Home is Where the Studio Is

Steve Casey is living out his dream 
of being a home studio craftsman.

By Sam Gazdziak

Steve Casey saw what he wanted to do with his life early on in his woodworking career. As a student in the California State Northridge woodworking program in the mid-1970s, he and the other students had the chance to visit the home studios of several local and Northern California craftsmen, including Sam Maloof, Art Carpenter and J.B. Blunk.

“I was nineteen when I saw those craftsmen and what they were doing. I knew then that’s what I wanted to do with my life,” says Casey. “They were studio craftsmen that had built their own shops and filled their homes with their own work. I thought they were living the most incredible unique and creative lifestyle you could choose.”

“Since then my dream and goal has always been to find a place where I could build my studio, live and work at home, have a family, watch my kids grow up.”

Casey, 45, has accomplished exactly what he set out to do. The studio for his business, Casey Design in western Los Angeles County, CA, is only about 70 feet away from his home. He has also made a name for himself by building high-end entertainment centers and furniture pieces in the Los Angeles area. In his free time he is able to persue his other passions of riding sport motorcycles, flyfishing or dirt bike riding with his two sons, Bryce age 13, and Perry age 10.

Casey’s woodworking has continually evolved. He began his career doing wood art sculptures and art furniture. He was building audio and video equipment racks before anyone had conceived of a home theater system, and he got a reputation for specializing in that kind of work. Although he still does custom furniture pieces, the bulk of his work is now home theater cabinetry and entertainment centers. “It could be anything from a tiny corner unit to this monstrous paint-grade unit we’re doing now,” he says.

When Casey and his wife Janet moved into their home, he started designing and building his studio. He made it big enough to fit whatever machinery he would have (2,100 square feet, including an upstairs office) and integrated dust collection into the floor.

One of the benefits of having a large amount of floor space is that Casey was able to set up a large table saw for his shop. He says that most small shops can’t afford the floor space it requires, but he is able to run a 16-foot cut front to back without any interference. He can also cut off a 1/16” off the end of an 8’sheet of plywood. Steve’s shop also has a Davis & Wells stroke sander and a 20-inch band saw and a 16-inch Bridgewood planer. Casey also owns a large collection of hand tools that he and his part-time employee use.

“Wood planes are incredible,” he says. “I have a collection of antiques and modern planes, sharpened and ready for business.”

Casey works with the 32mm system and uses Blum hinges. He says he likes the Blum Inserta hinges for paint-grade pieces, because he can show the painter how to easily remove the doors of a unit and reattach them without messing up any adjustments. He uses Accuride guides on most of his work.

Casey says he can finish a project in an average of four to six weeks, depending on the scale. Building fine furniture tends to take longer, because of the work involved.

“For the same amount of energy and effort it takes to build a ‘routine’ 16-foot unit, I may only be able to build a 4-foot-wide fine piece of furniture,” he says. “If I’m doing that work, it’s because someone has covered the cost to do that kind of quality.”

There are certain considerations in working with entertainment centers that, to Casey, come naturally.

“I’ve listened to audio / video installers complaining over and over again that they go to jobs where the cabinetmakers have failed to provide proper access to the equipment or ventilation, or that they can’t get the TV hooked up to the VCR without drilling a hole in the cabinet themselves,”

Casey says that the aesthetics of a piece are easy to achieve; the difficult part is the mechanics. “Typically in a home theater, there are many crucial things that have to come together. There is the architecture, the clients furniture and personal style, equipment ergonomics, as well as proper sound and viewing dynamics.” he says. “Generally, there’s a fireplace in every room we put a big-screen TV so there’s almost always an issue of how to dedicate two focal points in the room.

One couple called on Casey to build an entertainment center for a house that they had been working on for two years. He was asked to fill a very odd space in the corner of a room. Naturally, there was also a fireplace in the room that had been given a beautiful lacquered finish. They were initially worried about whether Casey’s entertainment center would fit the room’s decor as well as the space.

Casey looked at the odd space and determined that the best way to deal with it was to put the face of the center across it, using the odd space only for background casework. He then finished the entertainment center to match the fireplace. “They were thrilled that they got everything they wanted,” he says. “It matched their fireplace, it hid the wires and mess they were looking at for months, and it finished their house. The client called me after we were finished and left a very nice message about how happy he was with the job.”

Casey’s current project is  a large paint-grade cabinet that is broken down into three pieces.  (Click here to see the project start-to-finish).  Interiors will be done in black melamine to match the black audio and video equipment that will be added when the piece is done. He out sources cabinet doors for paint-grade pieces to a company that uses CNC machinery to make them look like raised-panel doors.

Except for the paint-grade pieces, Casey and his assistant Alex Perez, finish all their projects themselves. When the woodworking is done, the piece is then taken apart, finished and reassembled to make sure nothing was knocked out of alignment. When everything fits, it is taken apart again and brought to the job site. Casey says that he does a lot of designing for breakdown construction, so that the unit can be moved yet looks like one large piece when completed.

Up until recently, the large majority of Casey’s work had come from word of mouth, either from customers or audio/video installers and retailers. He does not do any advertising for his company. “The way I would like my operation to be perceived can’t be advertised. If you advertise you are in the same boat with every other generic cabinet shop out there.” he says.

Casey has been able to find new clients without advertising with his Web site, www.stevecaseydesign.com . His Web site serves as more than just a portfolio of his work — it includes sections for frequently asked questions, instructions about commissioning work and pictures of wood samples, finished and unfinished.

Casey is personally involved in the site and wrote most of the text, so he can present himself exactly as he wants.

“I designed the site to educate potential clients about my work.” he says. “ For the past twenty three years clients have been asking the same questions over and over. To address this I have a frequently asked questions ( FAQ,s) section. I also have a section called Woodworking 101, basic woodworking information that I think every potential client needs to know. There’s a whole section on how to commission work, several picture galleries, and background information on myself and my business.”

Casey says that the original intent for the Web site was to serve as an introduction to potential clients. Before an actual face-to-face meeting, clients could read through the information on the site and then decide if they were interested in having a piece custom-made. “When a new client calls me, I can now direct them to my Web site and have them look at all the important sections. They can then decide if my work is right for them.” Casey says. “That was how I visualized  my site. I had no intention or expectations of getting noticed on the Net, it’s so big and wide open. I’m just a studio craftsman in Southern California, how would I get noticed?”

Quite by accident, Casey has gotten much more visibility than he ever planned. He started by registering his Web site on many popular search engines, like Yahoo! and America Online. The people who work for those engines rated his site high because of all the information the site offered, and it started getting several hundred unique visitors a day.

Casey has gotten several jobs from people who found his Web site. “For the job I’m working on now, the client would not have known about me had he not gone on the Internet. He did a general search, found my site, visited the site and then contacted me.” Casey says. “This customer and job is a mile and a half from my shop!” The commission for another piece of furniture Casey is currently building also came from his Web site; it’s a TV cabinet for his webmaster’s master bedroom. The upper half of the piece will hold a TV, VCR and a pair of speakers. The box that will hold all the equipment will be set on a swivel. On the lower portion, Casey built a pair of pull-out panels. The owners can drape a comforter across them as a place for their cat to stay.

Casey hopes that the Internet will allow him to keep pursuing bigger, better jobs. His other future plans include spending more time working on his house and also working to pass down what he has learned during his career.