My dream since I was a little kid was to have a nice space to work. When I was thirteen I used to work on my bicycle and motorcycle under a tree in the front yard of my parents house. The garage was converted into a den and the back yard pool deck was off limits. I can’t tell you how many little parts I lost when they fell in the grass and disappeared. I rebuilt my first car motor in the street in front of this same house when I was sixteen. I rebuilt my second car in the same space and actually got cited when the neighbors complained about my car always being apart. When I moved out, the house I lived in had no place to work.

When I was at school studying woodwork and design in the mid seventies, I was invited to go on a field trip with the advanced students to visit some craftsman in the San Francisco bay area. We visited some well known wood people and some not so well known woodworkers. The thing all these amazing craftsmen had in common was that they all had their own shops. I was in awe that you could actually set up your own space and then make a living doing what I would do for fun. A short time later I took another field trip with my own wood class to Sam Malouf’s house and shop. Sam was quite well known even then, but is now considered this country’s premier woodworker and craftsman. I was quite impressed that all these craftsmen had taken control not only of their environments but their own destiny as well. After seeing those woodworkers and their shops my goal was clear, I spent all my time working toward my version of what I saw those craftsmen doing.

About a year after those fateful field trips I had started my own wood shop with Ken Shayer, a friend from my wood class at CSUN. We pooled our equipment and hand tools and just started working. We had separate business and customers and different work habits so it worked out fine. After a few years we needed more space so we moved into large quarters with the same basic operation. Sometimes it got pretty tight when we both had large projects going. I got married in 1984 and was living in an apartment about a mile from my shop. My wife Janet was not convinced that we should live in an apartment forever. She started talking to real-estate agents and looking at neighborhoods. I remember being very depressed about what we could afford and how I couldn’t run a wood shop out of a residential garage. Some how Janet found a rural neighborhood not that far from where we lived. She called a local real-estate agent and before we knew it we were the proud owners of the worst house on one of the best acre and a half lots in the area. About a year later, some serious clean up work and a new paint job on the house, I was ready to build my dream shop.

The short version is I designed the building, had it professionally drafted and engineered, got it through plan check, got permits and started building . I had the concrete, framing and roofing done by contractors I hired, the rest I did myself with my two employees. The long version of that process is in need of it’s own website. I made up for all the horrible places I had to work when I built this studio. My shop is 2100 square feet, has automatic dust collection in the floor, air and electrical outlets every where, lots of north facing skylights, and an open plan that feels twice as big as it is. Over the years I have filled it with every piece of equipment that I ever wanted. I can build almost any size project now as a result. I have had 20’ long entertainment centers and full large scale kitchens set up in this space. The absolute best feature about this shop is the seventy five foot commute, it beats the hell out of driving even ten minutes in LA traffic.

Since 1987 I have been working at home and have had the opportunity to watch my two boys growing up. I like to think that I am carrying on the traditional role of craftsmen in the community that started when a cave man sharpened a stick and his buddy asked if he could make him one too.