It all started a decade ago when Mayra, my wife, and I purchased our condominium. We wanted to do some remodeling, but no matter who we hired, we were unsatisfied. Finally, we gave up, and decided to do it ourselves. When it came time to furnish each room, we couldn’t find anything that interested us. So, we decided to take that on ourselves too.

We began acquiring tools, and thought it a good idea to get some training for safety and accuracy. Shocking revelation! – No, watching every episode of The New Yankee Workshop isn’t sufficient to learn everything necessary to build museum-quality furniture! So, I enrolled in a course at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking. The original plan was to take one course, then resume the renovation/furniture-building on our own. Well, while I was there I noticed that the design course with Graham Blackburn still had space available. Then, a furniture design/build class with marqueteer Paul Schürch opened up. It was while I was away in Indiana that week that Mayra called. She said that she’d been looking though the catalog, and had mapped out all of the classes necessary for me to achieve their Master’s program by the end of the following year. We were sliding down that slippery slope!