For the past two decades, Giffin & Crane has maintained a steady working relationship with one of Santa Barbara’s finest cabinetmakers. Starbuck Minikin, headed up by Charlie Starbuck (pictured), specializes in custom, one-of-a-kind projects.
“I like building something nobody’s ever done before,” Starbuck said. To achieve that, especially for the region’s high-end market and its discerning clientele, Starbuck draws from 40 years of experience. “I bought the shop from Bill Minikin in 1978,” he says. “That’s when my career in cabinetry began. I trained for five years with Bill’s partner, Wes Butler.”
Before that, after earning an advanced degree from the University of Colorado, Starbuck worked as an accountant in San Francisco, a job that provided considerable monetary compensation but not much else, he said. So the Santa Barbara native moved back home to revisit the creative impulses from his younger years, namely woodworking skills he picked up at Laguna Blanca School under the guidance of shop teacher Charles Chester Cash, a retired carpenter.