Peter Huizenga Had 250 Records and Nowhere to Store Them

If necessity is indeed the mother of invention, here’s the birth story of Sidetracked Workshop in Southeast Portland: Peter Huizenga had 250 records and nowhere to store them.

This was several years ago, and Huizenga’s parents had just gifted him their entire vinyl collection out of the basement of his childhood home in Vermont.

Huizenga saw it as a fun design challenge. By day, he was working for a company building high-end camper vans for millionaires. By night, he was using those design and woodworking skills to make his own cabinet for this new-to-him record collection. He built speakers into the cabinet, measured out a spot for the turntable, and built enough cabinet space to house the records—Steely Dan, Talking Heads and Cat Stevens among them.

“I really enjoyed that project,” Huizenga says. “It’s an interesting design space, an interesting niche.”

He did some market research and found other companies in the record-storage furniture space, but not so many as to suggest that the market was flooded with competition. In April 2024, Huizenga took the leap into entrepreneurship and launched Sidetracked Workshop, a Southeast Portland company that makes one thing: wooden vinyl record storage cabinets.

Today, Huizenga oversees six full-time employees. Sidetracked sells about 150 cabinets every month and ships them free, fully assembled to customers in the lower 48 states. Portlanders are extra lucky: Sidetracked Workshop has a showroom in the Urbanite space where we can peruse the line in person.

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Prices range from $475 for a 15-inch-wide “Sidekick” model to $2,250 for the “Showstopper” cabinet, which has space for 240 records. Most of the models have crate-style storage that shows the whole album cover rather than just the spines. Customers can flip through their collections in a way that feels like shopping at a record store.

Huizenga’s design veers hard into the popular midcentury modern aesthetic, with its circular side cutouts and brass hardware finishes. This makes sense, given the already retro nature of a vinyl collection.

“A free perk of this business is, I get to borrow from the coolness of music and vinyl for my brand,” Huizenga says.

Huizenga moved to Portland from Norwich, Vt., almost a decade ago to attend Lewis & Clark College, where he studied computer science and mathematics. Upon graduation, he quickly realized he didn’t want to sit at a desk all day. So he found his way to building—first a tiny home on wheels and then camper vans. In his spare time, he enjoys snowboarding, gardening and hanging out with his dog, Appa, a fluffy Newfoundland who can often be found napping on the floor of the Sidetracked office.

On a chilly January morning about three weeks after Christmas, Sidetracked Workshop is still digging out of its holiday order madness. The team has about 300 cabinets in its work queue, so the workshop is humming with activity. Two employees are sanding, two are assembling. One is making “pocket holes” in the wood for sturdiness and so the screws stay hidden. Another is applying finish with a cloth, the raw walnut turning from pale gray into the rich brown that will go out to the customer.

The cabinets are made with plywood from a mill in Eugene, then covered with hardwood veneers—either walnut or white oak, though the walnut outsells oak by a ratio of 10 to 1.

The workshop is located in an industrial building across Southeast Milwaukie Avenue from the Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge. Not even two years in, Huizenga says the company is outgrowing its space. Sidetracked just leased yet another room in the building that Huizenga would like to use to store inventory (once they catch up from holiday orders).

The whole Sidetracked collection is designed to be modular, meaning that the pieces all work together and can be rearranged and combined as one’s record collection grows.

“What’s really fun about this is, we build something for people’s hobbies, so our customers are so lovely and excited and send me the greatest emails,” Huizenga says. “That’s a fun kick that I don’t think we’d get if we were making coat racks.”

Find Huizenga’s work: sidetrackedworkshop.com | @sidetrackedworkshop

Make It: Furniture

Woodworking

If you want to try making your own furniture, the Guild of Oregon Woodworkers (7634 SW 34th Ave., guildoforegonwoodworkers.org) offers a variety of classes—as well as open shop hours for members. Here’s how it works: The organization is a closed guild with a limited number of spots, but opens to new members at the beginning of each month. If you apply and get accepted, you’ll need to pay $88 for annual dues (for nonprofessionals) and pay for certain safety certifications (prices vary depending on what parts of the shop you want access to, but start at $40). Once that’s out of your way, you can access tools, shop time at the organization’s Multnomah Village facility, and classes (both project- and skill-based, some lasting half a day, others stretching for five sessions)—as well as the camaraderie of team activities, community service projects (including toy making), and more.

Supplies

To get going on a woodworking project—or invest in some tools—check out woodworking-specific stores like WoodCrafters (212 NE 6th Ave., 503-231-0226, woodcrafters.us; 7 am–5 pm Monday–Friday, 9 am–5 pm Saturday) and Rockler Hardware (11773 SW Beaverton Hillsdale Highway, Beaverton, 503-672-7266, rockler.com; 9 am–5 pm Tuesday–Saturday) for both wood and tools. Crosscut Hardwoods (3065 NW Front Ave., 503-224-9663, crosscutportland.com; 8 am–4:30 pm Monday–Friday, 9 am–4 pm Saturday) also offers a variety of wood and supplies, including epoxies and finishes.

Nester, Makers Edition Magazine is free, distributed all over Portland, and can be found at these locations. Love Nester? Save the date for NestFest, where we bring the magazine to life at an event in Fall of 2026.