Fallen Wood Becomes Bookshelves at Child Care Center
By Craig Reed
Lisa Woods had the vision, and Mike Cooley turned it into reality.
The vision was a tree-shaped bookshelf for the after-school child care center Lisa and her husband, Alan, own and operate off Central Avenue in Sutherlin. Lisa initially asked Alan about taking on such a project, but his answer was, “You’ve got the wrong guy for that!”
So, Lisa approached Mike about her vision. She knew Mike, the general foreman for Jensen’s Tree Service in Winston, worked with wood and created unique products. She also knew the Cooley family because Mike and his wife, Ramsie, have 2 daughters who attend the after-school program.
“I talked to Mike, and he said he could come up with something,” Lisa says. “He brought my vision to life. It’s beautiful.”
The finished tree shelf wraps around 3 sides of a post in the center and stands floor to ceiling. There are 3 shelves cut into the wood. On the ceiling above the bookshelf, green leaves have been painted to complete the look.
“I think it looks great,” says Mike’s 14-year-old daughter, Raelynn. “I love how it turned out. I know the kids love it. They think it’s cooler than regular bookshelves. It’s definitely what we envisioned from the start, if not better.”
Lisa agrees.
“It’s phenomenal,” she says. “It exceeds anything I ever expected. It adds warmth and depth to the room. I’d definitely give it an A-plus-plus.”
The piece of wood Mike used for the project came from a big oak tree that went down in the Melrose area in March 2019 during a snowstorm. The tree came down across Young’s Lane, knocking down 1 power pole and taking power lines to the ground.
Douglas Electric Cooperative called Mike to let him know of the problem on Young’s Lane.
“It was a giant mess,” Mike says.
Mike, who has worked on such tree problems for 20 years with Jensen’s, had to drive to his Melrose home to get his chainsaw with a 60-inch bar. He needed the long bar because of the size of the tree’s trunk.
He made the cuts, and a nearby property owner with an excavator cleared them off the roadway and away from the power line so work could be done to restore power.
Several months later, Mike was called and asked if he was interested in the big section of the tree that remained next to the lane. People in the area knew he had a small bandsaw mill and cut wood for different projects.
He brought the tree trunk and some large branches home and used some of the wood to build stairs to his children’s tree house and stairs to a swimming pool.
Then in August 2024, a month before school, Lisa approached Mike with her tree shelf vision and a photo of what she had in mind. The photo showed a tree shelf made from plywood.
He agreed and worked on the project over the next year.
“Mine was made with a chainsaw,” Mike says.
The wood came from a large branch, not the trunk.
“What makes it special is that rough estimates on the tree’s rings make it about 400 years old,” Mike says.
He turned the branch into 6 sections so the bookshelf could be manually lifted and handled. The sections are stacked and connected by steel brackets that are not visible.
The chainsaw work was followed by a lot of sanding and then painting with clear polyurethane. Raelynn and her 12-year-old sister, Fynlee, helped smooth the wood with electric sanders and paint. Mike used epoxy to fill some cracks and a torch to add some dark lines to the wood.
“We discovered how hard oak is,” Mike says with a laugh.
“There were definitely hours and hours of sanding.”
Last September, Mike, Austin Slate, and Mark Rhea stacked and connected the wood sections at the center. To complete the project, Mike and his daughters stepped up on ladders and pressed actual oak leaves dipped in green paint against the ceiling to make prints of leaves.
“I do like the way it turned out,” Mike says. “I especially like the kids’ reaction to it.”
He was pleased when he saw young Sophia Danworth’s first reaction to the tree shelf.
“She was just in awe while walking around it,” he says. “My thoughts were, ‘My, oh wow. Maybe it was worth it. The kids and their parents will enjoy it.’”