Stewart and four designers work in the company’s showroom, located in the Old Custom House just off Route 1, overlooking the Kennebec River. Across town in a 15,000-square-foot shop, 14 highly skilled craftspeople employ traditional woodworking principles such as hand planing and mortise-and-tenon joinery to build cabinets intended to last a lifetime. “Our cabinetmakers come from the fields of furniture making and boatbuilding,” says Stewart. “Our lead cabinetmaker was formerly a wood-worker for the White House.” Now Kennebec Company’s president and sole owner, Stewart was once one of them. He joined the company in 1999 as an entry-level cabinet-maker and later managed the shop, before taking over in a succession plan from cofounder Dave Leonard. “My mother’s family had woodworking mills and lumberyards in western Massachusetts, and I always had an interest in this craft,” Stewart says.

While the craftsmanship in Kennebec Company’s cabinetry is clear in photographs, seeing it in person at the showroom is even more impressive. “It’s the little things that separate us,” says Stewart, indicating a gracefully curved bracket connecting the end of a run of cabinets to a countertop, and the deep-teal painted beadboard on the back inside wall of a dark-stained glass-front cabinet. In a couple of the showroom’s kitchen displays, a small cabinet with a door is built in below where the upper cabinets meet in the corner. “I call that a tea cabinet,” says Stewart. “We like to use up all the space in a kitchen.” Other displays have similarly thoughtful design details: a row of tiny drawers underneath a pair of upper cabinets; a lowered section of countertop for baking, with storage drawers below for bowls and tools; and one of my favorites: a built-in piece at the end of an island that lifts up to reveal containers for trash and recycling.

As important as their design are the materials used in building Kennebec Company’s cabinets. This begins with careful wood selection; only the highest quality hard-woods—including white oak, maple, cherry, and pine—are chosen. Every board is run through a process that takes the tension out of the wood fibers, significantly reducing the chance that it will move over time, Stewart explains. This means the company’s cabinet doors and drawer fronts will remain flat. Hand-planed pine is a popular choice for either painted or stained cabinets. “It’s literally worked by hand; you can feel the texture,” Stewart says, running his hand over the door of a cabinet painted Benjamin Moore’s Boothbay Gray. The hand planing isn’t obvious when looking at the cabinet, but I feel the grain of the wood as I follow his lead. “We take a lot of pride in our finishes. This is our hand-brushed paint, but we’ll also do a spray-painted finish for clients who prefer that,” he says. For hardware, the company contracts primarily with Connecticut-based Horton Brasses. “They make really solid, traditional hardware that always looks good, and the natural brass finish will age beautifully.”