The Yin and Yang of Custom Woodworking

The REN Design Company is a typical family business, hidden on a beautiful stretch of road in Wading River.

Shop owners Jason and Samantha Nagorski estimate they know about half of the people who come by each day. And it’s not unusual to catch a glimpse of the couple’s 7-year-old daughter, Ruby, whizzing around the sales floor on roller skates. Ruby also has the honor of serving as the shop’s muse, having generously lent the initials of her full name (Ruby Elizabeth Nagorski) to the name REN Design.

But don’t let the shop’s picturesque location and charming name fool you: The Nagorskis are serious craftsmen. And they’ve mastered the yin and yang of custom woodworking and design.

Samantha, who has a background in graphic design, photography and painting, usually designs and draws the projects. Jason does most of the construction. He describes himself as a skater kid and took a job with a cabinet maker straight out of high school 20 years ago, never looked back and gradually developed into a master carpenter.

Jason is a bit of an enigma. He’s a man-child, a guy who built himself a motorized skateboard and regularly cruises the Wading River and Port Jefferson, 10 miles away.

“I don’t do tricks anymore,” he says a little wistfully, adding that at 37, he no longer feels confident pushing his board to top speed.

Jason is also a demanding craftsman through and through – although it takes a lot of effort to get him to admit it.

He tends to approach his craft in a way that can feel reductive and overly modest. The furniture he and Samantha design for a discerning clientele is unique and often quite impressive—especially their dining tables. But Jason is quick to reduce his contribution to the projects to a minimum.

“I don’t have that vision,” he says. “Samantha does. Whatever that creative thing is, I don’t have it. I need a lot of reference points.”

“I consider myself more of a craftsman or a builder,” he adds. “When I see other people working with wood, I say, ‘This is art; something is coming from your soul.’ I don’t necessarily see my work that way.”

Not surprisingly, Samantha, his partner of 18 years, doesn’t entirely agree with Jason’s assessment. “I see what he does every day,” she says. “So I think it’s crazy that he thinks that way.”

Jason doesn’t want to admit that he was born with a special gift – a feel for wood that other people simply don’t have – but he lets a hint of ego show, albeit very reluctantly.

“I wasn’t born with talent,” he emphasizes. “I learned a skill. But I would say I’m the best at that skill.” Even though they don’t quite agree on the nature of creativity and talent, Samantha and Jason have been working together successfully for a long time.

In fact, the couple’s creative collaboration began quite early in their relationship, years before they considered finding full-time jobs as designers and manufacturers of furniture and home accessories.

When her sister was expecting a baby, Samantha drew up plans for a custom crib for her soon-to-be-born niece. Jason built it out of maple. “It was probably the first real thing I built that wasn’t a closet,” he says.

The bassinet was so well received by friends and family that it led to further projects. About five years later, around the time the couple had their daughter Ruby, the REN Design Company was founded.

“The birth of our daughter gave us a new direction and made us want to get off the rat race,” explains Samantha. The couple both worked full-time and ran a side business renting out vintage photo booths (several of which Jason had built himself) for weddings and events.

For the first few years after the store opened, Samanatha worked there full-time, but Jason kept his job as a carpenter and worked nights and weekends for the fledgling business. Then, in 2020, around the time the pandemic hit, he switched to working at the store full-time.

Jason has held a full-time job since high school, along with several side gigs, and considers his current situation a relatively quiet chapter in his life. As co-owner of a growing business and father of a young daughter, his time is still very busy. But in Jason’s case, the old saying that if you do what you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life is especially true.

“I’m only 37, but I feel like I’m retired,” he says. “I walk to work. 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. is a normal day for me, but it doesn’t feel like I’m working 14 hours. I still love woodworking and I still love what I do.”

Samantha and Jason agree that while their daily lives can be stressful, the biggest source of stress for them is delivering a custom product to their customers.

“You go through everything with the client, they’ve made all the decisions, the product has been built to the specifications they wanted – hopefully we’ve been able to work out what they had in mind,” says Samantha. “But there’s always that level of uncertainty. Will they love it? Will they love what we’ve put so much time and effort into?”

Samantha says the couple’s clients are almost always delighted with their furniture. “You can’t beat the exhilaration you get when you create something that people love,” she says.

Samantha estimates that about 60 percent of the couple’s revenue comes from custom furniture design, 20 percent from direct retail sales in the store and 20 percent from the craft parties she hosts at the store several times a month on Friday nights.

“I live very much in the world of giving,” she notes.

The workshops, which typically involve around 20 women building, painting and decorating one of Samantha’s creations, can last between 2.5 and 4 hours. Participants love the fact that they can go home with a unique handmade decoration or art object at the end of the evening.

Although much of their custom design business comes from word of mouth, Samantha and Jason are also active on social media to fuel their growth, often posting online about the progress of larger custom projects. As any small business owner who doesn’t have the luxury of a dedicated social media person on staff knows, it takes a lot of commitment to keep Instagram and Facebook regularly updated with content.

“Sometimes a project can take twice as long just because it takes so long to create the social media videos,” complains Jason.

Aside from the success of their business and the obvious quality of the furniture and home accessories they produce, Samantha and Jason are one of those couples who have managed to find what seems to be a very comfortable balance between work and personal life.

“If we won the lottery, we would still have this place,” says Jason and Samantha nods in agreement.

This article appears in the August 16, 2024 issue of Behind The Hedges inside Dan’s Papers. Read the full digital version of the magazine here. Click here to view previous Master Craftsman columns.