Our Story
"Jesus Was a Carpenter" is a small, family-owned, private business. We love our country and the opportunities for entrepreneurship that living in America provides. Seeking to create a success story of our own, and one that would glorify our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we launched this business and named it after the One who gave us such a vision.
We officially began in the summer of 2017, selling farmhouse table sets out of a small booth that we rented inside a local antique mall. During this time my wife, Leanna, and I worked to capture the current custom-furniture market and what would be our brand within it. We wanted a relevant style, but we also wanted to create pieces that would be timeless in both their appearance and functionality. Pictured-left is the first dining set that we built and placed for sale in our booth. Rather encouragingly, the set sold within just a few days. During that same short span of time, we began receiving requests from folks who saw this set and wanted the same craftsmanship, but in a different size/finish/style. From there, things took off rather quickly. This "Fancy Trestle" design pictured here became our most popular client-choice, and still remains so to this date.
Working out of a small 9x12 shed, we started this business with fairly humble beginnings. I (Daniel), at that point was still working within an entirely different full-time profession during the day.
I spent many late-nights, early-mornings, and weekends wiggling my way around the perimeter of our assembly table as I sanded the edges and corners of custom furniture within this cozy building. During this time, Leanna continued as head "style-consultant" and began our social media presence on Facebook.
An order for a new shop was placed at the end of that same year. The new shop was over twice the size of the previous space, and featured several key upgrades, such as insulation + a specified electrical setup. We also constructed an "Outdoor Workstation", which further expanded our operational space + abilities.
During the next year of business, 2018, we took on many different custom commissions, expanding far beyond the realms of dining sets. While experience had shown us that having a set and concise group of standard product offerings is most profitable and efficient, we also wanted to be a business that could step out and create a client's unique vision. Pictured are some of our first custom one-off commissions. Each of these clients came to us with specific goals; a product that could only be made custom.
In the fall of 2018, and after much prayer, I decided to step out in faith and leave my full-time profession to begin working my JWAC business full-time. I handed my keys back to the amazing janitorial/landscape company that I had been working for as a Janitorial Operations Manager at a local college. I made many amazing friends while I was there. It was a difficult decision to make, but it was the Lord's plan. Step one was to find a new vehicle, since I lost the fancy truck provided to me by the janitorial company. We found "Leroy the Lariat" for sale locally and brought him home.
He had all the goods: rustic patina + a long bed + plenty of style. He cruised SO smoothly, but did stay very thirsty! Leroy would eventually be sold in the fall of 2021, replaced with the exact same vehicle that I gave up when I left my full-time job to pursue JWAC full-time: a 2016 Chevy Silverado LT pickup. Crazy how things work, huh? I named the new truck "Jireh", becuase God is our provider, our Jehovah Jireh!
In late-2018, JWAC began receiving requests from local custom homebuilders to install sliding doors within their client's homes. Since "barn door" installs are a uniquely-complex task, it is often attractive for contractors to
sub-contract out this type of work to companies like us that specialize in sliding doors. We continue to build our network of homebuilders, and we are always looking to make new connections with builders in our area.
Contact Us to start that conversation!
Near the end of 2018, we started to get requests for custom built-in woodwork, as client's wanted our same artisan-level craftsmanship within their home's permanent fixtures, as well.
2019 brought about a great deal more commercial work for us. JWAC is committed to providing our commercial clients with unique and captivating woodwork that establishes their brand in a way that only custom craftsmanship can!
In the spring of 2020, we opened up our second and final booth at Main St. Antiques & Design Gallery. We setup a TV with a slideshow of our custom pieces, accompanied by Christian praise and worship music. Thousands of folks passing by heard music glorifying the Most High during the mall's business hours!
2020 was a year of great-hardship for the world. We experienced those same hardships, but also some great growth, as well. A co-owner joined us, and then departed the company later at the end of the year. There were some blessings in this season, as our scope of work increased to include more advanced built-in cabinetry, which to this date remains our most popular product. We took advantage of special SBA funding options available at the time, and used them to increase our shop space and machinery. We were still working out of a home-based studio, but the shop footprint increased two-fold with new new shop extension. Having the new larger planer and jointer also helped our operational flow and increased our quality of product tremendously!
2021 was, perhaps, our most difficult year to date. In my former business partner's absence, I had to do a lot of work that I was not as familiar with as he was, and I had to work extra hours to fulfill all of our client commissions that were booked prior to his departure. Everything went great on each project, praise God! Towards the end of the year, things got much better, as I was able to bring in some much-needed additional staffing. We were getting a lot of calls, and they helped me to fulfill the additional project requests. These are great, God-fearing men in these pictures! We expanded our space once-more at the home shop near the end of the year, adding a third building, which served exclusively as our Finishing Room. After years of painting outside in the elements, it was AMAZING to have an indoor, well-insulated, space to spray paint and sealant!
One really cool and encouraging thing that happened in 2021 was that it was the first time our work was featured in print! A dining table that we designed and built for a local interior designer, Misty Molloy, was featured in a local magazine, "Currents" (April 2021 edition).
One especially-notable project from 2021 was the dining set that we crafted for the Anderson Family. We used a Dremel tool to hand-carve scripture and crosses into their table top, then filled the carvings with black epoxy. This table was one of our best received projects to-date by our base of followers on our social media accounts.
Fun project! I hope that we can do another like this one day!
By the time we entered into 2022, we had outgrown the home-based shop. We prayed a lot, and after just a bit of searching, we found the perfect commercial space, our new shop home on State Park Rd., in Troutman! We made a post (see below) on our Facebook page, on a Tuesday, asking our followers for help us find a place, and we listed our ideal specs. A JWAC follower, Chris, saw the post and sent me the link to his friends shop listing. He was friends with the landlord, and thought it would be a great space for us. I agreed, and informed Chris that I had already been trying to contact this landlord for a couple of days about this space, with no success. Chris helped connect us with his friend, and within 48 hours of that post, we met the landlord, Ben, saw the shop, which matched that EXACT specifics we had listed as needs/desires, and were moving in! God is good!! Our new shop was over 6 times larger than the combined space of our prior home-based shop! Perfectly partitioned for our needs. You can certainly call this a "God thing"! AND, it already had provisions for one other aspiration I had in my head for a commercial space...
...and that is: to open a coffee shop! We have been hard at work turning our front lobby space into TRUTH Coffee & Meeting house! Opening in 2023, it will feature a kids area, plenty of seating in a cozy environment, and we aim to even have a drive-up service! A great spot for meet-ups, bible studies, or to work on your laptop. Folks can sit and watch us do woodwork through the windows! Stay tuned to our media pages for more on this! We hope to open TRUTH Coffee & Meeting House during the second quarter of 2023.
With the new shop set up and rocking, it was like everything finally clicked! In addition to our day crew, we started an Evening Crew that works part-time in the evenings. The larger space + dedicated Finishing Area in the rear of the shop really helped increase productivity and quality! We added a second vehicle to the fleet, a van, to help with tool and crew transport for larger cabinetry installs. We completed several large cabinetry jobs in 2022, including two projects with "Cat Nooks" as base cabinets. Yep! That's a thing...now...apparently. Ha! I think we are the first, worldwide, to build a nook for cats into a base cabinet beside someones fireplace! We built our first "cat nook" in early-January, and after we posted the completed project, another client wanted the exact same thing. Who would have guessed that?! The larger shop also allowed us to easily craft monstrously-large furniture pieces, such as a house-looking kids loft bed with a side rock climbing wall. I would have loved one of these as a boy! 2022 was a fast-paced year, for sure!
This is our story, so far. Thanks for reading through it!
We are excited about what is in store for the rest of 2023 and beyond: more tooling, new skill sets developed, new designs, COFFEE, and more relationship building!
While the rest of our story remains untold, we place it entirely into the hands of the Father, who is good and is True, and is working all things for His Glory.