The mission of Cairn Carpentry, LLC is to provide the highest quality of craftsmanship while developing long-lasting relationships with its clients. We strive to fulfill your building needs by simplifying the building process, maintaining clear lines of communication, and providing direction to bring your vision to life.
While his formal education is in Technical Theatre Design and English, Todd Townsend has been a carpenter in some capacity for most of his life, and has committed himself to developing his craft through many different outlets. While in college he learned to design and build theater sets which is where he first developed skills with power tools and simple electrical wiring. In the summers, he worked as an apprentice doing small renovations, which gave him the necessary skills to complete most carpentry projects. By the time he joined Johnsbrook Design in Colorado in 2004, he was a fully trained carpenter’s helper and cut man, and had learned to read drawings and blueprints. While working in Colorado he attended the Art Institute of Colorado where he studied Photography/Design and learned simple CAD skills and became proficient in SketchUp and 3D rendering.
Upon returning to the east coast in 2007 he took a job as the Lead Exhibits Designer and Installer at the Shelburne Museum, where he first fell in love with old buildings and the sentimentality of historical restoration. After five years at the museum, Todd moved on to be the Lead Carpenter for Resourceful Renovator, a company based in Richmond that specializes in resourcing materials from old buildings into new builds and historical renovations. Over the course of four years with Resourceful Renovator, he found his true calling as a manager of small projects and lead on major renovations. He learned about the estimating and budgeting processes and began to take the reins on planning projects from start to finish, all while managing a crew of carpenters.
With over 15 years of carpentry experience under his belt, Todd set out in the Fall of 2017 to form Cairn Carpentry, LLC and take control of the entire process from start to finish. In 2020, during the height of the pandemic, Todd returned home to Keene, NY to plant roots in the Adirondack Mountains. He is ready to put his unique skill set to work on your building project and looks forward to developing a long lasting relationship with each and every one of his clients.
In the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York hikers use piles of rocks called cairns to signify where the trail goes. These piles of stone are only necessary above the high alpine tree line, where the trail can no longer be seen and nothing but granite lies ahead. The beautifully crafted cairns are placed strategically to guide the hikers to the summit and give them direction in what can often be treacherous hiking conditions. While cairns are used all over the world as trail markers, they have historically had many purposes, including grave stones and monuments to the gods. They can be found as pieces of art stacked high on the beaches of the Pacific, and as religious relics in the depths of the Arctic. The Dutch have anthropomorphized the piles of stone and refer to them as Steenman - “The Stone Man”. In Finland, they are painted white and used as markers in the waterways to lead ships into harbor. The one thing that nearly all these uses have in common is the simple principle of giving direction and guidance. Cairns show the way. They show the way to the tops of mountains. They show the way to your buried loved ones. They show the way through harsh weather. And they show the way when all hope is lost. Cairn Carpentry is committed to living this philosophy in everything we do, giving your building project the direction it needs to be everything you dreamed it could be.