Local Woodworkers Team Up To Create Items For Charities

For more than a decade, Larry O’Toole of Hampton Bays has been constructing all sorts of things out of wood and donating the pieces to charity.

With the help of Keith Dutcher of Deerfield Millwork in Water Mill, who provides him with wood scraps free of charge, Mr. O’Toole has designed birdhouses, hand-painted nameplates, and even office furniture.

What started as just a thoughtful project for his daughter’s students each Christmas morphed into a passion to use his craft to help others.

In 2010, Mr. O’Toole, who owns Hampton Bays Maintenance Inc., started to make custom estate birdhouses, which he would sell, then donate that money to Bideawee in Westhampton—ultimately raising more than $5,000 for the animal rescue organization. He did the same thing for the Southampton Animal Shelter Foundation in 2014, this time raising more than $4,000.

In that same year he also constructed furniture for the office of Hemlock Park Elementary Principal Dr. Christopher Dalley in the Brentwood School District, and for his own daughter, Jennifer O’Shea, who teaches fourth grade at the school. Making nameplates for each of her students had been his first charitable undertaking, and he still makes them every year.

As he held up a glazed wooden nameplate outside Deerfield Millwork last week, Mr. O’Toole explained that he simply mills the donated wood, which flattens and squares it, and then paints on the names of the children. “And then this will become the sign for Destiny,” he said, referring to the plate he held, on which the name was painted in light green.

Mr. O’Toole recently built another of what he calls his estate birdhouses, and he is in the process of creating some more. The pieces cost between $800 and $1,000, depending on how large they are, and can house as many as 24 birds the size of sparrows. He said he’s happy to sell them as long as the check is written out to a local animal rescue organization or shelter.

All of the wood Mr. O’Toole uses comes from a large container of wood scraps that Mr. Dutcher leaves outside the workshop for Deerfield Millwork. Mr. O’Toole said that without Mr. Dutcher’s help, it would be far more difficult to do what he does. “Without this, I’ve got to, you know, buy all this stuff. And then it gets expensive after a while,” he said.

“He’s really a nice guy, to donate all this,” Mr. O’Toole said of Mr. Dutcher as the two stood outside the workshop. “He’s one of the reasons I’m able to do this for charity.”

Mr. Dutcher said he allows Mr. O’Toole, and others, to use the leftover wood from cutom-made doors and cabinets simply because he wants to help people.

“As you find out, more people are in need around here than you know,” said Mr. Dutcher. “So, besides Larry doing his beautiful things for charity, some of these people actually heat with this stuff.

“Sad to say, but it’s true,” he continued. “It’s absolutely true.”

Those interested in purchasing a birdhouse can reach Mr. O’Toole at (631) 603-8924.