BRYANT POND — It took Randy and Brenda Malm years to build their business handcrafting fine wooden pet furniture. 

In February, it took fire just 40 minutes to burn their Classic Pet Beds workshop to the ground. 

Tens of thousands of dollars worth of wood, equipment, tools and nearly-finished product, plus the two-story building itself, all gone. With the workshop steps from their home, the Malms were just thankful the wind that night was blowing in a good direction. 

“I could feel the heat of it from the bedroom,” Brenda said. “We’re pretty grateful we still have a home. We still have ourselves, and our pets are still here.”

But the shop was gone, and with it the business.

Until now.

Custom Pet Beds is up and running again on the same spot, in a two-story shop built in eight weeks by Randy and his only employee, with some help from friends and neighbors. After a season of no shipments, his solid wood dog crates and signature pet feeders are starting to go out again.

“The fire put us on vacation for 90 days,” Randy said. “But (customers) were willing to wait.”

A wood turner and craftsman, Randy started the business several years ago after friends saw a cat bed he’d made in his spare time and urged him to make them to sell. Business sputtered, then began to slowly grow as he added sturdy, solid wood pet feeders. When Randy and Custom Pet Beds were part of a Sun Journal pet feature in 2007, he was selling pet beds and feeders through some New England pet stores, half-a-dozen online stores and his own site, classicpetbeds.com.

By 2011 he’d expanded his line to include handcrafted solid wood dog crates, litter box concealment cabinets, pet caskets and urns. He was selling through pet shops throughout the country and 30 online stores, including Walmart.com.

“We just happened to have found a niche,” Randy said.

But on Feb. 9, Brenda woke at 1 a.m. to see an eerily orange sky through their bedroom skylight. Their next door workshop was engulfed in flames. Firefighters don’t know the exact cause, but they believe the furnace was to blame, Randy said. 

Other Bryant Pond-area business owners offered to let Randy use their shops to complete some orders, but he wanted to focus on rebuilding the shop instead. Although the insurance money would have allowed him to hire a contractor, Randy, with a background in construction, believed he could build the place quickly to his specifications.  

The first three walls went up in the middle of a snowstorm.

Over the next eight weeks they rebuilt the shop. Charlie Reiss, owner of Bethel Kitchen Design, lent them building tools. Other friends wired the place for electricity, put in the heating system and hauled equipment in and out, including the 9 tons of scrap steel that had been shop equipment before the fire melted it.

By May, the shop was finished enough to allow Custom Pet Beds to start making furniture again. By June, Randy had restored all but a couple of pieces of damaged equipment,  including one that will cost $20,000 and take more than a month to rebuild.

Only a couple of very old orders remain to be filled. One is from December, another from January. 

Classic Pet Beds did lose some business. Although some online sites modified their listing to note items were temporarily out of stock, others took down Classic Pet Beds items entirely. Randy and Brenda are still working to get the business back to the way it was, and they expect to get there soon. Then they expect to grow even more. Sam’s Club is looking into putting Classic Pet Beds items on its website. And for the first time, the Malms have opened their 169 Cushman Road shop to the public 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday.

It’s their way to let locals do a little pet furniture shopping. And to show that Classic Pet Beds is back.

So far, customers have been happy, even when it’s taken a few months to get a dog crate.

“They’re like, ‘Wow, that was worth the wait,'” Brenda said. “That’s nice to hear.”

Have an idea for a pet feature? Contact Lindsay Tice at 689-2854 or e-mail her at ltice@sunjournal.com

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