Our Story

Our adventure into the woodworking industry began in 2019 when we decided to build our own house at the ripe age of 20(Em) and 23(Mikey). Little did we know that building the cabinets for our new home would propel us into a wide variety of different woodworking adventures in the years to come.

In the Fall of 2020, we were closing in on “layoff” season for asphalt, and I (Mikey) needed something to keep me occupied during the winter months when we werent paving. So, I decided to start creating some things to sell locally. At first, it started as a side gig when we were wrapping up the paving season. I was making some Ink pens, cutting boards, signs, small furniture pieces, you name it. If someone had something they wanted built out of wood, I was their guy. Through the winter of 2020/2021 I stayed busy and grew my collection of woodworking tools to what I considered a fairly well-equipped shop for someone working out of their garage. During the 2021 paving season I had a full schedule of people waiting for projects when I got laid off in the winter again. I thought I had really hit it big! Then one day in the fall of 2021, I was scrolling facebook and I saw a post from a mutual friend of my brother and me stating he wanted to sell his map-making business. Knowing a little bit about it from hearing my brother talk and knowing the previous owner, I was intrigued. I sent him a message and said I was interested in talking about taking over his business, and things went on from there.

Fast forward to February of 2022, I’m a full-time woodworker, no longer doing asphalt, and Emily and I are headed to Florida to pick up the machinery to run a map-making business. After getting everything back home to our garage, we immediately started creating maps and taking orders. We fell in LOVE with it. Talking to the customers, hearing their stories about memories of all the different lakes we were asked to create, and manufacturing the maps themselves, we loved the process from start to finish! It seemed like we had struck the lottery. We were doing something we loved, providing for our son, and living the life we dreamed about!

Later on in the year 2022, we got into building custom cabinetry. Something else that I knew I loved because of the time we spent building the cabinets for our own home. Then it happened, in the spring of 2023, I had a decision to make. We were so busy with cabinets that we couldn't comfortably keep up with the volume of map orders we had coming in, so I unfortunately shut down map ordering and focused on Cabinetry. We were strictly cabinetry for about 3 years when the burnout of being a small business owner/operator finally struck. My work-life balance was in the toilet, and I had to make a change, or I was going to have to quit it altogether to regain my sanity.

So, we slowed down bidding on cabinetry work and pivoted once again to creating the smaller pieces that started our journey. Cedar signs, Toyboxes, cutting boards, you name it. Then Emily hit me with it- “Why don’t we start making maps again?” It hit me like a ton of bricks. Something we were so excited about a few years back suddenly seemed to be like a reborn vision. I dove right back in headfirst! 3 years ago, when we were making maps, we were working out of a 1000 square foot garage, drying things on a rack in our laundry room, packing maps for shipping on our bed and kitchen table, and using every bit of extra space in our house for making a living. NOW, we have a 4,200 square foot cabinet shop with a dedicated finishing room, extra space for a packaging area, a dedicated office, and much better tools and equipment to create our one-of-a-kind maps!

It seems like we have come full circle. Back to doing something that brings us a great amount of joy! Being chosen and able to share in the process of creating a unique gift for someone for any occasion truly does something for our hearts and souls that building cabinets just never could quite accomplish.

Whether you are looking for a gift for an anniversary, wedding present, a closing/housewarming gift, birthday, Christmas, or whatever it may be, we would be honored to be a part of that process! If you followed along this far, thank you. It truly means the world to us as a small family-owned and operated business.