When Paul Derevnin was a young boy growing up in Saratov, Russia, his parents would drop him off with his grandfather where he’d stay while they were at work. As a child, Derevnin would watch his grandfather’s rough hands shape fine hardwood furniture, sanding and staining each piece with tender love and care.

So it should be no surprise that Derevnin spends his days much like his grandfather did, giving new life to aging furnishings in his shop in Bremerton.

“This is how I grew up,” he said. “I’m sure watching my grandfather was what triggered my fascination with wood.”

But the journey, from being a college student in Russia, to owning an antique furniture repair business in Bremerton, was a strange one, even Derevnin admits.

He was studying interior design while in college in Russia. Following graduation, he decided he wanted to see the United States and with only what he could carry in his suitcase, he landed in Chicago in 1996.

For the next 14 years, he worked as an interior designer. In 2007, his grade school sweetheart found him online and they began talking. Soon she joined him in Chicago, where they eventually married. His wife, Marina Lashka, is a concert pianist, who performs with the Bremerton Symphony. She is a graduate of the Moscow Conservatory.

About four years ago the couple was on vacation in the Florida Keys when Derevnin dove into a pool, not knowing how shallow it was and he broke his neck. Four the next four months, he could do very little, except read. And so he began studying and researching where he might want to move. He decided on Seattle.

Soon, the couple put everything they owned in their small car and a U-Haul and began driving west from Chicago to Seattle. The trip took four days.

“It was just such a beautiful place in all the photographs I’d seen,” he said. “It has everything … the ocean, mountains and such nice people.”

Once here, they discovered Bremerton and fell in love with it.

“It has all the character of a small town,” he said. “And yet it’s close to Seattle, if you want to be in the city.”

They found a small apartment around the corner from where the shop is on Callow Avenue. Paul found a job as an interior designer at Ashley’s Furniture.

Marina began to look for piano engagements and students to teach.

It was a few months later that Paul happened to walk past Carpenter’s Furniture Refinishing, at 632 N. Callow Ave., and decided to go inside.

“I went in to look around and I met the owner Roy (Carpenter),” Derevnin said. “And he offered me a job.”

Derevnin continued to work both jobs for some time, until one day, Roy told him that he wanted to retire and sell him the business.

That was two an a half years ago and since then, Derevnin has run the furniture repair business as his own.

“I kept the name (of the shop) the same, because people know it,” he said. “The shop started in 1973 by Roy’s father. I respect what they put into it and so it remains Carpenter’s.”

Much of Derevnin’s business comes from people who have been in the store before, or who have family members who have had furniture repaired. His real talent is repairing old furniture — some items more than 100 years old — to their original state.

“It takes patience,” he said. “And many times I have to make parts that are missing.”

While he can make furniture from scratch, he prefers repairing other people’s prize possessions.

“It’s funny,” he said. “People bring things to me in boxes. They don’t even know sometimes what they are. I have to figure out what it is.”

Too, he said, older folks will bring in pieces, such as an antique table, that are in terrible shape, They’ll tell him that it has memories and they want to have it repaired, even though none of their children want it.

“Then, when it’s all finished and all fixed up, they come back and tell me that their children are fighting over who gets it,” he said.

A common item is the family rocking chair.

“You know — grandma’s rocking chair — pretty beat up but they want to make it nice for the next generation,” he said.

Derevnin also goes to auctions and “peeks” at garage sales.

“I buy things that otherwise would end up in the trash,” he said. “I bring them back here to the shop and when I have time I work on them. And then I sell them.”

He has an entire back room filled with projects that await his time, attention and talent.

Derevnin much prefers to work on older items.

“Furniture was made so well back then,” he said. “Today’s new stuff is not like that.”

But, he said, he’ll take a look at just about anything anyone brings in.

“I’m honest with people,” he said. “If it’s not that great of quality, and it would cost them more to repair it than to replace it, I don’t do it.”

His work includes everything from antique chairs and dressers, to dining room tables and even an old 1913 Edison crank phonograph, and old radios in wooden stands.

He replaces legs, and arms and patches scratched areas. He sands and stains and varnishes, and he will re-cane chairs, too.

He even has a spray booth where he can apply paints and stains as would be done in the original factory where the item was made.

His charges are based on how long it will take him to complete the job and on the costs of the materials used. Typically, a chair might be $50 to repair and an entire table at $500.

“I don’t like to raise prices,” he said. “I’m not in this for the money. But when my suppliers raise their costs, I have to pass some of that on to the customer.”

Some of the things he’s repaired have been shipped to him from as far away as the East Coast, mostly because he is known for his fine craftsmanship.

It’s  a talent that he knows is in his blood.

“Even my name — Derevnin — means wood or trees in Russian,” he said. “There’s just something about it. When I come to work I smell the smells in my shop and breath them in. I see the history of these old pieces. I see items that people would throw away and I think ‘that can be saved.’ I know I’m here to give them a second life.”

To contact Derevnin call 360-377-5050. Visit his website at www.carpentersfurniturerefinishing.com.