Cherry Wood
Steve Cherry: Cabinet Maker
One’s inner youngster emerges as creativity, and feeding
this creative child is an imagination at play.
That’s Cherry style.
For 36 years, Steve Cherry and his inner child have toyed
with woodworking. Today, along side wife and business partner, Kimberly,
Steve’s playfulness manifests in extraordinary and unusual custom woodwork and
a lifestyle grounded in fun.
Born and raised in Lancaster, this McCaskey alumnus is the
oldest of three and describes his upbringing as typical Ozzie and Harriet with
“wonderful parents who gave you just enough leash to allow you to grow up and
be an interesting person.” He had a ball growing up in Lancaster.
“We went downtown and shoplifted fish from the five-and-ten
and set off fireworks—we were mild juvenile delinquents, which is an underrated
skill in training people to deal with the world,” Steve jests. “A juvenile
delinquent gets control of his life, he gets to make his own decisions, and he
gets to create his own world and his own havoc—and doing all this while
walking a fine line between what’s really something serious and what’s just
harmless fun. I had that training and background in Lancaster, and it has
served me well.”
Steve graduated with an honors degree in American studies
from Lehigh University and lasted a year working as a newspaper reporter, apparently
not finding the same satisfaction as his father, editor of Lancaster New Era for 30 years. It was the early ‘70s—good times and long-haired hippies—when
Steve moved on a whim with his ex-wife to a Zen center in Rochester, New York.
“It turned out she really liked it and stayed; I lasted
about 4 months. But when I was there, I decided I would become a
woodworker—out of the clear blue sky, never touched a tool before.”
Steve began harassing a Rochester woodshop owner for a job.
Persistence paid off, and he was given a chance. There he befriended Old Al, a
miserable old man everyone avoided.
“I quickly saw that if I was going to learn anything, he
would be the guy I would learn from. So I sucked up to him, and we got to be friends.
He taught me a tremendous amount in a year’s time.”
A self-described know-it-all young person, Steve decided to
open his own woodworking business in Rochester. But Lancaster was calling.
“I thought if I’m going to start a business, Lancaster is
the place to do it. I already had all these contacts and could just jump off.”
Steve bought an 18th century stone house in southern
Lancaster County with acreage and a pond, a “hippie dream-come-true.” He built
a shop of his own on the property and soon met Peter Deen,
a finisher and painter instrumental in Steve’s training and with whom he
partnered in business restoring 18th and early 19th century furniture.
“It was a magical partnership because it was so juvenile,
and we had such an irreverent sense of how to do business that we just pulled
it off. We had so much fun and so many laughs. “We’d do things like stick
snakes in people’s drawers when they’d come to pick it up. We got away with
running our business that way. We were just naughty little children having a
ball making stuff and getting paid well to do it. I’ve since grown up.”
After 15 years, Steve tired of pure restoration and took his
craft in a different direction from Peter’s. Around this same time, Steve met
Kim in Jamaica at a friend’s house, and in about 2 weeks decided they should
get married.
“When they say impulse decisions are a disaster, this one
hasn’t been so far.”
Meet the two of them, and one can’t help but agree. As
business partners and playmates in life, the couple is together 24/7. A
Canadian, Kim is a trained artist with a fine arts degree from York University
in Toronto. It didn’t take long to realize she and her husband share an
aesthetic sense and a zest for life. The two also share a family: Steve’s twin
sons, Dan and Josh, and his daughter, Sarah; Kim’s daughter Kyle—all adults
with interesting lives of their own. They also have an 18-month-old grandson,
Finn.
Kim entered the business being taught the ins and outs of
creating distressed surfaces by some of Steve’s work buddies. She soared with
those lessons and relied on her own eye and sense of color to figure out the
rest. Steve refers to her as “an amazing little working dynamo” because she
handles all the finishing for everything the business designs.
“I’d have to say that this business couldn’t operate without
her, she’s that important,” he emphasizes.
The two create and play out of their home and shop, which
are located across from each other on Grant Street. The Cherrys live on the top two floors of an old four-story, 18,000-squarefoot tobacco
warehouse that together they have transformed from a wreck into a wonderland. Already
living in the city, the couple passed the vacant warehouse often, always
admiring its character. They were delighted to see it go up for sale, quickly
crushed to learn it had sold, and elated once again to hear the sale fell
through.
Upon the city’s approval for a single-family residence, they
purchased the property, and in a revelation akin to divine intervention, Steve
and Kim sketched the open floor plan in one night. After ascending a few
flights of original wooden staircases, one steps out of Lancaster City and into
an enchanting kingdom of serenity, color, edginess, and style that captivates
the eye and engages a youthful spirit.
A trip to cherryorbit.com speaks of the couple’s belief that
“the time you spend in your home should be magical,” and their amazing portfolio
of craftsmanship and artistry teaches by example as many of the portfolio
pieces grace their residence. To put the mystic of this abode into words cannot
do it justice. It’s truly spellbinding. The producers of Home & Garden Television
agree, having featured the couple’s home in the network’s “Building Character” show
a few years ago. The HGTV spotlight shined on the couple a second time on the program
“Country Style,” where their “unique urban country loft” served as the backdrop
for showcasing the beautiful marriage of Steve’s woodworking talents and Kim’s
color artistry.
Rightfully so, Steve claims their home as one of his
greatest accomplishments.
“It is a world we’ve created that’s still magical for us.
Every day we get up, and it’s just a magical place to be. That hasn’t changed,
so I know that it’s good because it stays with me.”
Suggestive of a ballet studio, the home’s first floor opens
to a vast, empty space with large windows that send light dancing across shiny
wooden floors. Steve shares their dream of turning the space into a showroom to
display Cherry original creations and spotlight their work’s diversity. The
company thrives on custom millwork, furniture, picture framing, and floor
cloths, as well as interior design direction. Diversity has served them
well—when one aspect of the business slows, the other tends to pick up,
just as the current lag in millwork reflects the downtick in housing
construction.
“The industry in general right now, as I talk to my
suppliers and other woodworkers, is slow compared to what it was. It’s not a
total recession; there are pockets of activity. I’ve been busy right through it
all, but the phone isn’t ringing nearly like it used to, so we are just not
getting the contacts or the number of things to bid on and explore. I think
that situation is going to stay the same, or even get a little worse, before it
gets better.”
Nonetheless, the nature of a small shop keeps the pace
steady. Steve, Kim, and Steve’s right-hand man and fellow woodworker Joe Hoffard comprise the proficient team working hard to
deliver big. The bulk of Cherry clients come from Lancaster County, suburban Baltimore,
and suburban Philadelphia, with word of mouth having been their biggest marketing
asset over the business’s lifetime. With such exhaustive design and production,
the Cherrys make certain to refill the well of imagination
from which they draw.
“We try to vacation a lot, at least one overseas vacation a
year because we get inspired from them, and we design a lot around what we see.
We were just in Mexico and saw these Mayan ruins; we took a couple snapshots,
and they are now the cornice work of the stuff I just designed for a decorator
in Philadelphia.”
Vacations go a long way toward making work feel like play.
And while perhaps prone to childish thinking, Steve claims he’s not entirely
the wild and crazy guy some may misperceive him to be. Kim laughs and banters,
“He’s not immature crazy—rather fun, a sophisticated crazy.”
“Lancaster is a very conservative community, and I’ve always
been a little bit of a wild card here, by choice, and I like the role.”
That’s Cherry style.
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