Cedar Ideas was created in 1991 to make beautiful and useful products from remnants of Northern White Cedar that remained from manufacturing log homes. Based in Oakfield, Maine, the company is a subsidiary of Katahdin Forest Products and Katahdin Cedar Log Homes, North America’s largest cedar log home manufacturer. Using the traditional fine furniture joinery techniques of both woodscrews and glue, Cedar Ideas outdoor accessories are hand crafted to add beauty to your home for years to come.
At the start of Cedar Ideas, one of Katahdin’s founders, Foster Gordon, and his son David Gordon (the company’s current president) put employee Kevin Locke to work. He fashioned a selection of useful window boxes and planters from pieces left over from the log home manufacturing process. Kevin enjoyed developing the prototypes of window boxes, planters and trellises. He brought his dog, Sheba, along to keep him company while he worked alone in the small mill building. Soon Cedar Ideas moved to a larger building and had a production line making a variety of outdoor cedar products.
Cedar Ideas thus became the second element in the growing list of Katahdin’s green practices. As the parent company increased production of log homes, so did Cedar Ideas—creating attractive and durable outdoor planters, window boxes, workbenches and other outdoor accessories. Not everything trimmed from the cedar logs can be hand crafted into Cedar Ideas products, and so Katahdin developed an array of recycling practices that ensures every bit of the cedar log is used: bark is processed into mulch, sawdust is fed to the industrial biomass boiler for heat, and other larger wood pieces are planed into fencing, decking or railing components.
Now with this website, Cedar Ideas’ beautiful and durable cedar products can be shipped anywhere people enjoy the great outdoors.
