as possible, providing easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions here, and if you get stuck, we’re a phone call away. You'll need a Phillips screwdriver and a hammer to tack the back on. We provide everything else.
What kind of hardware do you use?
All our products assemble easily with hardware from Hafele of Germany. They've been around since 1923 and make first-rate, high quality cabinet hardware.
How do you finish your furniture?
You can choose any Minwax Wood Finish or we can blend a custom stain or do any solid color for you as well. All our cabinets ship out with a clear satin urethane lacquer topcoat from Sherwin Williams.
We ship for free to the 48 states.
Our catalog items have free shipping to the 48 contiguous states. Quotes freely given for shipping to the rest of the world. It's easily done!
Do you ship outside the United States?
Yes! We’ll pack your order with TLC and ship it anywhere on the planet with FedEx. Contact us for a quote.