My first real inkling of an interest in hands on woodworking came when I was about 22 yrs. old. I was working  for my father and we were remodeling a bookstore in Hollywood, California. Part of the new design was to build  a new stairway to a landing in the middle of the store. On each side of the stairway we framed at various points,  openings. The side walls of the stairway were then covered with bendable plywood. After they were covered, we  took a router https://amzn.to/4cbE9Pz with a ball bearing flush cutting bit https://amzn.to/3vdbmJH and routed  out the opening to the exact size we had framed. This whole process really intrigued me. When the job was fin ished, I went out and bought my first tool, a plunge router. Boy did I have fun with that router. I made all kinds  of small wall hanging plaques with routed rails and spindles to display plants or any other item you wanted to  show off. 

I then decided I wanted to tackle something a little more challenging, a bookcase with doors on the bottom. I  built it out of pine, and then put a face frame on the upper part of the bookcase. I scalloped the edge of the face  frame with a sabre saw https://amzn.to/43mkVTb and then routed the edge with a round over router bit https://amzn.to/4cjx3sk . When it came to the doors I decided to let my imagination run wild. I made a pine frame, then  routed the backside to accept a piece of 1/4” oak plywood. I then cut numerous pieces of 3/4” oak to 1/4” thick. I  then attached those 1/4” pieces at a 45 degree angle to the door frame on top of the 1/4” oak plywood. After that  I ran more 1/4” strips of oak in the opposite 45 degree angle on top of the other oak strips, creating a kind of a  lattice work. I finished the whole bookcase in Danish oil https://amzn.to/4clF9Rh applied with wet/dry 600 grit  sandpaper https://amzn.to/3TjJOKD . I was so proud of that bookcase, and it resided in our master bedroom for  several years before our tastes moved on.