More than a dozen handmade wood picture frames in oak, walnut, cherry and maple laid out on a workbench.

Handmade on the Central Coast

Picture frames
cut from good wood.

Custom hardwood frames built one at a time in a small shop in Los Osos — from exotic offcuts, reclaimed lumber and sustainable bamboo. Any size, any wood, made for the piece you actually want to hang.

Start a commission See the work
Any sizeStandard or made to your dimensions
From $25Small frames, honest pricing
Rescued woodCabinet-shop offcuts & bamboo
Pickup or shipLocal in Los Osos, or to your door

Why the wood matters

Beautiful lumber shouldn't end up in a dumpster.

A picture frame is a small object, and small objects are where the good scraps go. Purpleheart offcuts rescued from local cabinet shops. Short lengths of walnut and cherry too stubby for a tabletop. Quartersawn oak with ray fleck too pretty to burn.

Every frame here starts as wood somebody else was finished with — or as bamboo, which grows back faster than almost anything you can put a saw to. Nothing is stained to fake a species it isn't. The grain you see is the grain that grew.

  • Exotic hardwood offcuts diverted from local shop waste
  • Reclaimed and salvaged domestic lumber
  • Rapid-renewal edge-grain bamboo
  • Hand-sanded and finished — no veneer, no filler, no fake grain
Close view of a pale hardwood frame showing contrasting wooden splines reinforcing the mitered corners.
Mitered corners, reinforced with contrasting splines — the joint that keeps a frame square for decades.

The work

Recent frames

A run fresh off the bench. Click any photo to look closer.

Off the bench Oak, walnut, cherry, maple
Wide profile Pale hardwood, satin finish
Bamboo Edge-grain, unmistakable stripe
Quartersawn oak Ray fleck, left to speak for itself
Mixed species Bamboo, purpleheart, oak, birch
Profile Depth, weight, tight miters

Materials

The woods on the rack

Stock changes with whatever comes through the shop. If you have a species in mind, ask — odds are there's a board waiting for it.

  • White Oak

    Quartersawn where possible, for that shimmering ray fleck. Pale, hard, and it stays put.

  • Red Oak

    Open, straight grain with a warm pink cast. The workhorse.

  • Walnut

    Deep chocolate brown, occasionally streaked with sapwood. Dresses up anything hung on a white wall.

  • Cherry

    Starts salmon, darkens to a deep russet over years of light. It gets better after you buy it.

  • Maple

    Nearly white, tight and creamy. Sometimes figured, sometimes birdseye.

  • Beech

    Pale and even-toned with a fine fleck. Quiet — lets the artwork win.

  • Purpleheart

    Genuinely purple, no dye involved. Rescued as offcuts from local cabinet shops.

  • Red Birch

    Warm amber heartwood with subtle figure. An underrated frame wood.

  • Bamboo

    Edge-grain, with that unmistakable striped seam. Technically a grass — and it regrows in a few years, not a few decades.

Commissions

Bring me a size. Or bring me the art.

Standard sizes are always around, but nothing here is limited to them. Frames are cut to whatever dimension you need — including the awkward ones that off-the-shelf framing simply doesn't make.

Send along a photo, a canvas, a print, a poster, a piece of your kid's artwork or a mirror, and it gets fitted properly rather than forced into something close enough.

Ask about your piece

How it works

  1. Tell me the sizeArtwork dimensions, or the frame size you're after.
  2. Pick a woodOr describe the room and let me suggest one.
  3. Get a quoteSmall frames start at $25. Price scales with size, species and profile.
  4. Pick up or shipLocal pickup in Los Osos, or shipped anywhere in the US.

Glass, backing and hanging hardware can be included — just say so when you write.

A workbench in Adam's shop covered with finished frames, tool cases and offcuts stacked behind.

The shop

Adam McOuat

Adam is a painter and woodworker on California's Central Coast. Alongside frames he builds custom furniture — coffee tables in purpleheart, walnut and cherry — and paints murals, and has shown work around San Luis Obispo County for years.

Framing is where all of it meets: the woodworker's fussiness about a joint, and the painter's understanding that a frame's whole job is to make something else look right.

"If you see something you like or have an idea for something else, just contact me and we can figure something out."

More of Adam's work — tables, murals, photography — at his portfolio site.

Get in touch

Let's talk about your frame.

Tell me the size, the piece, and roughly what you have in mind — a rough idea is plenty to start.

Contact details coming soon.

  • Based in Los Osos, California
  • Pickup By arrangement, locally
  • Shipping Available nationwide