“We are hand-making something special for a person’s home. People put very few things in their house that will last the life of the house. The flooring and millwork is one of them.”
Gerry Lashway, president and owner Ponders Hollow Custom Wood Flooring & Millwork
Westfield, MA—Ponders Hollow Custom Wood Flooring & Millwork, headquartered here, takes a hands-on approach to manufacturing. Ponders Hollow specializes in plank flooring, which is 50 percent of the business, including solid, engineered, and pre-finished. The other 50 percent is custom architectural moulding, with over 5,000 profiles.
President and Owner Gerry Lashway purchases 1.7 million board feet annually from mills, distributors and wholesalers. The majority of the wood is Poplar in 4/4-8/4 random lengths, Select and Better, for millwork, crowns, baseboards and casings. These are custom-run to individual orders. Birch, Cherry and Maple are also used for the millwork. Most of the Ponders Hollow mouldings are of pre-primed Poplar, ready for the final coat of paint. Lashway stated, “We’re running all different components for a house that’s full of painted trim, from small bin mouldings to wide baseboards to multiple-cut crowns. We buy different thicknesses and lengths. As the order comes in, that’s how we buy the lumber.”
The wide plank Hardwood flooring requires Rift, Quartered, and Live-Sawn White Oak, Hickory in different grades, Walnut in clear, select grades, Red Oak and Ash. Lashway reported, “Over the years, we’ve done a good job here of having a range of suppliers who will work with us and get what we need. Like other companies, we struggle to find the increasingly desirable White Oak in Rift and Quartered.”
Ponders Hollow also makes softwood flooring, with 200,000 board feet to be purchased in the coming year. Eastern White Pine from the Massachusetts area, Longleaf heart pine from the South, and Canadian red pine make these beautiful floors. Lashway prizes pine for its possibilities. “You can really see the beauty of how a tree grows when you have these wide, long boards. To be able to have an open floor plan with 16-foot long, 12-14-inch-wide pine going through it makes a gorgeous floor,” he enthused.
The Lashway Lumber sawmill, where Lashway and his brother Larry were the fourth generation to learn the wood trade, provides a small percentage of the lumber used by Ponders Hollow. Their father, Gerald Lashway, noticed impending change in the lumber industry and planned an additional business, Ponders Hollow Custom Moulding & Flooring, Inc. Gerry Lashway remembers, “I was with it from the beginning. We began building in 2004. By the end of the summer in 2005, we were running machines.” The company recently purchased a Friulmac End Matcher for squaring and end matching tongue-and-groove wide plank floors, significantly improving the wider choices.
Gerry Lashway’s degree in forestry shows in his love of wood and his desire to put hand-crafting into every item off the floor. He said, “We are hand-making something special for a person’s home. People put very few things in their house that will last the life of the house. The flooring and millwork is one of them. It’s really important for our team to know that. Whether you’re a homeowner or you rent, you replace your appliances, furniture, tables and light fixtures. Not too often do people tear up the floor—it’s there for a lifetime for generations to walk on it. At the point you realize that, it becomes a very cool, rewarding and proud job to do.”
Twenty employees work in the 40,000-square-foot plant. Ponders Hollow believes that safety and quality product is more important than speed and turnaround. “As much as the machines are doing the work,” said Gerry Lashway, “we are hands-on because of the way we set it up and handle the boards. We are putting a set of sharp eyes on the machines and a steady hand on the boards. We have six people on the flooring line looking at every board for quality control, grading every board by hand. That means we run the product a little slower to keep the product quality right where we want it. Unfortunately, if you can’t get something done in two to three weeks a lot of people will go elsewhere. As much as we try and meet those demands, we realize we do it differently. We don’t run the moulders twice as fast to crank it out. We start with the customer’s specifications, so it takes a little bit longer. Our attention to detail sets us apart.”
That detail shows in the enormous product catalog (262-plus pages) of millwork that Ponders Hollow can produce, with over 5,000 profiles. To assist selection, the plant houses a newly remodeled showroom that opened in June 2021 for both flooring and millwork. The company produces more one-time millwork jobs than duplicate jobs, custom made to drawings and blueprints from architects and builders. For each custom job, the company makes a CAD drawing and, after approval, the knife and the product.
Flooring also varies greatly. Gerry Lashway explained that, “One day, we’ll be running a 5-inch White Oak floor, one day an 8-inch floor, the next day it’s got knots. There are so many different options because we don’t specialize in one specific thing. You just learn to roll with it!” As a result, Ponders Hollow consistently adds to its product lines.
Each job at Ponders Hollow is unique in its own way. For Gerry Lashway, it’s still a thrill to walk the plant floor. “I go out there and go, Whoa! This crown moulding is amazing! We have 200 different ones and I’m still amazed. It’s gratification for what we do here. Love what you do and enjoy it!”
Ponders Hollow is a member of the Wood Products Manufacturers Association, National Wood Flooring Association, Homebuilders Association of Western Massachusetts and the Architectural Woodworking Institution.
For more information, go to www.pondershollow.com.
