“This started as a garage company building furniture when I got out of college. I went to school for design because I am happy building things and would be doing this even if I wasn’t doing it for a living. My dad was an architect and I was always surrounded by designs. I am not good at anything else. Furniture is practical and I like to make it beautiful. We reclaim the old growth wood because it is an extinct species and mother nature grew these trees. New 2 x 4’s are often from man grown wood. I would rather work with 300 year-old-wood instead of. 25 year-old-wood.We have another warehouse full of lumber. I get excited over cypress. The wood has a softer texture and it works with tools better. It is good to have a lot of wood to choose from and we use it for similar uses to what it was used as originally I started taking down barns and old houses for the wood and we recently took down an old house on the bluff in Daphne — it was one of the oldest houses in Mobile/Baldwin County and couldn’t have been remodeled. They were going to demolish the house but we saved the boards and the trim. It is a step back into the past. Taking the house down piece by piece, I get to see how they built it. Something looks weird and you realize they didn’t have a saw or a crane or a welder and you figure out what they did instead. I have learned and become a better woodworker from that.”

“I started building furniture for four years. I stayed in my desk job for 2 years and came to this old Emperor Clock building a year ago from working in a garage. A lot of the equipment is original to the building and we got it back running and use it. Everything has fallen into place. Building furniture is like playing in a band, that is how much fun it is. The business side is the hard part. The billing and marketing aren’t as much fun. We will have two or three showpieces for Arts and Crafts Festival and cutting boards, serving trays and kitchen things.”

“I love the water and getting on the boats. Anything outdoors, fishing hiking and being with my 2 dogs. Weekends off I come here and work on something I want to work on and the sketchbook projects that I have had in my head. You can’t sell those until you build them. More people are finding appreciation and inspiration from our past. and looking for something beyond computerized and disposable. I get to do what I love and preserve the past.”