When we lived in Seattle I started getting into woodworking. We lived in apartments for a while, so I never really had many tools. I still managed to put together a few projects — and loved it — but what I could do was always extremely limited.
That all changed when we rented a house with a garage and basement. All of a sudden I could fit some bigger tools, and in that year I built as much furniture as I could. One of the first things I made was an outdoor couch for the deck out back.
There was something so immediately satisfying about learning how to use different tools to build furniture. It felt like all the effort I put into it paid immediate, massive dividends.
Moving back
Coming back to Minnesota, one of the things I was most excited about was finally getting some more space for a woodshop. Our house has two garages, and the shop is on the smaller side. It’s taken a ton of work (and a new roof) to get to to be functional year round, but now we’re all set.
One of the first projects I took on after moving back was rebuilding all of the cabinet doors & drawers in our kitchen. That was a huge undertaking, but I’m really happy with how that all turned out.
Going Deep
After the kitchen, I started making increasingly complicated furniture that I’ve always wanted to try buidling. A custom desk for Kaitlins mom, and most recently a dining room table for our living room. It’s been a really busy year.
I’m starting a business
All of the has been leading toward a new goal: I want to make more custom furniture for people. I still have my day job, of course, but the more I can fill my time with interesting projects and building beautiful furniture, the better.
For the logo I really liked the idea of using the penrose triangle, so figuring out a name with an A made the most sense. I'll admit that a lot of it boiled down to finding a good domain name: https://afternoon.furniture.
So that’s where I’m at for now. I’m still picking up random projects for people I know around MN, but I don’t really have a grand plan for where I’m going from here.
YouTube
Last week I power carved a huge thing and decided to try filming the process and put it up on YouTube. I had a lot of fun figuring out the best way to film stuff, and I liked the process of editing everything down to be concise and hopefully entertaining.
I probably won’t film every project, but I will definitely start trying to do more on YouTube and over on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/afternoonfurniture
Okay that’s it!
Paul 👋
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