Albion man turns reclaimed wood into custom-made furniture

By Tom Rivers, Editor Posted 5 April 2013 at 12:00 am

Photo by Tom Rivers – Jeremiah Knight of Albion opened Knight’s Pride, a custom carpentry shop with fine arts, last month at 120 North Main Street. Knight is pictured with a “hall tree,” a bench with hooks to hang coats.

ALBION – Six years ago Jeremiah Knight spotted some cedar in a house that had been demolished. The wood and the pile of debris were headed to a landfill.

But Knight wondered if he could make something from the cedar. He fished the wood from the pile of ruins, took it home and made a toy box. He tried more projects, always using wood that was doomed for either a landfill or a burn pile.

Knight in six years has made cabinets, benches, chests, beds, wine racks, rustic shelves, tables and lots of toy boxes – all from discarded wood, sometimes more than a century old.

“It was all headed to the dump,” he said Thursday about the old wood.

Knight, 31, gave up a good-paying construction job in Rochester to open Knight’s Pride, a custom cabinetry business, on March 20 on 120 North Main St. The site also sells and displays fine arts from local artists. Knight’s mother, Kim Muscarella, runs an art gallery in Albion. Many of her paintings and creations are on display in her son’s shop.

Photo by Tom Rivers – Jeremiah Knight sits on a one of the hall trees he made from reclaimed wood from an Albion home that was knocked down. Knight left a construction job to open his custom cabinetry business on Main Street.

“I’m building a customer base and I know more good things are going to happen,” he said. “I want to be part of the optimism in Albion. I want to support my community.”

Knight doesn’t like to see good material go to waste. He feels the same about gasoline and time. He didn’t like expending those resources in the long drives for his construction job.

He touts the benefits of his business. “Number one, it’s American made,” said the Army veteran. “It’s custom-made, and it’s made from reclaimed materials. It’s becoming highly sought after with the whole green movement.”