Our story
I make sawdust for a living.
No investors, no showroom, no factory. Just a guy in Milford, Maine who got tired of building porch furniture on nights and weekends and decided to see what happened if he did it for real.
Who's building it
One guy, one shop, one name on the back of every piece.
It started with a porch swing for our own house, then an Adirondack chair set for my in-laws, then a picnic table for a neighbor who saw it in the yard and asked who built it. I said me, and that I could build them one too. That's more or less the whole origin story — nobody hired a consultant, there was no business plan on a napkin. People just kept asking.
For a couple years it lived in the cracks of a regular job — evenings, Saturdays, whatever daylight was left after work. The order list kept growing faster than the hours did. Last fall I did the math, talked it over with my wife, and walked away from the steady paycheck to do this full time. It was a scary thing to sign up for. I don't regret it.
How we got here
The short version, bench by bench.
Nothing about this shop happened fast. It went the way most real things do — one piece, one customer, one referral at a time.
A porch swing for our own house
Built it because I wanted one and didn't want to pay gallery prices for it. First time I really thought about joinery instead of just getting a project done.
Family started asking
My in-laws wanted Adirondack chairs. A neighbor wanted a picnic table after seeing ours in the yard. I said yes to everything, because I genuinely liked doing it and the money didn't hurt.
Facebook, Marketplace, and a lawn full of chairs
Put a few pieces up for sale online and set some out on the lawn along the road in Milford. Turns out a chair sitting in the grass sells itself better than any ad copy I could write.
A piece landed in an antique store
A local shop in Orrington agreed to carry a few pieces on consignment. Having something of mine sitting next to actual antiques was the first time it felt like a real trade, not a hobby.
I quit my job
The order list had gotten long enough, and my wife and I decided the math worked. Scary week, good decision.
First commercial order
A local business ordered a run of picnic tables for their outdoor seating. Different kind of job than a family dining table, and it told me there's a real market beyond individual homeowners.
An employee, a proper shop, and lumber yard shelves
The plan is to hire one person, build out a real shop instead of the space I've been making work, and get standard pieces onto shelves at Maine lumber yards. Still family-run. Still my name on the back of every piece.
How we decide things
Four rules I don't bend on.
None of this is a mission statement. It's just what actually happens on the bench, every time.
Overbuild it on purpose
If a joint could be a butt joint held with screws, I'll mortise it instead. If a leg could be 1.5 inches, I'll make it 2. It costs me time and a little extra lumber. It also means the porch swing your kids fight over is still standing when their kids fight over it. I'd rather a piece outlast the warranty by decades than meet a spec sheet exactly.
The part nobody checks
Finish the underside too
The bottom of a table, the back of a chair slat, the inside of a drawer — I sand and finish those the same as the parts you see. Nobody inspects them at pickup. It's for the piece, not the sale.
Tell the truth about price and timeline
If a design is going to run more than you expected, I say so before I cut anything, not after. If I'm backed up six weeks, I tell you it's six weeks, not "soon." I'd rather lose a job to an honest number than win it with a guess I can't keep.
Answer your own phone
When you call about your order, you get me — not a receptionist, not a call center reading from a script. I know which board your table came from and where it stands in line, because I'm the one who's building it. That's the whole reason to keep this small.
No shortcuts
Every piece that leaves this shop was built and finished by one person, in Milford.
No outsourcing, no drop-ship kits, no assembly line. If your name's on the order, my hands were on the wood.
On pricing
Middle of the road, on purpose.
I'm not trying to be the cheapest option and I'm not trying to be a gallery. My pricing sits deliberately in between: built better and heavier than what you'll find at a big-box store, and a good bit friendlier than what a gallery or high-end custom shop will quote for the same piece.
If your budget and the design you want don't quite line up, I'll say so and suggest a version that gets you most of the way there for less — a simpler profile, a different wood, one less feature — instead of just quoting the number and letting you walk away.
See pricing and timeline questionsIn their words
What it's like to order from a one-person shop.
Our porch swing is the best thing we've bought for this house. Eric sent us photos the whole way through, and it showed up looking better than I pictured. Twenty years from now our daughter is getting that swing.
I asked for two Adirondack chairs and got a text with a real price the same day. No runaround, no upsell. They've been out through a full winter and still look great.
We needed outdoor seating for patients and Eric matched three tables perfectly. He delivered and set them exactly where we wanted. Easiest vendor I've worked with all year.
He built our dining table out of cherry and it's the centerpiece of the house. The little plaque on the underside made my husband tear up, honestly.
Come see a piece in person.
There's usually something sitting on the lawn in Milford, and a few pieces on consignment at the antique store in town. Stop and look one over, or just message me — I answer my own phone.