Professional cabinetry is typically a commercial shop endeavor – a large building, industrial equipment, a crew of employees. David produces custom cabinets for high-end residential kitchens from a two-car garage. He has done so for eleven years. He is booked out eight months. His clients include architects, interior designers, and homeowners who have been referred by both. He makes a comfortable living from a 440-square-foot garage.
The key to production cabinetry in a small space: a CNC router. David’s shop is organized around a 4×8-foot CNC router table that occupies one full bay of the garage. The router handles every panel operation – drilling for cabinet hardware, routing dadoes, cutting parts to size. What used to require a full shop of specialized machines (panel saw, boring machine, edgebander) is now handled by one machine with the appropriate tooling. The router operates largely unattended, which means David can be doing hand-assembly work on a cabinet at the bench while the router cuts the parts for the next one.
The workflow: a new project starts with a SketchCam file that converts the cabinet design to router toolpaths. Parts are cut on the router from sheet goods. Parts are edge-banded at a dedicated station with a manual edge bander. Parts are assembled at the bench – pocket-screw joinery for boxes, traditional mortise-and-tenon for face frames and doors. Doors are routed with profiles, sanded, and finished in a dedicated spray booth built in the back corner of the second bay.
“People ask me why I don’t get a bigger space,” David says. “I tell them the garage is the right size for one person. If I got a bigger space, I’d need employees to fill it. I don’t want employees. I want to make cabinets.” The scale is a deliberate choice, not a limitation. Are you running a home-based production shop? Tell us about your business model and your space.