The Oral History of My Cabinet Romance

The Oral History of My Cabinet Romance

I think it sounds stupid when I say aloud (or write) the words “I’m passionate about cabinetry.” Because, who on Earth is passionate about cabinetry? It sounds to me almost like a disorder. Dude, if you can’t stop looking at and touching other people’s cabinets, that’s not an unfair advantage in the market, you should be seeing someone about it.

But – and I sigh as I write this – I am (passionate about cabinetry). Let me relate some of my relationship with cabinets and spray-finishing, and I promise to bore you with how interested in it I am. In high school, I had many pursuits: I played 3 sports, was elected to student government, worked as a life-guard and swim teacher, ran the sound panel for the theatre productions, appeared IN some theatre productions, went to speech and debate meets, placed in a Physics competition with a trebuchet, often played with gasoline and fire, etc. But guess what I always wanted to do? The cabinetry classes. I craved it. One semester, I went to the advisor’s office 3 different times with the Cabinetry 1 class on my planned schedule, and every time she sent me away, trying to convince me to take it off my class register. I listened and never did take those classes.

Jumping a few year’s ahead, I was 2/3 of the way through a Mechanical Engineering degree at a good engineering school, but I sure wasn’t a fan of my studies. My grades were fine, to be clear. But I left the program and eventually found my way to a Technical College that offered Cabinetry and Millwork as a certification. I had the time of my life in that program.

I worked for several years in cabinet shops, building custom cabinetry, spraying, staining, glazing, installing, and breathing sawdust. It didn’t get old, I just liked it. It appealed to me. I liked the precision of cabinets, yes, but also their utility. I’m not a “fine woodworker”. I have an intense distaste for live-edge tables, and for epoxy river-tables. I don’t care for bow-tie joints. None of that interests me. I like cabinets. What do you want from me? It’s not sexy. It’s not even interesting. But I liked building 5 or 6 variations of a box over and over. Plus, very physical work is cleansing. Production like that has infinite room for improvement, and I have a continuous improvement brain. It’s nice to complete. Building cabinets let’s me complete repeatedly, and I get to iterate on my never-ending stream of ideas for process improvement.

After that, I eventually found myself working as a trainer for a franchise that (at the time) was the largest refinishing company in the United States. Refinishing means they clean and sand your cabinets and then apply a new color to them. Every month, I trained people for 9 days to refinish cabinets. Most of them hadn’t done anything like that before. My stated goal was to turn them into craftsmen in those 9 days. I taught them about cabinets – the main construction styles and methods of assembly, wood species, principles of good kitchen design, decorative and functional hardware, how to measure for doors and drawer fronts, etc. I also devoted time to coatings. We learned about pigments, dyes, color theory, solvents, resins, spray equipment, booths and air flow, tinting machines, and on. When I wasn’t training, I was answering technical support calls from the franchise owners and their technicians – helping them troubleshoot issues in the field. Actually, I very often had to step away from training to take those calls. It was nonstop. I loved it. And you know, I think I peaked. God made that job for me, and I don’t think I’ll ever find that perfect a fit again.

For almost all of my adult life, I’ve been unable to walk into anyone’s home without ogling their cabinets.

So, yeah, I like what I do. I can’t turn it off. I’ll bore you to tears droning about cabinets and coatings, if I don’t check myself. It’s a living. It’s my living.