Make a Career in Making Fine Cabinets.

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If your construction trade is in fine kitchen cabinetry, you’d have been doing something else in the ancient world. Back then what we would think of as a kitchen didn't exist even remotely. The ancients did their cooking usually outside in an area which they could cover if it rained. The food was stored in stone urns with the body of an urn buried below ground with a visible lid.

The ancients used ground storage of unprepared food that they didn't preserve with salt or eat fresh because there was no refrigeration. Too, if you were poor or even in the small numbered middle class, you probably had no kitchen at all if living in the city and ate your food prepared at the market from a dealer of foods, who worked from a stall. Almost all the food that the ancients ate was conveniently finger food as they had no modern eating utensils.

Now let’s move to the 1950’s. The kitchen as we know it really came into being. World War II's end meant that there were many industries that, when peace came, had the mass production, new technologies and new materials developed which brought costs way down. Kitchen design benefited from this.

Today we would hardly know what to think about a house or apartment that had no kitchen. And as it's the center piece of pride in the home for many people, there are jobs to be had in the area of hand crafted cabinets and counters. The fact is that a large percentage of the nation’s wealthy wouldn't think of having a pre-fab kitchen no matter how high the quality.

Now quite a few people get into cabinet making because it's a family trade. If you're a kid whose Grandparent perhaps made cabinets and then taught your Dad or Mom the craft, you'd have a trade to go into where you could lean the skills needed from a craftsman on the job.

Others learned to do the job starting as a hobby in youth. I have a friend whose Dad's a master builder and finishes fine cabinets, among other things. His Dad started young in life working in construction. If you asked him, he wouldn’t be able to tell you when he got into fine finish work. He learned as a small youth as part of life and on then on the job.

Another friend of mine constructs rough cabinets. He builds cabinets that look like rough hewn antiques. He has even figured out ways to put flaws in various parts of the latches to give them an absolutely authentic look. He gets offered near antique prices even when he tells prospective buyers that the furniture is new. I guess the reason they offer so much is that he does the work for fun, not for profit. He rarely ever sells what he builds.

For the young and those who have limited ways to learn this trade but are interested, you can go to school and learn the art of cabinet making. A start is vocational training in high school and then there are colleges that teach the trade. The average salary right now in this field is about 
$31,000 a year and there was a 6 % rise in income over the course of last year.

For those with carpenter skills who are tired of the cold and want a year around job, cabinet making may be your answer. Even if you have to go to a college or trade school, you have a heads up with the skilled work that you have already done. A university or technical school also fills a gap in a resume if you have been out of work for a long time. And as with all skills, if you find your calling, you'll find on the job satisfaction and perhaps real success.

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By Jeffrey Ruzicka

Jeffrey Ruzicka is a retired executive of a small company that specializes in industrial water treatment. He lives happily with his wife in Western Pennsylvania and is a contributing writer to Nexxt.
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