Niece Lumber’s cabinetry division started selling kitchen cabinets in 1980. We started out with 2- 60” displays (oak and hickory) of which were located right inside our front door. Cabinetry manager Bill Schibel, who began his career selling windows and doors, became very interested in learning how to design kitchens. Bill took a couple of design courses and after about a year suggested an expansion in the kitchen department and the decision was made to add on a kitchen showroom in 1984.
Then owner Harry Blair and then General Manager Bruce Currie allowed Bill to make the decisions on everything kitchen related which allowed us to grow at a steady pace. At that point there weren’t may lumber yards selling kitchen cabinets. If they were, they were standard stock sizes, but since we had the reputation for being a high quality lumberyard, Bill wanted to offer “custom ” cabinets. So we did, and for many years we were the only yard around to offer them.
Keeping up with the times, changing displays and continuing to better ourselves has made us a very strong competitor in our market. In 1997 Jill Opdyke joined Niece Lumber as our second designer. Over the years, Val Blair, Tim Graber, Stephanie Conover, Russ Yerkes, and Chris Jastrzebski joined the team. Our kitchen showroom space has nearly tripled over the years and sales hit five million dollars in 2017. Niece Kitchens is regarded as one of the largest single location Starmark Cabinetry dealers in the United States.
