About Us

Around age 10,  I would head out to our family barn where there were plenty of dust ridden scraps of construction lumber laying around.  My father was a carpenter and he had the old barn equipped with a 220 volt table saw, clamps, hand saws and plenty of nails. Being curious of how to cut the scrap on the table saw and assemble various 2×4’s and plywood, it kept me busy for hours in the summer.  Growing up in a house with 2 older brothers who had found the barn too when they were younger, they had already gone into the construction field and I knew I wanted to do the same at a young age.  I learned my skills of woodworking through them that an average 11 year old wouldn’t have any interest, but I did.  Throughout my junior high and high school years, my early learned skill really excelled me, putting me at the top of my class in industrial arts.  I was a “sponge”, soaking up and learning as much as I could from my older brothers and industrial arts teachers.

I started my career out of high school working for my brothers in residential framing and trim carpentry.  During slow times in the winter, I would find myself in that same old red barn firing up a diesel furnace and pursuing my cabinetry knowledge building projects that would fill every corner of my  mothers home.  At age 23  it would all change after I put an add in our local newspaper advertising for building “custom bookcases and furniture”.  Within a week I was meeting with customers and filling orders.  I didn’t know it at the time, but I had started my future in a career that I had always loved-cabinetry.

Years later we updated and improved the old red barn and today, it is our shop where we produce the finest quality built-ins and cabinetry in the Northern Illinois area.   We have a genuine passion for our work that sadly these days is forsaken. We stand behind every project we work on, whether it be in the shop or your home.  We look forward to sharing it with you.

From the Owner-Chris Ammenhauser