“For me, good design is function before form. My wife Gina weighs more on the form side. To her, it's going to change the feeling of a home, regardless of how it looks or how functional it is. The way it looks is going to have an effect too. It's been really cool to design together and balance out those two things. Good design is something that is pleasing to use in a certain way but also pleasing to look at.”

John Geating

Founder / Millworker at Leeward Furniture

Interview Date: March, 2020

Photo Credit: @knavarrophoto

Editor: Ryan Kane

“I didn't really plan on going into this industry. It wasn't a part of my dreams growing up. And I didn't go to school for it. I simply had a slight interest in it, got a job at a shop, and I haven't done anything else since.

I decided to try out woodworking when I was working as a property manager/TA. This was at a small study abroad school in New Zealand right after college. While I was there, I became really good friends with a sheep farmer in a town (as you do in New Zealand). He was an older man who did everything himself. He had a little woodshop. There we would make little random things. He taught me how to weld on the back of his truck in the middle of the woods. I started to appreciate making and building things out of wood in that way.

When I came back to the US, I got a minimum-wage job at this cabinet shop. And the foreman there is still one of my favorite people ever. He got me to really fall in love with the whole idea of woodworking.”

John Geating

Founder / Millworker at Leeward Furniture

Interview Date: March, 2020

Photo Credit: @knavarrophoto

Editor: Ryan Kane

“I’m John Geating. My wife Gina and I run a furniture company. We started it about two years ago, right after our daughter was born.

I've worked in the cabinetry and furniture industry for close to 10 years now in four different shops. I just love building things [mostly] out of wood, so this work has been basically an excuse to do that for a long time. I have learned from so many different woodworkers that I’ve worked under over the years.

Once we had our daughter, my wife and I felt that it was time to try and do it ourselves. There were methods of how I wanted to work that I wasn't able to do with other people. There were things that I wanted to build that either I didn't have the time to do on the side, or they were bigger projects that I could not do by myself. I needed to have my own company so that other people would pay me to build for them.

John Geating

Founder / Millworker at Leeward Furniture

Interview Date: March, 2020

Photo Credit: @knavarrophoto

Editor: Ryan Kane