You can plan the house party anywhere you want. Set out the comfy chairs in the living room, string fairy lights across the deck, arrange the appetizers on the dining table. It won’t matter. By the second glass of wine, everyone will be inevitably standing in the kitchen, leaning against the counter, reaching past one another for the corkscrew, having a conversation with whoever is whisking something on the stove. There’s no doubt about it: kitchens hold a special place in the home that draws people to it. Eventually we stop fighting it and, in the case of Fine Wood Interiors, start designing for it.
That instinct to cozy up in the kitchen is supported by the data. In the National Kitchen & Bath Association’s 2026 Kitchen Trends Report, surveyed designers were unanimous in agreeing that kitchens are becoming more personalized, multi-purpose hubs. Kitchens are no longer places to cook but also places to gather.
Beautiful Functionality
Understanding that important distinction is the daily work at Fine Wood Interiors, the cabinetry shop and showroom on Bodo Drive that has been designing Southwest Colorado kitchens since 1998. Founded by Erik and Donna Enriquez, the business was purchased in 2024 by its current owner, Ryan Throop, and his wife, Klancy Nixon.
Throop did not just arrive at cabinetry by accident. “I definitely didn’t stumble into it,” he says. His father ran a cabinet shop in northern Michigan, so the trade was the backdrop of his childhood in Traverse City. At 18, he moved to Durango on little more than an aunt and uncle’s glowing description, arriving in October of 2008. He went to a job fair, started serving tables at Purgatory, and spent two winters as a ski bum before a conversation with a customer turned into his first carpentry job on a house at Lake Purgatory.
Six years of home building, 10 years total, followed by a slight detour. In 2014, he launched a camper van rental company as a side business, then later a custom van build-out shop with a full metal and wood shop behind it. When he was ready to return to the home services industry, cabinetry sat near the top of his list. Three months after Ryan and Klancy met the Enriquezes, the deal closed. Today, the couple continues the legacy that Erik and Donna began. One of them is “quality craftsmanship and specialized service.”
Designing Around the Way You Actually Live
What Fine Wood Interiors offers now is a hybrid. The showroom partners with five manufacturers, spanning affordable semi-custom lines to fully custom high-end cabinetry, and offers a wide range of wood species, paints, stains, and custom finishes. Behind that sits the company’s own shop, where the team builds live-edge shelving, custom bookcases, the odd dimension that finally makes a room work.
That matters, because no two Durango households cook and gather the same way. A family with small children may need deep drawers a six-year-old can manage and a landing spot for backpacks. A couple who entertains may want an island with real seating and a beverage area that keeps guests out of the cook’s path.
Fine Wood Interiors' work stretches well past the kitchen door, too. They custom-design cabinetry for wine cellars, wet bars, outdoor kitchens, pantries, and entryways, among others.
A Family Business, Threaded In
Ask Throop what he loves talking about the most, and the answer is not just cabinetry.
“That would be my family,” he says. His daughters, ages three and six, are in and out of the showroom regularly. He and his wife, Klancy, are raising the girls on the Durango lifestyle options that brought them here in the first place. Things like rafting, fishing, hiking, and beautiful mountain views. For Throop, quality of life is just as important as work. And that includes giving back to the community.
He extends that same thinking to his business. Fine Wood Interiors offers its staff paid volunteer days, sending the team out to work alongside local nonprofits such as Adaptive Sports and Manna Soup Kitchen.
Throop credits the Durango Chamber, the Small Business Development Center (SBDC), and Region 9 with helping him buy and run the company; he took the SBDC’s six-month business accelerator course back in 2018. “It helped me through my entire entrepreneurial journey,” he says. “We feel really privileged that we’re able to own and operate a business in such a great small town. It allows us to be threaded into the community.”
Which, in the end, is what a good kitchen does. The holiday meal, the birthday cake, the homework spread out on the counter, the friends planted on stools at the island with a drink in hand and a smile on their face. The kitchen holds all of it. And that, more than the cabinetry, is what Throop is really building.
Fine Wood Interiors is located at 178A Bodo Drive in Durango. For more information, visit www.finewoodinteriors.net or call (970) 375-0002.
“We feel really privileged that we’re able to own and operate a business in such a great small town. It allows us to be threaded into the community.”
"What Fine Wood Interiors offers now is a hybrid. The showroom partners with five manufacturers, spanning affordable semi-custom lines to fully custom, high-end cabinetry."
Good food, good wine, good company. And a room built to hold all three. Custom cabinetry from Fine Wood Interiors turns a kitchen into the place everyone gathers, with room to prep, pour, and linger.