When Kathryn Etherington conceived of her kitchen, it was in shades of black, white, blue-gray and oak. She imagined a variety of shapes and finishes that would lend the Squilchuck house – completed last August – a sense of personality. She wanted easy access to all her appliances, but with a “great room” open-style floor plan, she also needed them covertly tucked away. And she dreamed of a central piece of furniture that would facilitate grand cooking projects when her friends and grandkids visited.
All these challenges and more were put to a local company that Etherington said she’d heard about “a million” years before at a home show.
Smith Custom Woodworking was started by father and son duo Rod and Jared Smith in 2007, with a production facility near Pangborn Memorial Airport completed in 2015.
“I had about five years experience building furniture,” said Jared Smith of starting the business. His dad had been doing finish carpentry work after retiring as a service technician from Verizon and “retired, for a second time, about six years ago.”
“Now, he helps out here and there but mostly works on his own projects away from the shop,” the younger Smith said.
The company, which has a dozen employees, usually builds 30 to 50 complete cabinets per week at its warehouse, including doors, drawers and accessories.
“In addition to cabinets, we also build some furniture, as well as components for wood-floor installation, passage or entry door systems and other miscellaneous wood parts,” Smith noted.
Recent projects include two solid-wood entry doorways – a barrel arched design in rustic alder and a craftsman set in cherry – as well as a custom rectangular dining table in white oak. There are also basket-weave, herringbone and hexagon patterned wood floors, an unusual folding-door-style cabinet, and six-sided coffered ceiling pieces in cherry for Smith’s own house.
“You typically see these done is squares, but that seemed too simple,” he noted.
Smith said his company has between 20 to 30 projects, “ranging in size and complexity” in the design phase at a given time, with three to seven on the production floor.
“We utilize more of a continuous production method rather than a batch method, (which) means that not all our craftspeople are working on the same project at the same time, but all phases of a project need to come together at the same time.
“As you can imagine, this requires solid communication between different production areas, and flexibility. When you add to this the nature of a truly custom product, it becomes very challenging,” he said.
Craftspeople at the warehouse are assigned to one or more production areas, including: panel processing, door fabrication, drawer box fabrication, pre-finish, finishing, assembly, delivery, and “something we call special projects.”
“Since we are still a small shop, most of our employees wear more than one hat,” Smith said.
Long-term relationships “with most of our major suppliers” were “built up back when we were small” and have been “maintained through close contact with individual sales people,” he added.
“I think our ability to work together to find solutions and create relationships that work for everyone has been critical with the material shortages and delays, due to COVID.”
Etherington’s project was one that faced hiccups during the pandemic – a shortage of both labor and materials, such as the hinges she had chosen.
She opted to “wait it out” to get the pieces she wanted, but referred to it as a “tough pregnancy.”
Still, she recalled marveling as field craftsperson Jeff Mauch held up pieces of trim again and again until they were just right before attaching them.
“The work they do is perfect,” she said.
Projects over the years for “hundreds of customers” – including everything from “a quick $15 job to process some material to $100,000 custom-home projects” – run together for Smith, but he said his firm once built headboards for a hotel in Hawaii, shipped furniture to Canada, and has “done some very cool kitchens.”
“I remember the people more than the project,” he said. “We have worked for some really great people, and I enjoy seeing them years down the road and hearing about how much they enjoy what we've made for them."
According to Smith, “The biggest challenge in what we do is managing a schedule and people’s expectations. This is something that I feel we could always improve upon.”
“As far as wood specific challenge,” he continues: “Because it is a natural material, it varies in color, size, consistency and pattern. When finishing wood, the same stain can leave very different looks on two different pieces – not usually what a customer expects.
“Wood also moves with the environment, and this can cause problems when tolerances are very tight. Wood can also hide its imperfections, and sometimes those will show up after you've invested a lot of time and effort into a piece.
“Typically, the only solution is to start over, which can be very disheartening. The good news is the piece usually turns out better the second time around.”
Etherington said she is most fond of a blue-gray, wall-to-floor cabinet that is distressed and has feet on it to “look like an old piece of furniture” in her kitchen, as well as her large island with ample work space and seating. An accordion-door “appliance garage” in the corner neatly hides her mixer, blender, toaster oven and electric tea kettle.
"I used a lot of wood – (including) white oak, wire brushed and then stained – that turned out beautiful. I also used black shiplap," she said.
“I’ve never seen anything on their website as out of the box as what I did. I think Jared really likes a challenge and doing different things,” said Etherington, who ultimately had the company build her additional items, such as bathroom cabinetry, a day bed and large bookshelf for her great room.
“I got all of the things that were important to me,” she said of her project. I think it turned out great.”