Out of the Wood

November 26, 2013

Jeff Carter, owner and operator of the Westmount Group, a custom furniture shop in West Haven, has a sixth sense. Okay, not really, but Carter says his brain “sees systems and how they work. I can drive over a bridge and see the forces.”

Carter understands how things are put together, and he uses that understanding daily. In the shop, custom cabinets, entertainment centers, chairs, tables, desks and much more are fashioned with precision and care, primarily out of wood, and based on a central plank: achieving optimal function through design.

Carter and his rotating cast of carpenters, engineers and designers care about aesthetics and presentation, too. Design for each project is intensive, as it needs to be to realize a client’s vision. But ultimately, Carter thinks, a chair is for sitting, and a table for placing things atop, and if such furniture is over-designed, too focused on flair, it’ll fail. “All it has to do is function,” he says. “You don’t have to make it so elaborate.”

The first fabrication tutorials he remembers receiving were from his neighbor, Nikki, who made doll furniture for her daughters. Carter, age 12 and already pursuing design projects, would wander next door and ask for help, and Nikki would graciously lend a hand, aiding the crafty kid through his projects, including a custom bed frame.

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Carter grew up in Quebec, splitting his time between Montreal and the Eastern Townships, otherwise known as Quebec’s countryside. One year, while living in Mansonville, a sleepy village in the Potton Township, Carter, now with a bit of woodworking under his belt, called upon another neighbor—not for tips, but for lumber. The neighbor had an old, out-of-use, apparently quite large chicken coop, and Carter asked if he could tear it down and take the wood. From the salvage, Carter made some of his first major structures: a shed, a treehouse and a cliff-side cabin that sits on the same property of the house his mother now lives in—which he also helped build.

Bridgeport was Carter’s first Connecticut stop. He’d gotten a tip in the late eighties from a colleague that the city was in need of all sorts of contractors and builders for HUD homes. The pay was decent, and he was looking for new work, so he packed his bags, thinking it’d be a short-term gig. Almost thirty years later, he’s still around, living in Milford and working out of West Haven.

While working with HUD, Carter hooked up with Bridgeport’s Habitat for Humanity outpost. He loved what they did, and how they did it, and felt he could put his fast-calculating brain to use, as Habitat homes tend to go up quickly via scads of volunteers who need clear, concise, expert guidance. For four-and-a-half years, Carter worked on-staff at Habitat, forming lifelong friendships as well as finding a lifelong mate, his wife Julia. Julia was a volunteer for Habitat at the time, and the two were unwittingly set up by a priest from her church, who would later officiate the wedding.