Building 25 Hotel Sofas From Scratch: American Walnut Plywood vs. Overseas Manufacturing

Needing 25 sofas for a 65-room hotel in Joshua Tree, California, the maker behind Homemade Modern took a hybrid approach: source cushions overseas to control cost, but build all the frames domestically using American walnut veneer plywood. The goal was to match — or come within 10 to 20% of — a fully overseas-made sofa while achieving higher material quality, local sourcing transparency, and easier long-term repairability.

The result was a 15 to 18-hour build per sofa frame at a $30/hour labor rate, using approximately 1¾ sheets of plywood per unit. The finished sofa is compared side-by-side with a China-manufactured prototype that arrived painted rather than veneered — and the difference in material sensibility is immediately visible.

Columbia Forest Products' walnut veneer Europly costs more than twice the price of standard furniture-grade plywood, which demands a clear justification. Three factors make it worthwhile at this scale.

Europly is stronger than standard furniture-grade plywood, which means less material is needed for structural members. Fewer sheets per sofa partially offsets the premium price per sheet.

The walnut veneer runs through the full thickness of the sheet, meaning the exposed edges look finished without any additional banding. On 25 sofas with many visible edges, this saves significant labor — edge banding is time-consuming and the result is often visually inferior to natural veneer edge grain anyway.

The veneer faces arrive flat and smooth, requiring minimal sanding. For volume furniture production, every hour of sanding saved matters. The maker notes he would always pay more for better veneer plywood if it cuts two hours of surface prep.

Rather than starting with a complete set of technical drawings, the maker cut strips first and worked out final dimensions iteratively — a practical approach when designing a new form from scratch. The key design constraints were: hide all pocket holes, keep cuts simple enough for a moderately experienced builder, and target a 15 to 18-hour build time to keep labor costs competitive.

The legs and back rest supports are built from two layers of plywood glued and screwed together, creating 1½-inch-thick slabs. This thickness serves two purposes: it gives the sofa a visually substantial appearance without additional cladding, and it provides enough wood depth to accept structural screws from multiple directions without risk of splitting.

The sofa platform deck uses single-layer plywood, but the perimeter is faced with 1½-inch ripped strips to create the appearance of a thick edge matching the legs. This is a common furniture-making economy: full double-ply everywhere would add cost and weight without adding visible quality on horizontal surfaces where only the edge is seen.

A palm router with a round-over bit is used on all exposed edges. This delivers consistent, repeatable radii far faster than sanding — critical when building 25 identical units. The flush-trim bit also rescues slightly uneven glue-up edges, reducing remedial sanding time.

Pocket holes join the back rest components and connect the leg panels to the underside of the deck frame. All pocket holes are located where they will be covered by trim boards or hidden on the underside of the sofa — none are visible in the finished piece. The internal support frames between the legs are simple rectangles of ripped plywood, screwed together and then fastened to the deck underside.

Rubio Monocoat is applied mid-assembly — after the major panels are cut and routed but before the leg panels are inserted into the frames. This staging approach avoids the problem of finishing in tight corners (fully assembled) while also being more efficient than finishing every individual component before any glue-up. The back rest is left unattached for transport, allowing more sofas to be stacked in a truck; it is bolted on at the installation site.

The team brought the overseas prototype directly into the adjacent hotel room for a live comparison. Both sofas are structurally sound. The difference is primarily in material honesty and finish quality.

The back rest is identified as the single component that takes the most hours relative to its material cost. Eliminating it in favor of a round bolster pillow would save approximately four hours of labor per sofa — enough to make the US-made version cost-competitive with a fully overseas unit even before accounting for shipping and tariff exposure. This is the most likely design change for production scaling.

The sofas were built for the Reset Hotel in Joshua Tree, California — a 65-room property constructed from purpose-built steel frame modules (similar in appearance to shipping containers, but engineered specifically for this use). The insulation was designed to handle the extreme desert heat.

Over the course of the hotel build, the team of three produced approximately 500 pieces of furniture, most using the same walnut veneer Europly. Other builds visible in the video include French cleat shelving systems, rock-cast vases, epoxy-covered mirrors, and fold-out slim desks designed to fit within the narrow module footprint.