About Circular Builds
Circular Builds is a Philadelphia-based carpentry business. We utilize materials destined for landfills to build functional and beautiful pieces for your home or outdoor space.
Past Projects include:
- Sheds
- Interior Furniture
- Exterior Furniture
- Shelving and Pantries
- Garden Beds and Boxes
- Noticeboards
- Laser-cut Signs
Our name comes from the idea of a Circular Economy a model of production and consumption, which involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling existing materials for as long as possible.
These principles are at the core of how we design and build for customers. But salvaging wood is not only environmentally friendly, it is also often far superior to products you can buy at the lumberyard today. Recycled wood is often from old-growth trees that are more structurally sound and have fully dried out. Salvaged materials are also a connection to Philadelphia's past and the people that built the city of brotherly and sisterly love.
About Me
Hello! Nice to meet you, I'm Ricky Boebel.
As with many of us, I've had a winding road to carpentry. I started my career doing data analysis for technology companies and eventually nonprofits. During this time, I would go to our local tool library and hire-out a saw and a drill, and make the simplest shelf or bench I could on the weekend.
In 2019 my now wife and I joined the Peace Corps in Madagascar to learn about another culture and see other possibilities. The ingenuity of my neighbors in Madagascar floored me. Every day I would see another ingenious tool made out of something that would be trash back home. It was a culture that created sustainable systems out of necessity as opposed to here in the US, where participating in a circular economies is often a luxury item.
We all know what happened in 2020. For us that meant getting evacuated back to the the US. I found myself not ready to go back to office life and found work on an Urban Farm in Ohio. At the farm, I spearheaded an effort to start a community fridge for people to get free food any time of the day. We built the structure for the fridge in one day, out of a pallet, scrap plywood, 2x4s, and a reclaimed awning from a neighbor's house. I was hooked, next, I converted a shed into a sauna and then another shed into a tiny house. By the end of 2021, I knew building things would be my calling and I started Circular Builds when I moved to Philly in 2022.
I've included some pictures here of my early days, my Instagram is the best place to see my latest work.