Specialty store for wood crafters opens

If you’ve been waiting for that special piece of Bolivian rosewood for your home project, you’re in luck.

Woodcraft, a national woodworking specialty store, just opened in Spokane Valley, and it’s a carpenter’s paradise.

“It’s a woodworker’s candy store,” said co-owner Nick Charles. He and his wife Rosemary have been quickly working on opening the store, and even though there’s still scaffolding up outside, the store is ready for business.

“We’ve been on a six-week blitz, getting this ready to open,” he said.

Clean aisles highlight a wide selection of custom woodworking tools, many with special purposes and some so unique they can’t be found anywhere else in Spokane, Charles said.

The store keeps an expansive selection of chisels, as well as a library of woodworking books that can be purchased. In the back, racks hold dozens of varieties of rare and hard-to-find hardwoods.

“The area has been hungry for this type of store,” Charles said.

The shop offers classes which teach different woodworking skills and techniques, Charles said. Once a year, Woodcraft stores around the country hold a “Freedom Pen” event, where people create wooden pens that are sent to troops overseas.

The store is perfect for the woodworking enthusiast who wants to shop from a single place, instead of traveling around town, he said.

“It’s a tremendous art form,” Charles said. “It is amazing to see people turn a raw piece of nature into a family heirloom.”

The store is near the Fred Meyer store at Sprague and Sullivan in Spokane Valley at 212 N. Sullivan Road.

Part of rental payments applies to home purchase

Realtors often tell renters that it makes more sense to buy a house than to rent one.

A plan offered by Greenstone Corp. is designed to help renters reach that goal.

The development company will allow $100 from each month’s rent at any of its three apartment buildings to go toward the purchase of one of their homes.

“It’s a pretty cool program,” said Lisa Newsom, manager of the Big Trout Lodge in Liberty Lake.

The plan allows a renter to have a maximum of $2,400 from rent payments to go toward a Greenstone home. The person must live in one of the three Greenstone apartment communities – the Big Trout Lodge, the Adirondack Lodge in Spokane or the Rockwood Lodge in Coeur d’Alene.

The plan only provides credit for a maximum of two years.

The resident pays a one-time $25 fee to sign up. If the resident decides not to move into a Greenstone home, he or she doesn’t have to pay back the money, Newsome said.

“The commitment is what we’re looking for,” Newsom said.

From 40 to 60 people have signed up at the Big Trout Lodge in the past few months alone, Newsom said.