Transcript of Episode 14

Speaker 1: All right welcome to the Design Build Show.

Peter Erdei: Thank you.

Speaker 1: I have my great friend here, Mr. Peter Erdei. Peter is Hungarian.

Peter Erdei: Yep.

Speaker 1: I’m taller than him but he’s bigger than me.

Peter Erdei: Yeah, it’s true.

Speaker 1: And he owns a live edge shop in Clearwater, Largo, Florida. Clearwater area.

Peter Erdei: Yeah.

Speaker 1: This is where we are. Pretty cool atmosphere for the show. These are all his slabs in the background. What do you call your business?

Peter Erdei: It’s Erdei Designs and [inaudible 00:00:36] because we not only make stuff but we design stuff. So a lot of the time people just don’t know what exactly they want. They have an idea of what it is they like to have. And then you try to communicate that over an emails or Facebook Messenger but I always tell them if they’re local just come on in and then we can look at wood. Because once the minute they walk in here everything becomes more real to them.

Speaker 1: Yeah but I got that and I wanna get into that, the design aspect of it. But just starting basically, basic, basic, you do live edge custom furniture. Built-ins, right? Is that accurate?

Peter Erdei: Yeah, accurate yeah. We do live edge and contemporary. It depends what the design is for.

Speaker 1: Okay cool. Awesome. So wood furniture?

Peter Erdei: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Okay good man. So when you started talking to me about that I didn’t really know what live edge was. It was probably a year, couple years ago?

Peter Erdei: Yeah. It was about two years ago.

Speaker 1: But now it’s like, I mean I was probably a little behind my time. I should of known that but yeah, that’s awesome. So you turn this furniture in to custom, and by live edge we’re talking about like that’s a live edge right?

Peter Erdei: Keeping the exact original contour of the wood basically.

Speaker 1: Right, awesome.

Peter Erdei: So when you look at it, that was basically the tree and live edges means just keeping that just the way it is.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And contemporary is just?

Peter Erdei: Cutting it straight, making it more into a transition kind of design phase, you know, when there’s a lot of squareness. And not everybody likes live edge and honestly not always live edge looks good in every space. It just doesn’t but sometime you put something more contemporary in there and it creates a huge effect just the way it is.

Speaker 1: Awesome. So I wanted to have you on the show for a while. You’re our first what I would call, ’cause my company has worked with you right? We’re working with you right now.

Peter Erdei: Correct we have a project that we are doing and it’s in the shop right now. We’re shipping it off next week to you guys.

Speaker 1: Awesome. So I’ve interviewed architects, designers, builders, you know design builders like myself, but you’re our first what I would call a vendor or a subcontractor, somebody who facilitates us doing our work. And I’ve wanted to have, and I will have more on the show because you guys are so imperative to what we do. Because on one project we can have 20 to 30 trades. And we’re experts at creating a project in Design Build. And Design Build Show is all about bringing back the architect of old wherein the architect built. The derivation of the word architect is Greek for master builder. And up until the past 150 years ago, the architect was responsible for the whole project. You know, oversaw it from beginning all the way to the end of construction. And we’ve gotten away from that, Design Build is bringing it back. But 150 years ago construction, technology was not as advanced as it is now.

Peter Erdei: Right.

Speaker 1: There’s also, I think, there’s the aspect of people are available to so many different designs. So like locally you’re not necessarily doing the same thing you’re doing … people can pick from whatever they want. The point of what I’m saying is when we get to our trades, our trades are integral for us and we love to have our trades be Design Build. Because they can help us from the beginning of a project, conceptualize a project, and for their expertise, the area they’re and expert in, make it better. And you definitely … I wanna walk around and just show people your stuff because it’s so cool. But when we got here I was asked you a lot of questions just because I’m not an expert in this area and it’s great to have that expertise. But also you are a design builder right?

Peter Erdei: Correct, yeah.

Speaker 1: Would you … I know when I started talking to you about the show, I don’t know how much awareness you had of what Design Build was … did you have a lot of awareness of it or?

Peter Erdei: No I didn’t. I mean I have a couple of people that I know have did design build firm. SO they view everything in house and then they also execute. But what I’ve been finding here locally is that it’s not like the trade I’m in, I’m not a carpenter. A lot of people think I’m a carpenter, but not really per definition of, craftsman is really someone who uses his mind and his heart, and his passion to really create. This is art, this is functional art.

Speaker 1: Artisan is another [inaudible 00:05:38].

Peter Erdei: Correct, correct. And one of the things that we do here, we do work with designers and we do commercial and residential projects, we do not do installs because that’s not what our business model is. We make one off furnitures.

Speaker 1: But you work nationally and internationally?

Peter Erdei: We do internationally. We ship anywhere in the world, correct.

Speaker 1: Because we’re in Boston, you’re here so-

Peter Erdei: Well I have a table right there that’s getting shipped off next Wednesday I think to Canada for example.

Speaker 1: Oh cool, awesome.

Peter Erdei: So we do take orders from anywhere we have some lines and now we divide and various other places, Costa Rica. But what basically the point being is that this is only what we do. We don’t do anything else, we just do live edge and contemporary furniture, functional art. We like to use the word functional art because it is an art, but it has to be functional. So when designers come to me and sometimes architects as well, they tour the shop, they look at stuff and then they can think with it better. Then they see that this is only what we do. There’s a couple other companies in this area who does this type of work. But this is not what they only do, they do other stuff. They do cabinetry, they do stone work, they do glass work, they do metal work, all under one roof. And the design aspect of this is, it’s sometimes quite extensive because when you’re rendering and then you’re trying to replicate what the rendering represents I gotta go out there in nature and find that. And finding exactly what’s on the rendering it takes some time and it takes to when you know and where those people are.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it would probably be better to start earlier with you. Like, “Hey here’s the concept we have.” Then you can, I think, with us we probably were a little bit farther ahead than we could of been once we started getting advice from you. But I think you said we start off with, “Hey we wanna light colored wood.” Then you were able to help us specify the right wood. And then what did we do give you a drawing?

Peter Erdei: Yeah. I got a drawing, I got blueprints and then-

Speaker 1: First you got an email.

Peter Erdei: Yeah, I got an email.

Speaker 1: From an intern that was just describing like 10 pages what we wanted but that wasn’t as helpful right?

Peter Erdei: Well it was-