Building momentum in the Rockies

Inside a busy shop in the foothills of Colorado's Rocky Mountains, the team at 4 Chicks Furniture and Cabinets moves steadily between cabinetry and furniture projects. One day may involve producing components for a custom kitchen, while the next centers on assembling a handcrafted dining table or built-in bar for a mountain home.

That range has become a defining feature of the operation. By combining cabinetry and furniture under one roof, owner and founder Carrie Nelson has built a shop in Conifer that can flex between production-style cabinet runs and highly customized one-off pieces.

"We're a combination shop, which I love so things don't get boring," Nelson says. "We'll make furniture and we'll make cabinets. That means doing kitchens and closets and entire houses of cabinets, but also on the furniture end we can do tables, Murphy beds, nightstands — all kinds of different furniture pieces which is really fun. It breaks up the monotony."

The company name often draws attention from first-time clients. It reflects Nelson and her three daughters, who became both inspiration and motivation during a difficult personal transition that led to the business's formation.

Today, the operation includes Nelson, two full-time employees — Colin Jones and Andy Marrone, dubbed "the roosters" — and part-time helper Susan Everet, working out of a 2,800-sq.-ft. shop outfitted with modern equipment. But the company began far more modestly, operating with limited tools and a growing need to rebuild both household essentials and financial stability.

Originally from the Midwest, Nelson grew up outside Chicago helping her father maintain the family's 200-year-old farmhouse. That early exposure to repairs, remodeling and problem-solving shaped her comfort with tools long before woodworking became a profession.

As an adult, she continued taking on hands-on projects, including home renovations and building playsets for her children. In 2006, the family relocated to Colorado due to her then-husband's job transfer. A few years later, following a divorce, Nelson found herself rebuilding both her household and her sense of direction.

"I got divorced and he left with half the furniture. That's what happens in divorce," says Nelson, whose daughters were 14, 12 and 6 at the time. "My three daughters and I stayed here in Colorado, and he went back to the Midwest. So, I was building furniture to replace the things I needed.

"It was pretty cathartic. I had a history just growing up knowing how to do that sort of thing. I started working on a mudroom setup for the entryway — a cubby unit on the wall and a cubby unit on the floor with a bench on it. While I was working in the basement, I said if anybody wants to buy anything that I make, we should just call it 4 Chicks Furniture, because that's what we are now."

What began as necessity quickly turned into informal production. Friends began requesting pieces, then referrals followed. By the time Nelson formalized the business around 2014, she had a growing customer base built largely through word-of-mouth and early online exposure.

"I decided to see what would happen if I put all my eggs in one basket with the furniture. I was just working out of my garage and jumped all in," Nelson says. "It was scary, but word of mouth spread. It wasn't just traditional cabinets or kitchen cabinets — more casework with mudrooms, cubbies, things like bookshelves and lots of tables. Then I got a project for a client who found my website. They were in the middle of a remodel and needed five different pieces."

Early production relied on a minimal toolset, including a DeWalt compound miter saw and her grandfather's GE belt-drive table saw.

Before transitioning fully into woodworking, Nelson spent about seven years in hospitality management as a food service director. While unrelated to woodworking, she says the experience provided critical business fundamentals.

"The one thing I'm really thankful for now is that it taught me how to run a business, and I kept those skills."

Those skills proved essential as she navigated scheduling, customer communication, budgeting,and employee management in a growing custom shop.

Today, 4 Chicks primarily serves the Denver metro area and surrounding mountain communities, including Thornton, Aurora and Westcliffe, with occasional projects extending into neighboring states such as Kansas. About 90 percent of work is residential, though the company takes on commercial projects when they align with production capacity.

"When we have some of the big projects, it's about 50-50. It ebbs and flows," Nelson says. "We're working on a project with a local bar right now doing a combination of furniture and bar cabinets."

Operating in Colorado's mountain regions has shaped material preferences and design expectations. Nelson notes that alder remains the dominant species requested by homeowners looking to match existing architecture.

"The prevalent thing that we see here is alder — alder cabinets, alder trim, and even more so in the mountain area," Nelson says. "We're matching that for clients, because they'll move into a home and want something matched. We're also seeing other people who are tired of the wood look and are going to either painted cabinets or a laminate product, a tactile surface veneer. But when you look at the wood portion, we see a lot of knotty alder and clear alder."

Staying current with both aesthetic and manufacturing trends has become part of the company's long-term strategy.

"It's very important to stay up with manufacturing techniques and learn how to do things better," Nelson says. "While I came from a background of knowing how to use equipment and having been taught by my dad and my grandfather, there's still a pretty steep learning curve in how you make a good cabinet. There's continuous learning that has to happen."

As demand increased, so did the complexity of managing both production and business operations. One of Nelson's biggest challenges has been stepping away from the shop floor to focus on estimating and client development.

"We've been consistently busy throughout all the years I've been in business. What I see as the bottleneck is actually what I'm doing in the business," Nelson says. "If I'm spending all my time in the shop, which I love to do because I love that hands-on work, I'm not getting out my estimates or my revisions, drawings to clients, and then we're waiting for a contract because I've been in the shop."

Delegation has become essential. "If I've got everybody in the shop and we're all humming, then I'm able to spend 80 percent of my time networking, working on estimates, working on drawings, getting revisions, talking to contractors," Nelson says.

Hiring remains an ongoing challenge, but Nelson emphasizes training over experience.

"When you get good people, you treat them well and be sure you can keep them on board," she says. "We're not afraid to have people come in who don't have any skills. When I started out, I had people work for me who didn't have much skill, but skills are transferable. It's about teaching them how to safely use the machinery and how we do our processes."

Equipment upgrades have transformed production capabilities. What began with basic machinery has evolved into a CNC-driven workflow.

"I never dreamed we'd have a CNC machine or an automated edge bander. But our needs increased, and as time goes on, I have less tolerance for inaccuracies in machinery," Nelson says. "We upgraded table saws and now we have a Biesse CNC machine and a Cantek edge bander."

The shift has improved efficiency but created space constraints, particularly during large residential projects requiring staging and storage.

Nelson's long-term goal is continuing growth toward $1 million in annual sales, though she acknowledges that physical space is becoming a limiting factor.

"What I see right now is our shop is not big enough to do that," she says.

Despite constraints, she remains focused on problem-solving and incremental expansion.

"We say woodworking is just a problem-solving industry," Nelson says.

From basement beginnings to a fully equipped custom shop, 4 Chicks Furniture and Cabinets has grown through necessity, adaptation and persistence — qualities that continue to define its next chapter.

Learn more at 4chicksfurniture.com.

Originally published in the July 2026 issue of Woodshop News.