A skilled carpenter can dress up a room with trim and molding, but a cabinetmaker can turn your remodeling dreams into tailor-made reality. “I can build what you can’t buy,” said Wayne St. John, owner of Alexandria Carpentry. “If you can think it, I can build it.”
| Resources |
| www.alexandriacarpentry.com |
| www.eastcoastwoodworks.com |
| www.thosmoser.com |
St. John runs a small carpentry company that builds custom libraries, kitchens and furniture for commercial and residential customers. Although he installs trim and millwork, he specializes in customizing projects that satisfy the whims of his clients.
“Sometimes people give me pictures out of a magazine and say ‘build me that,'” St. John said.
For a Springfield home owner who purchased an executive desk with a mahogany finish, St. John added the built-in bookshelves to match, replicating the design, style and finish of the desk. “People who see it think the bookcases were purchased with the desk.”
Darren Joyce, owner of Stevensville, Md.-based East Coast Woodworks, has more than 30 years experience as a carpenter but considers himself a cabinetmaker.
“Cabinetmakers or furniture makers are more artistic,” he said. “A lot of what is considered carpentry includes jobs that are finished on sight and then someone comes in and does mostly painting. We have the ability to fabricate the piece from start to finish.”
Joyce said the demand for cabinetmakers is trending upward with the desire of homeowners to have built-in or permanent cabinetry look like standalone furniture. “Even with kitchen cabinets and vanities, you’ll see cabinetry up on feet and with higher quality finishes,” Joyce noted.
People also are selecting more exotic woods, such as ribbon mahogany. East Coast Woodworks completed an entire kitchen and dining space using the expensive hard wood cut to expose a linear grain. The cabinets include floating glass shelves and geometrical shapes.
Joyce admires the work of master craftsmen such as furniture maker Thomas Moser, who launched Thos. Moser, which has a showroom in Georgetown. Although Joyce works directly with residential clients, he prefers working with professional designers who represent customers.
“My obligation is to the designer first, but I want to make sure the end-user is just as pleased as the designer,” Joyce said. “We are an extension of the designer, but if the end-user is not pleased, it’s a waste of time and money.”
Joyce builds furniture for some of the area’s top designers, including David Iatesta, Cole Prevost, and Patrick Sutton and Associates. “When we work with designers we take their vision, their style and we can make it their own,” said Joyce. “If they want a unique piece, we can provide that.”
Similar to the custom clothier, Joyce’s company is smaller than the large firms that create cabinets in stock sizes. Yet he can handle multiple jobs, keeping his cost below what you would pay a studio cabinetmaker.
“An individual studio artist can spend three to six months on one piece of furniture,” Joyce said. “Some of the large companies use robots to spray paint finishes on furniture. We are somewhere in between.”
Cabinets,woodworking,cabinetry,interiors,decorating
