THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 11, 1996 TAG: 9608090198
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA MCNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: 96 lines
When you're building a seven-bathroom home with a kitchen big enough to hold court in and you've designed your own cabinets and woodwork, who are you going to call?
A Virginia Beach woman who was building her dreamhouse in Suffolk called Heritage Woodworks, and she got exactly what she wanted.
``The kitchen probably ended up being the most expensive room in the house,'' Karen Sykes said. The woman, who had been working with an Atlanta designer, ``wanted something different, and she wanted to be able to see what she was getting,'' she said.
For nearly a decade, Sykes and her husband, W.C. Sykes, have been catering to customers searching for something different. And over the years, Karen Sykes said, she has seen the kitchen become increasingly important, ``more of a social place.''
The business started as a hobby. Karen's father was a woodworker, and when she and W.C. got married, her husband got interested in woodworking. At the time, he was shop foreman in a commercial plastics company in Norfolk.
Eventually, W.C. started doing odd jobs in his spare time. Finally, as commuting daily through the Norfolk tunnel became more taxing, working with wood became more enjoyable.
He quit his Norfolk job, and the couple started their cabinetmaking business in a shop behind their home in Chesapeake. As the business grew, they began looking for a larger location, and they wanted to live in the city where they worked.
``We moved our business out here first,'' Karen said. ``Everybody here was so friendly. It took us two years to find land we liked to build a house.''
Heritage Woodworks, now employing 11 skilled cabinetmakers, first moved to Shoulders Hill Road in Northern Suffolk. When that location grew too small, the company moved in the spring of 1995 to their present location on Pruden Boulevard, into the 12,000-square-foot facility that once housed Butler Paper Co.
Using computer design, ``We can build the kitchen for you, and you can see what it looks like,'' she said.
``We build cabinets to fit your house and walls,'' he said. ``This isn't something you have to move a wall to fit into your house.''
Customized cabinet-making, W.C. said, is a dying art. Heritage is one of the largest custom cabinet shops remaining in Hampton Roads.
```It's challenging,'' W.C. said. ``All of my men are cabinetmakers. . . . A cabinetmaker can take a job, lay it out, cut it, put it together, sand it, spray it and install it.''
Plans from Karen's computer go directly into the shop. Many of the tools used in the spacious shop also are linked directly to a computer that provides accurate measurements, exact angles.
The company specializes in solid, one-piece door construction from a high density, man-made fiberboard product that, when finished, looks like wood but has none of the stress points of wood construction that can separate over time.
Despite the appearance and durability of the fiberboard product, however, most people still prefer wood, W.C. said.
The business doesn't come without challenges, like the black lacquered Oriental design built into a Williamsburg home or the cherry wood bar a Suffolk man wanted.
``He wanted a billiard room,'' Karen said, laughing. ``And he wanted it to be something different from anything anybody else had. We had to come up with something totally different, and we had to promise not to ever build it again.''
``And to top it off, once we got the bar built, he couldn't find a pool table to match it, so we ended up building the pool table,'' W.C. said.
W.C. feels the company, which he expects will complete kitchens, baths and woodwork in about 300 new homes this year - all over Hampton Roads, into North Carolina, as far west as Richmond - has a secret to its success.
``We put cabinets in $200,000 homes, and we put cabinets in $50,000 homes,'' he said. ``We know we've got to be able to accommodate everybody's budget, and we're willing to do that.''
And there's another element to the success of Heritage Woodworks, Karen said. She and her husband, both 40, with a daughter 16 and a 2-year-old son, work well together.
``I go to him and say, `You tell me how it will work, and I'll make the computer do it.','' she said. ``He works with the builders and the shop foreman. I guess we're a good team.''
Teamwork, with the entire company involved, worked in the case of the woman with seven bathrooms.
Her simple, original design - that looks something like one picture frame atop another - has been used for cabinets throughout the house. The cabinets have been constructed of hard maple, completed with a natural finish, and they're ready to move in.
``We made up probably 20 samples for her before she was satisfied,'' Karen said. ``Just her center island is 11 feet long and 5 feet wide. She has cabinets to the ceiling. It's been kind of exciting to bring it together.'' MEMO: Linda McNatt writes a regular feature about Suffolk businesses for
The Sun. If you have ideas, please fax them to her at 934-7515, or call
her at 934-7561. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MICHAEL KESTNER
Karen and W.C. Sykes own Heritage Woodworks, which started in a shop
behind their home. by CNB