The Cup Cover You Didn’t Know Your Patio Needed
Western Timber Frame | Community Spotlight | May 2026
Pavilions, Pergolas, and the Outdoor Rooms That Start Everything Else.
You’re sitting outside under the pavilion, morning coffee in hand, and something lands in your mug. A leaf. A bug. A few drops of rain that came out of nowhere. Everyone who spends real time outdoors knows this moment. You either drink around it or go back inside for a new cup.
Mariano Urrutia figured there had to be a better answer.
A Hobby That Turned Into Something Worth Sharing
One of the things we love about being in the outdoor living world is the people we meet along the way people who spend so much time outside that they start dreaming up things the rest of us never thought of. Mariano Urrutia, out of Santaquin, Utah, is one of those people.
He’s a woodworker and laser engraver who came up with something we had to share: a wooden cup cover with a ring built into the underside that grips the rim of your mug. It doesn’t slide off. It doesn’t blow away. It just sits there and does its job.
“I figured if you just make something flat, it’s going to slide off the glass,” Mariano says. So he designed a ring that fits over the top of a coffee mug, glass, or tumbler — sized to work with different rims. Then he added a matching coaster that doubles as a storage base. The cover nests right into the coaster when you’re not using it. Cover and coaster, one set, stacked and out of the way.
The whole thing started as a hobby. Mariano got a laser engraving machine and just started making things playing around, seeing what was possible. He posted a few pieces on Facebook, and people started asking questions. “Are you selling this? Can you do this for me?” He’d tell them to bring it over and he’d see what he could do.
What gets you about Mariano is what happens when people tell him the story behind what they want engraved. An anniversary date. A family name. A piece that means something to someone. A lot of the time, once he hears the meaning behind the piece, he just gives it to them. “It was my pleasure doing it for you,” he says. That’s the kind of maker he is.
He also makes engraved wood signs — the kind of piece you’d hang in a pavilion or outdoor room to make the space feel like yours.
If you want to see more of his work, look up Laser Designs by Mariano on Instagram (@marianolaserdesigns).
The Details That Make a Space Yours
Here’s the thing about outdoor living that nobody talks about at the design stage: the best parts come after the structure goes up. The string lights someone hangs on a whim. The speaker tucked into a corner. A cup cover that a woodworker in Santaquin made because he loves being outside as much as we do.
When we design and build timber frame pavilions and pergolas at Western Timber Frame, we’re building the room. But the room isn’t the point — the life that fills it is. Over 7,000 families across all 50 states have put up one of our structures, and every single one of them has made it theirs in ways we never could have planned. That’s not a flaw in the design process. That’s the whole point of it.
A patio cover keeps your drink from getting rained on. A cup cover keeps the bugs out while you’re not looking. Both of them exist because someone decided that being outside was worth getting the details right.
