Starting a business building furniture and cabinets in today's market is not for the weak. Its almost 9 pm on Saturday night. My wife and I have been working on projects on our house all day that have been put off for months due to how busy we are this time of year. We just got back from grabing a quick bite to eat and now, at 8:30 pm, I'm in my shop working on wrapping up a quick project. Nothing fancy...just an oak hand rail for the stairs at my parents house. I have a set of cabinets that I'll be starting on Monday so trying to wrap this up so I can start the next big thing. Then I've got more projects lined up after that. This is not my only job. I teach percussion at our local high school. So, when marching band season kicks in...I'm very busy. On top of that, I'm a substitute school bus driver in the mornings. All that so I can make my dream of owning my own successful woodworking business a reality. Giving up is not in my vocabulary. If life gets hard, I'll work harder. I will succeed. Support your local businesses. We're just trying to make a good life for our families and provide good quality service and goods to our customers. If you're reading this and thinking about starting your own business - do it. Be brave and take the leap. And don't give up. #smallshop #woodworking #Woodworking #woodworker #woodworkinglife #newbusiness #entrepreneur #nevergiveup💪 #NeverGiveUp

Getting real close to having a grand piano bookshelf completed. This has been a side project I've been working on with my dad for a while now. I'll post more pictures when we get it done and installed in the house. This is an 110 year old Baldwin grand piano that we converted into this bookshelf. Tried to use as much of the original piano parts as we could and added some solid mahogany shelves to it. I'll also be making a coffee table out of the keyboard and other parts that we didn't have a use for in this project. #woodworking #woodworker #woodwork

Do I have something in my beard? #woodworking #woodworker #woodworkinglife #woodworkingcommunity

Recently had the opportunity to restore a family heirloom chair for a friend of my family. Always a little nerve-wracking digging into a piece like this but it turned out great. My sister delivered it for me and she told me I made her friend cry. Scared me at first until she said she was thrilled with how it came out. Always feels good to return an old piece of furniture back into something beautiful. #woodworkingproject #smallshop #woodworker #woodworking #woodworkinglife #woodworkingcommunity #restoration

A work in progress. I've been busy building an heirloom dining room table for a good friend of mine. This is made from (nearly) 100 year old lumber taken from their house during a recent remodel. We're keeping it very rustic. This type of table isn't for everybody - but it means a lot to this family. Its a reminder of the history of their house and all the hard work that has gone into taking their nearly 100 year old house and building their dream home. Its made from multiple different species of wood - just as their house is. Its not flat...its not perfectly smooth. But. ...thats how a house that has been lived in for 100 years is. #smallshop #woodworker #woodworking #woodworkingcommunity #woodworkinglife

Rubio Monocoat Pure on black walnut, and 5% Smoke on tiger maple. This was a fun project. @rubiomonocoatusa is such an awesome finish. #woodworking #woodworkingcommunity #woodworker #smallshop

Ok, it's been a while since I've posted anything, but I've been really busy and just haven't stopped to make time for social media lately. I'm finally able to post these pictures of my first set of kitchen cabinets that I built. These are floor to ceiling pantry cabinets, each 3' wide with a quartz countertop between the base and upper cabinets. Maple plywood construction with rustic hickory face frames and shaker style doors and drawer fronts. I also installed a matching shaker style end panel on the exposed end of the cabinets. I used a pocket door slide and full overlay hinge to allow all doors to open and be tucked away as needed. Far left cabinet has a custom sliding shelf to store coffee syrup bottles as it'll be used as a coffee bar. The drawers were built to hold a large amount of weight with heavy duty drawer slides. Drawer sizes were customized to specific needs for the customer - who is a very good friend of mine and I'm very appreciative of them giving me the chance to build these for them. This was a big opportunity for me and my first big project since starting this business. It was tricky building these big cabinets in my small shop but I was able to make it work. Made a lot of mistakes along the way and learned a ton throughout this entire process. I already have another kitchen cabinet project lined up that I'm hoping to get started on in the near future as well as several other projects that I'm actively working on. I'll share more details on all those projects soon. #cabinetry #Woodworking #smallshop #woodworker #cabinetmaking #woodworking #woodworkinglife #woodworkingcommunity

Topic of discussion: Sanding is better than edge banding. Go. #woodworking #woodworker #cabinetmaking #smallshop #woodwork

Other than upgrading my ancient table saw to a new one, this Makita track saw is the best purchase I've made for my shop. When I started building kitchen cabinets, I was using just a circular saw and a not-so-great edge guide to break down plywood. This is certainly a game changer. Makes breaking down sheet goods and ripping straight edges on hardwood a breeze. #smallshop #woodworking #cabinetry #Woodworking #woodworker #cabinetmaking #woodworkingcommunity

Finished milling all the hickory and made some face frames for the base cabinets on this kitchen pantry cabinet build I'm working on. Went with a minimal face frame for these. These are going to have full overlay drawers and I wanted to maximize space so I can build as big of a drawer as possible to fit in here. This rustic hickory looks really good. Lots of character. Looking forward to getting the drawers and drawer faces on to see it all come together. #woodworking #woodworkingcommunity #woodworker #cabinetmaking #woodworkinglife #smallshop

Took a trip up to @cr_lumber today to pick up some rustic hickory for the kitchen pantry cabinets I'm working on. They have a great selection of wood there. Brought my daughter along with me. Needless to say, she was not as excited about looking at all the wood as I was. #woodworking #woodworkers #smallshop #woodworkingcommunity #cabinet

Taking a break from building cabinets today to work on the grand piano bookcase that my Dad and I are working on. Today I'm working on patching some damaged veneer. Also had some wood that was damaged on a small section on the edge so I'm having to fill that with some wood filler before replacing the veneer there. Dad's about got all the original clear coat stripped off. We're going to refinish this with Rubio Monocoat. We did some testing on it and it really made this 110 year old mahogany look beautiful. Still need to mill and build the shelves that we'll be adding. That'll be happening soon. #woodworking #woodworkingcommunity #smallshop #woodworker

First time building kitchen cabinets. This is the first of 3 base cabinets I'm building. These will all be 36" wide....big floor to ceiling kitchen pantry cabinets. Worked on dialing in my process today as I built this first carcass and it went better than I had anticipated. Using clear drying Bossdog Wood Glue since these will only get a clear coat. If you haven't tried their glue yet....do it! Also finally upgraded to the Kreg 720Pro. No idea why on earth I waited this long to make that upgrade. The measurements that I had plugged into Cutlist Optimizer were (thankfully) all accurate...leaving room to dial in a few panels. The next 2 should be easy. Going to be adding a minimal face frame to all of these along with shaker doors and drawer fronts all using rustic hickory. Next up is building all 10 drawers that will fill up these base cabinets. Then the uppers. I'll keep posting my progress. Learning a lot from this project and thats what its all about! #smallshop #woodworking #cabinetry #woodworker #woodworkinglife #woodworkingcommunity

Just getting started building a set of kitchen pantry cabinets for a good friend of mine. First time building cabinets (yes, the customer is very aware of this 🙂). I'm 3 sheets of plywood into this and I'm already learning a lot. 1. I really really need to get a track saw. 2. 4x8 sheets of maple plywood are quite heavy and tricky to manage in my small shop but it works. 3. The Bora 30" 4x8 Centipede was a great investment. Seriously...this thing is coming in clutch for this project. 4. There is a track saw in my future. 5. I still have A LOT to learn. I'll be documenting this process as I go. These cabinets are going to be super cool when I get done with them. #woodworking #woodworkinglife #woodworkingcommunity #cabinetmaking #woodworker #smallshop

Built this outdoor mud kitchen for my nephews and they loved it! Great to see kids get away from the screens, get outside and have fun getting creative (and dirty)!😊 #woodworking #woodshop #woodworkers #handmade

My dad and I have been working on converting this grand piano into a bookshelf. Its an old Baldwin thats over 100 years old that no longer piano'd so we decided to give it a 2nd life. The craftsmanship that went into these is amazing! My dad owns a piano tuning business and has done several big piano restorations...but this is new territory for us. Super fun and we're both learning a lot! Its always fun to work on projects together. #woodworking #woodworker #pianofurniture