D. P. Steel Furniture

Our shop is right in the Main Market area, which means it’s always loud and there’s always something happening right outside the door. We work with steel, so you can imagine the noise inside is even louder than the street. We spend our mornings moving heavy sheets of metal around and making sure the welding machines are ready to go. There are piles of pipes in the back and finished almirahs sitting near the front. We get quite a bit of dust on everything, so we have to wipe the furniture down before anyone comes to look at it. My hands are usually a bit black from the metal by noon. We don’t have a fancy office with air conditioning; we just have a small desk tucked in the corner where we keep the bills and a few pens. The floor is concrete and it’s taken a lot of hits from heavy tools over the years. When someone wants a specific size for a cupboard or a rack, we grab the measuring tape and just figure it out right there on the spot. It’s a busy life being in the middle of the market, and sometimes the traffic makes it hard to load the trucks. We just keep working through the heat. Lunch is usually eaten quick while sitting on one of the steel stools we made ourselves. It’s just how things are here in the shop every day.