Roots Run Deep

Established in 1972, RS Kitchen & Bath, a.k.a. Raymond Smith Cabinets, in Grantville, Ga., is a time-honored custom woodworking shop that offers top-notch cabinetry and furniture to residential clients. Nestled in a quiet rural setting just south of busy downtown Atlanta, the well-equipped shop is quite large at 35,000 sq. ft. and has an average of eight to 10 employees ready to tackle the most challenging and unique projects.

Owner Neal Smith, who fills the shoes of his late father Raymond Smith (2024), can be found there any day of the week, wearing his signature overalls, ready to help clients and staff. Lately, he’s been on his toes with a hefty backlog. 

“Sales are up tremendously, last year and this year. This year is better than last year. We’re backed up more than I’ve ever seen in my 45 years here. It’s amazing,” says Smith.

For over five decades, the shop has worked on thousands of cabinetry projects ranging from starter to high-end homes. With jobs sourced through builders and homeowners, the company offers design services, custom and semi-custom cabinetry, refacing, accessories, installation, and more. 

A family-owned operation, Smith’s wife Cassie handles the books and son Brian Neal (Junior) runs the projects.

Raymond Smith was born and raised in nearby Henry County, where he started a cabinet shop out of his garage following a forklift accident on a previous job.

“It was a long recovery,” says his son. “He was told he’d never walk again after he got both legs run over. He spent a long time in the hospital and rebroke his legs afterwards in a fall. I had just been born, and he needed to do something.” 

Raymond was self-taught and very proficient at acquiring jobs.

“He just had a knack for woodworking. He was from a family of farmers. He built a building behind the garage less than five years after he got started and that just kept getting bigger and bigger. He started out with one employee, and kept adding from there,” says Smith.

The shop found plenty of work within a 60-mile radius. The initial clientele was ideal. 

“Early on, dad got a lot of work in Peachtree City, and that essentially started out as a home for a lot of Delta pilots. So, to this day, a good 70 percent of our business is in that area. In the state of Georgia, Peachtree City has always been in the top 10 cities with highest median household income.” 

Jobs were generally for newly constructed homes, and included full kitchens, baths, laundry rooms and other areas. 

In 1979, Neal started helping with odds and ends at the age of 10, and gradually learned to build drawer boxes, then cabinets.

“What got me kind of hooked on it was Mama always made us go to church every Sunday. To me, that was very boring. Daddy stayed home and worked in the shop. I begged and begged and begged, and one Sunday, they let me stay home,” says Smith. 

The family also focused on racing mud dragsters as a side hobby, which entertained Smith and his two brothers throughout their adolescent years.

“That was a big interest to all us boys and dad.  The cabinet shop sponsored our first race car. We worked our way up through the lower classes, got up to the professional class, and did that about 15 years.”

After high school, Smith attended Georgia Tech Community College in Americus, Ga., where he majored in diesel technology to learn how to build engines and service the family’s race cars. At age 19, he started working full-time at the cabinet shop.

By 1989, the same year Smith married Cassie, his dad appointed him shop manager. 

“He wanted to semi retire. He’d been diagnosed with emphysema and wanted to slow down, so I’ve been essentially running it for him since ‘89,” says Smith. 

That same year, the father and son built their new building in a field across the street with more space and better equipment layout. There were eight employees when they moved.  

“The most we’ve ever had is 22 employees,” says Smith. “Most of the time we stay between 10 and 12.”

By the early 2000s, the Smiths began offering semi-custom cabinets. They had started getting into higher-end homes and wanted a quality product for medium- and lower-income customers. They saw a significant return on that investment when the Great Recession hit in 2008. 

“The only homes being built after that were $400,000 and down. We were used to the $600,000 and up, which kind of went away for a while. 

“We had to come up with something. We had to make a decision. It was either cheapen our product or carry someone else’s semi-custom, and I didn’t want to compromise what we were making,” says Smith. “We added our touch and we only sell semi-custom that we assemble now.”

Prior to 2008, about 90 of work was always new construction. Then, Smith says it was like someone flipped a switch and 90 percent of the work was remodels.

The shop does occasional commercial office projects. “Dad did a fair amount of commercial when he started in ’72. Somehow, he got into doing a lot of Dairy Queens in Atlanta, in combination with the pilots in Peachtree City.”

Cabinet sales are about 70 percent custom, 30 percent semi-custom. The shop has a backlog of 20 to 22 weeks.

“It means I get fussed at from the customer a lot for being behind, but it’s a lot better than looking for work. So, we’ll take it,” says Smith.

A current dilemma is finding low-skilled labor for tasks like sanding, sweeping and toting cabinets.

“The low-skilled guys used to be abundantly available. In the last two years, it’s kind of reversed. I’m good with high-skilled guys, but low-skilled guys I’m having a hard time keeping and finding them, which is odd, so it slows things up a lot. I have to take my high-skilled guys and have them do low-skilled stuff. It really starts slowing us down a whole lot.”

Smith rarely works in the shop nowadays. He spends most of his time meeting with clients, estimating and designing with Cabinet Vision software.

“I got into using design software because I was having more meetings with customers and they wanted to see something in 3D, so I had to come up with something instead of just hand drawings.”

Smith continues to explore ways to enhance company offerings, such as through his metal fabrication shop.

“While we were in the racing, I got into metal fabrication and built a lot of roll chassis. After we quit racing, I still wanted to work with metal and decided to integrate that into the cabinet side of things. I make panel inserts for cabinet doors. It’s worked out well, and we’ve started selling them nationwide.”

Neal Smith Designs, the metal shop, offers 130 customizable designs.

Smith is elated to continue working in the same market in which his dad got started and sees a prosperous future for the company.

“Peachtree City has gotten built out, but the cool thing about it is everything that was built 40 years ago. It’s time to get remodeled, so we’re getting to do a lot of the same houses we worked in. 

“A couple years ago I took out a set of cabinets that dad installed in ’72. We don’t take them out a lot. This customer just asked us, and she didn’t have any idea Daddy did them originally. I put them in his old shop for fabrication. He couldn’t get around well before he passed, but I got to show him, and he said they looked like the day he put them in. That was a special moment.” 

Learn more at raymondsmithscabinets.com. 

Originally published in the December 2025 issue of Woodshop News.