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Ottawa Citizen

For the home: Cabinet-maker's success has been years in the making

Article content Caroline Castrucci's phone buzzes and pings incessantly as she tries to show off the sparkling new showroom her company – multi-award-winning Laurysen Kitchens – has just opened after spending more than 50 years at its original Carp Road location. Article content It's a sign of the frenetic activity that has followed the vivacious designer and daughter of company founder John Laurysen as she and the team have worked to get both the showroom opened and an expanded production factory built amid construction delays and circumstances that have repeatedly hampered the move. Article content Article content Article content Article content 'It just seemed that at every turn there was something,' Castrucci says. Article content The new showroom on Colonnade Road opened May 2, about a year later than she first thought and with some finishing details still a month or two away from completion. The factory in Carleton Place, meanwhile, began expansion in 2022 to accommodate the Carp Road factory equipment and then some, jumping from 23,000 to 110,000 square feet, about 87,000 of which will be for production with the rest for offices and another showroom. It's also about a year behind schedule and now expected to be complete by the end of this year. Article content It's fitting, perhaps, that such change is happening as Laurysen celebrates the milestone of its 55 th anniversary, although that was not the intention. The move has been years in the making. Article content Article content Laurysen at 55 Article content The business was born of necessity. Founder John Laurysen, who had picked up cabinet making skills in the Dutch army, emigrated from The Netherlands in 1960 and initially found work for local kitchen companies. When he was let go on his birthday in 1970 and with a family to support, a couple of customers followed, saying they had signed a contract with him, therefore he needed to be the one making their cabinets, Castrucci says. Article content Article content Article content Two years later, the business relocated to Carp Road and built a 10,000-square-foot factory while the family and a small office found a home in the house on the property. Article content Castrucci and her brother Bill Laurysen spent summers as children — 'younger than what's allowed now,' she says — helping out and gradually learning the business, which they now run (she's CEO and he's COO), along with Bill's sons Corey and Michael Laurysen. Article content