You're Inspired, Now on To The Fine Woodworking
By Garen Garson 

If your husband has decided to take up woodworking as a hobby I would strongly advise you to encourage him. My husband is a finewoodworking craftsman, and ladies this is a vanishing trade. If you want unique woodworking projects in your home that you can actually afford, encourage your husband's talent.

We owned a woodworking shop for over 20 years and as time has gone by the people with the ability to produce finewoodworking has decreased dramatically. The few true craftsmen left now charge a pretty penny for individual projects.

It just simple supply and demand, there is high demand for beautiful woodworking projects but very few craftsmen to complete them. Many of the experts we know are so busy they actually have waiting list and they end up bidding project very high figuring if they get the job, great and if not oh well.

When we owned our own shop and show room there are many times my husband would build custom pieces so we could display them in the show room. Most pieces never got there; they always managed to end up in our home.

Finewoodworking projects line my home. I have beautiful custom pieces everywhere. My wall unit is custom designed to fit everything I needed in it, the hutch has a custom finish on it so I could match a very specific color in the fabric used in the curtains. Some quick and easy projects my husband has done is picture frames, a little molding and imagination and you can have very custom frames for a fraction of the price that you could buy them for.

Once your husband really gets an understanding of how woodworking works he can get to the point that you could redo your entire kitchen for about a third of what it would cost to buy it. We just redid our entire kitchen and all we paid for was the materials, my husband "donated" his labor.

The material for the entire kitchen cost us right near the $8,000 mark. This gave us raised panel mitered maple doors and all the gadgets any good kitchen should have. If my husband had done the same exact kitchen for one of our customers it would have cost them about $26,000. That is basically because the customer is paying for my husband's expertise.

So if you want your own home filled with beautiful, fine woodworking projects encourage your husband's hobby. You can buy tools for every holiday and he will love it. If his first project doesn't quite work out don't let him get discourage, find something positive about it and let him build on that. You can then have a house filled with finewoodworking, and the things you can do are unlimited. You can have unique and custom woodworking in every room, anything from picture frames to custom armoires.

So if you want beautiful furniture and cabinetry in your home, without going broke, encourage your husband's hobby, you might just be pleasantly surprised.