For twenty-two years, Daniel Ware has built libraries, mantels, and fitted kitchens by hand in a converted dairy barn outside Rhinebeck. No flat-pack, no veneer shortcuts — solid hardwood, cut joinery, and finishes laid by the same two hands that drew the plan.
- Trade
- Custom carpentry & cabinetry
- Studio
- Rhinebeck, NY
- Credentials
- Licensed & insured · NY #WC-31840
- Standing
- 4.9★ over 130+ commissions
Photograph — A No. 4 smoothing plane reads the figure of quartersawn white oak before a single joint is marked.
Most cabinetry today is assembled. Grainwright pieces are built — drawn at full scale on the shop floor, dry-fit before glue, and finished in oil that deepens for years rather than peeling off in three.
The studio takes on a small number of commissions each year: built-in libraries and window seats, fireplace mantels and surrounds, freestanding furniture, and full kitchens in cherry, walnut, white oak, and reclaimed chestnut. Every job begins with a visit, a sketchbook, and an honest conversation about budget — because the most expensive cabinet is the one you replace.
Built-ins that pretend they were always there
A good built-in disappears into the architecture. Crown that meets the existing plaster line, scribed bases that follow a hundred-year-old floor, shelves sized to the books that will hold them. The library above took eleven weeks — face frames in rift-sawn white oak, hand-cut beaded inset doors, and an adjustable shelving system you will never see the hardware of.
- Library & study built-ins
- Window seats & banquettes
- Mantels, surrounds & paneling
Four movements, one pair of hands
From the first measurement to the last coat of oil, the person who draws your piece is the person who builds it. There is no hand-off, no subcontracted shop, no mystery in the middle.
- 01
The visit
We measure the room, but mostly we listen — how you live, what you store, the light at four o'clock. No deposit, no obligation. You leave with a hand sketch.
- 02
The drawing
Full-scale story sticks and shop drawings. You approve every profile, reveal, and species before a board is bought. Surprises belong in books, not invoices.
- 03
The bench
Stock is milled, let to settle, then cut. Mortise-and-tenon, dovetailed drawers, dry-fit twice. This is the slow part, and the part that lasts.
- 04
The install
Scribed, leveled, and finished on site so it meets your walls — not a showroom's. We clean up after ourselves and walk you through the care of the wood.
“Wood remembers everything. The way it was milled, how it dried, the room it will live in. My only job is to listen before I cut.”
Kitchens you cook in for thirty years
A Grainwright kitchen is furniture that happens to hold your plates. Solid doors that won't sag, drawer boxes dovetailed in maple, soft-close hardware hidden behind hand-fitted faces. We build to the room and to the way you actually move through it — the trash by the sink, the spice pull where your hand already reaches.
- Full bespoke kitchens & islands
- Pantries & freestanding larders
- Vanities, wardrobes & dressing rooms
A barn's chestnut, returned as a wall of books
The clients had taken down a failing 1840s barn and couldn't bear to send the timber to a dump. We milled the salvaged American chestnut — a wood you essentially cannot buy anymore — and made it the heart of a two-story library: twenty-one feet of shelving, a rolling ladder on a blackened-steel rail, and a reading nook wrapped in the same boards that once kept the rain off cattle.
Nail holes and old saw marks were kept on purpose, then sealed under hand-rubbed oil so the history reads but the surface stays clean. Fourteen weeks in the shop, nine days on site. The blemish you notice first is the one they wanted to keep.
- Material
- Reclaimed American chestnut
- Scope
- Two-story built-in library + ladder
- Time
- 14 weeks shop · 9 days install
- Finish
- Hand-rubbed hardwax oil
What the rooms sound like, years later
Daniel drew our kitchen on the back of an envelope at the table, and somehow that sketch is exactly what we live in now. Five years on, not a hinge has shifted.
He talked us out of the expensive thing twice. You don't forget a craftsman who protects your budget. The mantel is the first thing every guest touches.
We thought reclaiming the barn wood was sentimental nonsense. The library he built from it is the reason we'll never sell this house.
Tell us about the room.
The studio books a year in two seasons. The visit and sketch are free; we take a handful of commissions at a time so each gets the bench it deserves. Start with a sentence — we'll take it from there.