Woodworking has always been fun, even during the twenty-five-plus years I spent building hundreds of cabinets and furniture pieces for customers. It was always a learning experience, and I developed many simplified methods I still use in my home shop long after I retired from woodworking. I also enjoyed writing about my business, but now I’ve decided to write about how I build projects in a small home shop using consumer brand tools instead of the trade tools I sold as part of my commercial shop.

If you own consumer-level tools, you may be hesitant to try building cabinets and furniture, but my book Woodworking Simplified Book 1 shows you how to create attractive and functional wood projects for your home or office using consumer tools.

I’ve always enjoyed learning woodworking techniques, but my top priority was making my work simpler and faster. If you want to jump in quickly after learning some basic skills and start building attractive and functional projects for your home or for family and friends, Woodworking Simplified is for you. In this first book of the series, there are six attractive and functional projects you can build using consumer brand tools you may already have. For each project, there are photos, concise instructions, materials lists, drawings, and even exploded views to help with assembly. And future books in the series include a dozen more projects for home or office and much more.

Over the years I learned many traditional methods and used them on some projects. Still, as a one-person business time was critical and as my business grew I simplified my methods, consistently maintaining high quality. The main objective of my simplified methods is to make building cabinets and furniture easier, faster, and safer. This doesn’t mean you stop honing your woodworking skills but to me, the most important thing is to get a quality wood project completed. Your skills will improve as you build more projects, as is always the case with practice.

Woodworking Simplified guides you through building six projects using low-cost, consumer-level power tools available at home improvement and department stores. I built every project in this book using these tools―and so can you. I share all the methods I learned in complete detail and also specific projects including photos, concise instructions, a materials list, drawings, and even exploded views. Everything you need to build the project yourself even with inexpensive, consumer brand tools.