Albuquerque Joinery

It’s a total hands-on approach to home building for Albuquerque couple Kenny DeLapp and Esther Frederickson.

After building their own adobe home, the pair decided in February 2020 to create their own business. Albuquerque Joinery, LLC, incorporates one of the state’s longtime traditions of creating houses with adobe bricks. 

DeLapp learned the art while working with his uncle, an independent contractor who designs and builds custom furniture, cabinets or fabricated materials for museum exhibits. DeLapp, who also does masonry work, did a lot of the woodworking, creating pieces from scratch. He decided to go on his own to help fuel his creativity and design. DeLapp does architectural design for new builds or comes up with ideas to help solve a client’s problem while incorporating unique aesthetics. 
 
“It’s the idea to combine the two different worlds in adobe construction, which are more masonry and heavy timber, with finer woodworking – that was the vision to be able to create unique woodwork, and have the ability to create something in-house to have that handmade feel,” he said.
 
Using pre-made adobe bricks, DeLapp and his two employees, who have several home building trades, are unconventional in their construction by creating bathroom vanities, cabinets and molding, even doors on-site. So far the couple has completed one house, which took about a year to build, and has small orders well into next year. They will start the next home in 2023.
 
Through a referral by their credit union, the couple found The Loan Fund to request a line of credit, which Frederickson said was absolutely essential to their first project.
 
“We feel so much better equipped for the next house in terms of our tools and employees, but also in our knowledge of our business overhead and the time involved in our particular handmade way of building,” she said.
 
“All we needed was a line of credit and that wasn’t what a traditional bank was going to give us,” DeLapp said.

To learn more about Albuquerque Joinery or to view more photos, go to abqjoinery.com.