How we started
Greg trained at the North Bennet Street School in Boston in the late 1990s — a two-year cabinet-and-furniture-making programme that's the closest thing to a formal furniture-making cert in North America. He moved to BC in 2002 to chase the lumber and the mountains, spent ten years in a couple of shared shops on the Mainland, and in 2012 took a lease on a quiet stretch of Frederick Road in Lower Lonsdale because the rent was reasonable and the SeaBus terminal was a fifteen-minute walk for clients coming from downtown.
The idea was simple: a one-person shop that could build solid-wood furniture and built-ins for the North Shore without the overhead of a four-staff cabinet factory. Fourteen years on, the formula has stretched to two people on the bench (Devon's the second-year apprentice) and a part-time bookkeeper (Maya, who keeps the GST/PST returns honest). The phone is still answered by Greg when he's not running the planer.
The crew
Two people on the bench, one in the books, one phone line. The voice you reach is one of two — not an agent, not a dispatcher.
- Greg Halverson — owner, furniture maker. Twenty-two years on the trade, fourteen of them on this bench. Trained at North Bennet Street School (Boston) in 1998–2000. Best at the design conversation, the hand-cut joinery, and the awkward built-in on a 14-mm-out-of-level floor.
- Devon Tahir — second-year apprentice, finish-carpentry focus. Bench-tool sharpening, finish-oil application, drawer dovetails. Most likely to answer the phone Wednesday and Friday afternoons when Greg is out doing site measures.
- Maya Olsen — bookkeeper, part-time. Keeps the invoices honest, files GST and PST, chases the slow payers. Not on the work side; you'll never meet her unless something's gone sideways on an invoice.
How we work
Every commission runs through the same rhythm. We don't have a "premium tier" that gets done differently — every piece, regardless of whether it's a $185 chair re-glue or a $6,500 walnut sideboard, goes through these steps.
- 1. Phone conversation. Five to ten minutes — what you want, what room it's going in, whether you've a wood preference, what the budget shape looks like. We'll tell you at the end of the call roughly what bracket the piece falls in.
- 2. Shop visit or site measure. You come down to Frederick Road to look at timber, or we come to your house with a tape and a clipboard. Pencil sketch on the spot, agreed shape, photos of the timber you've chosen.
- 3. Written quote. Single page, line-item, on the email next day. Timber at sawyer-receipt price, labour estimate in hours, GST/PST line. You sign, you pay a 35% deposit, the piece goes into the queue.
- 4. Built, finished, delivered. Eight to twelve weeks for furniture, six to ten for a single-wall built-in. Hard-wax oil under a clerestory window for seven days minimum before delivery. We bring it to your house, we level it, we leave the offcuts you might want.
Insurance & paperwork
- $2,000,000 CAD general liability — through Northbridge Insurance, certificate emailed in fifteen minutes to any building manager or strata that asks
- WorkSafeBC registration — Class M, woodworking, current and in good standing
- District of North Vancouver business licence — issued annually, on file
- GST number on file — supplied on invoices to GST-registered businesses
- Five-year structural warranty — written on every furniture and built-in invoice, covers labour to put right any joinery, finish-lift or drawer-slide failure
- Net-15 terms — available to standing trade accounts (3+ commissions per calendar year)
Woodworking is not a Red Seal trade in British Columbia — so there's no provincial trade-cert to claim, the way an electrician or plumber would. The legitimacy stack for a furniture shop in this province is the business licence, the WorkSafeBC coverage, and the general-liability insurance. We hold all three, current, and we'll forward certificates of insurance the same hour you ask.
What we don't do
This list is short on purpose. We say no to about a quarter of the calls we get, and we say it on the phone before either side wastes time on a meeting.
- Production-scale kitchen cabinetry — we build kitchens to order, not stock SKUs. If you want fifty identical doors, you want a Burnaby cabinet shop with a CNC.
- MDF, melamine or veneered chipboard carcasses — solid-wood and proper Baltic-birch plywood only.
- Drywall, framing, paint — when a built-in needs the wall opened, we mark the cut and sub the framing back to a Lynn Valley GC. Touch-up paint we sub to a Lynn Valley finisher we trust.
- Electrical, plumbing or gas — separate licensed trades. We'll cut the opening for an outlet box; we don't run the wire.
- Outdoor decks, fencing, exterior cladding — not the bench's strength.