|
Waltner Wood & Wall Designs |
|
Custom Furniture & Faux Finishing |
|
About Us |
|
Waltner Wood & Wall Designs was founded in 2003 by Jerome & Keri Waltner.
Jerome Waltner is the furniture designer and builder…..growing up on a farm in rural Kansas, he quickly acquired an appreciation for natural resources like wood. His educational background is in history, specifically Public History. After graduate school he worked in museum administration for five years, which gave him exposure to a variety of antiques and taught him the fundamentals of building display cases. Jerome actually began woodworking during high school, when he went above and beyond the requirements of most high-school woodworking courses and built himself a 9-drawer desk, which he still uses today. Classes taught by master woodworkers have enabled him to hone his craft and his innate sense of design results in truly dramatic pieces!
Keri Waltner is an educator-turned-artist who has been professionally trained and certified in a wide variety of faux finishes. She has nine years’ experience in creating unique finishes and has studied with one of the top masters in the country. Education, experience and a finely-honed eye for color have combined to make her one of the top-tier faux finishers in the Wichita area. In addition, her numerous extended stays abroad have contributed to a design style strongly influenced by European art and architecture. Keri loves taking a beautiful wall finish and designing an entire room around it. Why stop with just the walls?
Becky Kindy joined us in June 2005. Becky is a native of Newton and graduated from Newton High School and Bethel College. From 2000-2005, Becky worked full-time for USD 373 at The Learning Center. Becky likes working with her hands and has completed several home improvement projects. She has done quite a bit of painting in her own home and for friends, and confesses she usually sends her husband out of town when tackling these projects. She also worked at Kropf Lumber for two summers during college, providing customer service and creating store displays. Becky has also attended the faux finishing school where Keri received her training, so we now have two professionally-trained and certified faux finishers on staff. We are very fortunate to have someone with Becky’s skills on our staff.
Brett Prothro joined our team in January 2009. Brett has a degree from Southwestern College in Mass Communications and Film and his career experience since then has been primarily in groundskeeping. While he doesn’t have a lot of experience with wood, someone said of him that he can fix any machine that is broken, and that will serve us well in the shop. He has already proven himself to be a quick learner with basic woodworking techniques and he also has the communication skills we need to be able to sell our products at shows, so we are excited to have him on board. If any of you came to the Anniversary/Open House we hosted in September of 2007 or to the Art & Music event in April of 2009, you may remember Brett. He provided live music on guitar and vocals.
|
