Beneath a sign with a leafy hardwood tree, the door to the old Minneola Cotton Mill in Gibsonville opens to a world of wood. The smell of oak and pine and cedar coaxes customers inside The Hardwood Store of North Carolina. It’s a scent you might inhale in a closet of a turn-of-the-century home or a mountain cabin. If character had a smell, this would be it.

A doorway on the other side of the showroom reveals a 42,000-square-foot stash of plywood and planks — 40 species of domestic and exotic lumber laid in stacks, each with a grain as unique as a thumbprint.

Amid the chorus from the ripsaw slicing through planks and the molder shaping custom trim, owner Hilton Peel — and his daughters Helen Hobson and Sarah Butala — field questions from customers.

Owner Hilton Peel and his daughters Sarah Butala (left) and Helen Hobson. photograph by Joey Seawell

Peel carries high-quality lumber, but after 36 years in the industry, his most valuable asset is his knowledge, something he’s shared with his daughters. If you’re building a cutting board, they’ll tell you to steer clear of the highly porous red oak. If you’re an artist, they’ll suggest basswood because it’s inexpensive and soft, making it ideal for carving. And if you’re looking for maple, they’ll tell you that there are two kinds — sugar and red — and if you’re going to paint it, they recommend the red stuff.

But if you’re looking for a paint recommendation, ask Hobson or Butala — Peel can’t help you there. “Husbands and wives come in and say, ‘What color do you like?’ I’m colorblind,” he says with a chuckle. “It gets me out of a lot.” However, Peel is intimately familiar with the shades, grains, and feels of the wood that composes his inventory, a collection he’s cultivated over the past 30 years.

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Peel found his passion as an eighth grader in Virginia when his mother enrolled him in woodshop. He remembers her saying, “Somebody in this house is going to learn how to hang a picture on the wall!” In high school, Peel worked at Wickes Lumber in Weldon after his father’s job with the power company relocated them to North Carolina.

He studied at NC State and worked briefly in agriculture, then got a job at a lumber supplier in Madison. Peel frequented Woodworker’s Supply in Graham for his personal projects, but there was no lumber shop nearby at the time.

Peel’s youngest daughter, Helen, spent her childhood with her dad in his lumber shop. photograph by Joey Seawell

In 1996, on his birthday, The Hardwood Store of North Carolina was incorporated, and about a month later, Peel opened the store in Gibsonville to serve the Triangle. Peel employed his youngest daughter, Helen, just 2 at the time, to keep him company while he was building the business.

“I remember coming in and roaming the halls and raiding the vending machine,” Hobson says, though her father eventually put her to work. “[Helen] was driving a forklift by the time she was 10 years old,” Peel says, beaming. Her salary? A dollar a week.

A proud father of three girls, he’ll happily share a picture of Hobson as a toddler writing up a receipt, her red hair bright like cherrywood, tousled from a hard day’s work. “I just followed [my dad] around,” Hobson says. “Whatever he was doing, I was right there with him.”

Today Helen manages the family’s second location in Salisbury. photograph by Joey Seawell

About eight years later, Peel expanded into the old mill and Hobson got a promotion. The pair spent two weeks pressure washing the building. Hobson took out the trash and swept the floors while Peel retrofitted the interior, once reserved for textile manufacturing, into a woodworker’s haven.

His investment paid off, and soon their wood adorned notable venues across the Southeast. The Hardwood Store crafted custom trim — carved by molder Don Fogleman, who died this year after 29 years at the store — for Tryon Palace and Mount Vernon. It also supplied lumber for benches at Sarah P. Duke Gardens and for siding at LeBauer Park in Greensboro.

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Inside his store, Peel’s office walls are like a wooden scrapbook. There are hand-carved jewelry boxes, stock cars, and toy trains from the many years that Peel has donated lumber to the Triangle Woodworkers Association, whose members make toys for the Raleigh Toys for Tots program.

The sea bass and marlin mounted behind his desk were carved for him by a longtime customer, William “Dock” Lindley of Papa Doc’s Art in Currie, made with the color-streaked poplar that Peel would set aside for the artist’s orders.

And there are frames he’s made, filled with pictures of his three daughters and nine grandchildren. Since 2021, Hobson has worked full-time at the store, moving to the second location in Salisbury when it opened in 2024 (and has since gotten a raise). Last year, Peel helped her renovate her entire home in Boonville with new cabinets and molding. Her older sister, Butala, joined the team in 2017, and her daughter now drives a forklift at the shop. “She’s better than some of the guys,” Peel says of his 14-year-old granddaughter, a familiar sense of pride in his voice.

Sitting at his desk, Peel reflects on his early days of selling lumber. In the ’90s and early 2000s, folks would come in with issues of Wood magazine in hand. “I knew as soon as one came out, I’d see the project for that month, and the next day, that’s what everyone would be asking for,” Peel says. On Mondays, the day after The New Yankee Workshop aired on PBS, Peel would answer calls from aspiring craftsmen hoping to replicate whatever host Norm Abram had fashioned that week.

Today, the shop is doing better than ever. “When TikTok and Pinterest came around, we just took off because everyone decided they were going to get into woodworking, especially during the pandemic,” Peel says.

Purpleheart, imported from Africa, is popular for its naturally occurring plum hue. photograph by Joey Seawell

These new woodworkers are honoring a long-standing tradition. From our first colonial homes to the craftsmen who put North Carolina’s furniture industry on the map, woodworking is hammered into our state’s history. The success of The Hardwood Store proves that passion for a well-crafted home endures.

More than half of Peel’s clientele are hobbyists, many self-taught. They turn to him to help them build something strong, reliable, and one-of-a-kind: like a 4-year-old’s first big-girl bed, made entirely of purpleheart by a father who turned to the girl dad with the hardwood shop to make his own daughter’s dream come true.

The Hardwood Store of North Carolina
100 Railroad Avenue
Gibsonville, NC 27249
(336) 449-9627
hardwoodstore.com