His love started on stage, but over time his passion for woodworking shifted from props to one-of-a-kind pieces that families would enjoy for generations.

Michael’s first experience in woodworking was helping to bring a set designer’s vision to life for stage productions while in college back in New York. When he moved to the Pacific Northwest, he followed his love of the theatre by building sets for Portland Center Stage performances. While bringing a new world to life on stage brought him joy, he wanted to shift into building pieces with a longer life span. Initially, he honed his skills by working from a shop at home to create pieces for his friends. Eventually he presented his portfolio to The Joinery and came on board in 2007.

 

While our standard wood species allow us to build stunning dining tables, occasionally we like to experiment with different woods.  Recently we came across an incredible set of locally harvested, book matched Elm slabs and knew we could put them to good use.  The result is a gorgeous Live Edge Dining Table built by Michael, a ten-year veteran at The Joinery. The piece features an open grain pattern and unique figuring that resembles a heart shape.

 

We thought the table was stunning, and customers did too. It didn’t last long on our Yamhill showroom floor, but it will in it’s new home: the office of Steve Bloom, the CEO of the Portland Japanese Garden.

 

Even Mozart must have started by pecking out a few piano chords. When Hilario joined us ten years ago, his woodworking knowledge was limited to the hammer-and-nail nitty-gritty of construction carpentry. Then he came to work in The Joinery’s finish department, and over a number of years accumulated the skills and demonstrated the aptitude for the million-and-one details required to build incredible handcrafted furniture — the idiosyncrasies of each wood species, the tools, the joints, cut lists, custom design . . . .

After a great experience last year, The Joinery is again participating in the NW Earth Institute’s EcoChallenge.  With over 80% of our employees taking part, our Sustainability Team divided participants into four separate teams for an added layer of fun and friendly competition. The team came up with a new set of challenges:

• Challenge #1: Don’t eat anything that once had a heartbeat. Whatever your take on the ethics of eating animals, a diet featuring meat and poultry has a dramatically bigger environmental footprint than a vegetarian diet. There is ample evidence that reducing meat intake also improves your health. Our goal as a company is to reach 600 meatless meals.
• Challenge #2: Avoid to-go containers. A trash audit conducted earlier in the year (yes, our team shown below did some dumpster diving to determine what exactly we are throwing into the landfill) showed that about 10% of the trash from our Woodstock location was made up of to-go containers for food and coffee. Our goal is to eliminate the use of to-go containers in general and disposable coffee cups in particular, and to help we are providing insulated coffee containers to all participating employees.
• Challenge #3: Daily Exercise for at least 30 minutes has a beneficial impact on mental as well as physical health. And it can also be a lot of fun.

We are kicking the Eco Challenge off with a Vegetarian Luncheon this Thursday, when our four teams will begin battling it out for bragging rights.