Page 37 - BusinessWest July 24, 2023

“It’s nice to know that something
I made with my hands is going to be the object of beauty beauty in someone’s home for a long time.”
me there.”
Indeed, Preli started focusing on finish work, such
as crown molding, fireplace mantles, door frames, doors, and windows. “I did that for many years, along with remodeling and renovating. And then I got into doing furniture, which took more patience and required more solitary-type work.”
Even through the decade he spent making furniture out of a rented shop, he never saw himself in woodturn- ing, a craft that uses a wood lathe and hand-held tools to create symmetrically shaped pieces. “I thought I loved making furniture. But now that I’ve stepped away from it, did I really like doing furniture? I mean, I felt like I did.”
He switched gears, however, after his landlord passed away, and he lost his shop and moved all his tools back home, returning to commercial finish work while he and his wife, Kathryn, decided to start a fam- ily; their son was born in 2019.
“I was still working very hard, but my wife’s a doc- tor. She makes way more than I’ll ever be able to make. So she was going to continue working, and I planned to stay home until the kid was old enough to talk, and then go back to work.”
Then a pandemic struck, and that changed everything.
Crafting a Career
Specifically, it forced Preli to be home even more than he had planned to, and introduced a hobby into his life.
In some ways, he said the isolation many people faced during COVID was a blessing to his own household. “We even got COVID — we got colds and got over it — but it gave me a chance to put
my tools down for the first time ever. This was the first time ever I hadn’t been working. I mean, I dropped out of high school young to work. Now I was home with my boy the whole time. It was wonder- ful. That’s when I picked up woodturning, just as a hobby.”
Showing off the lathe in his basement, Preli noted that “it’s
These are some of the items Michael Preli sold at the recent Suffield Summer Fair.
a specific type of woodworking. The only thing I can do on that machine is round work, and that’s what I got into.”
Soon, the hobby started filling the Prelis’ kitchen with bowls and other items.
“I always undervalue my work, but my wife was like, ‘man, this stuff is coming out great.’
I’d been giving out a lot of stuff, giving gifts to my family. And of course,
Cellar Dweller >> Continued on page 46
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