Tom Leech, owner of custom wood furniture store Boards and Barrels on Holland Road, always loved working with wood in his spare time but it wasn’t until Christmas 2019 that he started taking his hobby seriously. Says Leech, “I made my wife a charcuterie board about three feet long made out of walnut. All my friends and family were loving it, and my wife said, ‘You know what? You need to quit your job and do this full-time.’”
Leech quit his job as a motorcycle mechanic and turned his garage into a showroom and wood workshop, but only a month into his new business venture the pandemic broke out. Says Leech, “It was scary. Here I just started this business and I quit my job to do this full time and then Covid hit and I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, what did I do?’. But to my surprise it actually launched my business because everybody was staying at home and remodelling their homes.”
Leech specializes in custom-made wood furniture, often using wine barrels as a focal point. Says Leech, “People send me pictures, ‘Can you make this?’, and I’ll try and sure enough I can and I have done a lot of custom work that way.”
Leech says the whole process has been a learning experience.
“I had some tools, just hand tools, but then I had to go out and I had to get tools that were necessary to do the job correctly. It was a learning process. (For instance), I had never dealt with barrels before. Of course the first one split open, just exploded right in front of me and fell to the ground. Then I realized I got to drill a hole and then put the screws in that’ll hold it together.”
Leech credits his success to his creative mind. Says Leech, “I could just be in the back of the shop, looking at pieces laying around and all of a sudden I got an idea and I’ll put it together and it works, it sells immediately and I’ll be pretty happy with it.”
Leech says he still can’t quite grasp how successful his business has been. “It’s been crazy busy, I love it and already, what I made last year, I just passed that actually today in income. It’s unbelievable. I wished I had started this whole business 10 years ago.”
