About

I began working with wood when I was just a few years old. I had found a piece of scrap pine in the basement of my parents home and just spend hours working with it...sanding it, trying out different scrapers and sanders and even a few old block planed my father had around the basement. I remember falling in love with the smell of the wood and my growing facsination with the nature of all things woode.

It was during this same period of time that I began to develop a deep appreciation for antique furniture. When I was in either late elementary school or early middle school I came across a really nice old oak desk chair on the junk pile at the printing factory across from my home. The finish was clearly shot and it was missing a few castors. But other than that, the piece was in fine shape. I snuck the old piece home and into the basement where I quickly went to work on it. At first, I began trying to sand off the old finish, but at my age I was way to impatient to do the whole piece by hand. So, I begn using some old furniture refinisher I found in the basement and alas, I was on my way. Before long I had refinished the entire piece, making it look better than the day it was new.

Not long thereafter our family was in a debate about what to do with my mother's old stereo combination. My great grandfather had bought it in the late 1940's, just before my great grandmother passed away unexpectedly. With her passing he no longer had any interest in listening to it, and gave it to my mother who was just eight years old at the time. Over the years, it grew both out of vogue and slightly out of repair. For as long as I could remember, the old piece remained in our garage where it was just a junky piece of furniture that recieved absolutley no respect. By the time I came to realize the significance of the piece, it was in terrible condition.

Somehow I was able to convince my father to help me move it to the basement and again I went to work on restoring an old piece which had been marked for certain death by landfill. This piece was a challenge because of the door which had long since gone missing and some moulding which had been broken off, never to be seen again. Nonetheless, once done, it was a mere shadow of what it had been.

Not long after, our family was in the process of house cleainging the attic to make room for a new bedroom. I had known no other house in my short lifetime and for that entire time I could remember this aweful looking green antiqued dresser which was always in the attic, always packed to the gills with left over bed linens, the overloading of which had had an adverse affect on the operaiton so the drawers. In the process of cleaning out the attic, that old dresser made its way temporarily into my bedroom. That is when, for the first time I took a really good look at it and discovered it was made of oak and that the drawers didn't really work that badly if not overloaded.

It took some doing, but I finally convinced my parents of my need for more dresser space and talked them into allowing me to have the piece provessionally stripped.

This dresser is where Olde Homestead began! To begin with, his shop was pretty impressive. Unlike so many other shops I have been to over the years, his shop was well lit, impeccibly clean and everyone there was very professional and customer friendly. When we got to the stripping shop, the proprietor took notice of my unique interest in furniture and in restoring antiques. He leand on the counter and said, "Son, I"m going to tell you how this business works and I hope you never forget this: for every job you do a great job on you can expect at least 2 referrals, but for every job you don't do your best you can expect to loose at least 10 customers."

That sage advice has stuck with me to this very day. Not only did his shop leave an indellible impression on me, his insight has served as the basis of my business plan.

*****

Over the years my passion for woodworking has served me quite well. In High School I had the extreme pleasure of studding for 2 1/2 years under the tutalage of Mr. Hal Royer. During those days, if you tookd Royer's woodworking classes and took them seriously, you would have gained the very near equivalent of having gone to Vocational Technical School. Royer was one of those teachers who was more than just excellent within his academic area; he gave us so much to build our lives and futures on. He took interest in me and became a mentor to me and I'm forever indebted to him. Because of my work in Royer's class I was given a unique opportunity in how I would make my way through college.

During my college years I had worked several years for the printing company across from my house. Building fashionable pieces with a specific purposes from discarded wood cases and palets, I earned extra money by selling these work my way through school.  And from there, my love of repurposing and resusing antique wood grew into my passion.