Nobody handed me a diploma. No apprenticeship. No woodworking school.

Just a garage, a YouTube rabbit hole, and a near-obsessive need to figure out why handmade furniture costs what it costs — and whether I could make it myself.

The first piece I ever built was a coffee table. It wobbled. The joints were ugly. I had to hide the tearout with a generous amount of dark wax and hope no one looked too closely.

But I kept building.

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The turning point: understanding wood as a material, not just a medium

Most people treat wood like it's passive. You cut it, shape it, sand it, finish it. Done.

What changed everything for me was learning that wood is alive — still moving, still responding to humidity, still expanding and contracting based on the season. Once I understood wood movement, every single decision changed:

• Why mortise-and-tenon joints are still superior after 3,000 years — they allow movement without cracking

• Why you never glue across the grain on a wide panel — it'll split, guaranteed

• Why quartersawn lumber is worth the price premium for anything that needs to stay flat

This is the kind of foundational knowledge that separates furniture that lasts 200 years from furniture that starts separating at the seams after two winters.

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The walnut dining table

18 months into my practice, a friend asked if I'd build a dining table for her home renovation. She'd seen my work and trusted me. Budget: open. Timeline: flexible.

I spent three weeks on the design alone. Bookmatched walnut slabs, hand-cut breadboard ends with draw-bore pegs, tapered legs with a hand-cut through-tenon detail, and a hand-rubbed oil and wax finish that took four days to build up properly.

The final price: €11,800.

Her reaction when it was delivered: she cried.

That piece taught me more than any tutorial ever could:

1. Client communication is a skill — she needed to understand what she was buying and why

2. Material sourcing is half the craft — I drove two hours to find the right slabs

3. The finish IS the piece — I almost rushed it and I'm glad I didn't

4. Premium pricing is a conversation about value, not cost — she never questioned the price once she understood the process

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What I wish I'd known on day one

If I could go back and tell myself three things:

1. Master one joint before moving to ten.

The mortise and tenon. Learn it by hand first, then with machines. Once you truly understand that joint, everything else is a variation.

2. Buy less wood, but buy better wood.

I wasted so much money on cheap pine projects early on. The material teaches you. Bad material teaches you bad habits. Get to hardwoods faster.

3. Finish samples. Always.

I have a crate of finish samples — same wood, different prep, different products, different application methods. Every new finish I try gets tested on scrap first. This habit alone has saved me thousands in ruined pieces.

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Why I built Heights Wood

Because the information that took me years to piece together shouldn't take years.

The forums, the YouTube videos, the Reddit threads — they're full of people giving their best guesses. What's missing is a structured path: foundational knowledge → tools mastery → joinery → design → finishing → business.

That's what we've built here. If you're serious about woodworking — whether you want to make pieces for yourself, sell at craft markets, or build a six-figure furniture business — this is the place.

Drop a comment below: what's the one thing you wish you'd learned earlier in woodworking?

Let's build something.