Designing with a little help from my computer A little while ago, a customer called wanting to do something in their living room to make it feel more formal, a bit “French country.” The homeowner presented me with pictures of rooms from design magazines. “Can you make my living room look like this?” Sure I… Read the full article
Like many carpenters, I’m always looking for an interesting challenge. I like tackling something I’ve never done before—and succeeding. Not only is it satisfying to push yourself, but a satisfied customer means good word-of-mouth, which (hopefully) leads to more work. Win-win. This is exactly what happened when one of my best clients approached me with… Read the full article
Volunteer work: good for the community and good for the soul One of my first memories, in the early 1930s, when I was 4 or 5 years old, was of our mother taking care of a neighbor woman, Eula Hughbanks, who had tuberculosis. TB was more common in those days, with little hope for a… Read the full article
(With Jesper Cook) Our company, Millworks By Design, is one of the largest high-end trim companies in the Los Angeles, CA area. We started our company in 2007 with the resolve to run it differently than the other outfits in the area. We saw opportunity in the lack of professionalism and organization one finds in… Read the full article
Learning to make your own tools is a step up for the serious woodworking carpenter Most of my work is at the high-end of the New England custom home market. For the jobs I do, in Boston brownstones that even today sell for several million dollars, there are no off-the-shelf parts—everything is completely custom, or… Read the full article
Melamine can be a viable option for many projects — with good conscience and no apology. I remember reading an article about melamine years ago. The author was very apologetic about the topic because he knew he was addressing woodworkers who had a disdain for the material. Melamine has a rap sheet alright; it is… Read the full article
Another lesson in durable exterior trim A few years ago, I wrote an article on Caulk-Free Column Wrap—a column that can be installed without having to come back in six months and caulk the corners or the trim. In this article I’ll take a second step in the same direction, and add some serious and… Read the full article
Concept to completion: Having vision is half the battle Like a lot of high-end jobs I work on, I’m sworn to secrecy about the clients. All I can say is, this job was on a pristine 7-acre waterfront property on Long Island’s Gold Coast, overlooking Connecticut and the Long Island Sound. The main house is… Read the full article
The problem with poor-quality foreign parts Remember the term “Made in the U.S.A.”? It wasn’t that long ago that the phrase was often used by manufactures to instill confidence in the product they were promoting. By-and-large, American manufacturers have produced good-quality parts and materials. In my 25+ years in the trades, I can only recall… Read the full article
Taking process pictures on the job or in the shop There’s something about photography that’s related to carpentry, I just can’t quite put my shutter finger on it. But I know a lot of photographers who are carpenters. I think it has something to do with using tools. After all, a camera is just another… Read the full article
Tackling a demanding project requires a careful drawing & plenty of wiggle room. Not long ago, a friend of mine referred one of his coworkers to me who was interested in replacing the fireplace-surround of an old bungalow he and his wife had just purchased. Excited by the opportunity, I set up an appointment to… Read the full article
(with Gene Wengert, The Wood Doctor.) Expected movement can be accurately predicted, which means avoiding potential problems down the road. In this article, we’ll explain the importance of understanding wood movement, how to use a moisture meter to measure the moisture content (MC) of trim, how to decide when a load of trim should be… Read the full article
After having worked exclusively on the restoration and repair of older wooden window sash for a number of years, I am pleased to see a resurgence of interest in window restoration, as well as discussion of the merits of original versus replacement windows.
There is a 99% chance that if you live in Los Angeles, your wood frame home survived the 1994 Northridge earthquake. It was a magnitude 6.7 event, caused $20 billion in damage, and seventy-two deaths. The damage to homes was primarily stucco cracks at door and window openings, and un-reinforced masonry chimney failures. There was… Read the full article