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For Esterina Gentilcore, it all started with a quest for a groove. In 2021, Gentilcore was a new mom whose house in Belmont was undergoing a remodel. While planning to outfit her kitchen, hoping to minimize mess and reduce food waste, “I was searching for a very specific cutting board. I wanted an oversized cutting board with a very deep juice groove,” she said. But she wasn’t able to find the exact product she was looking for.
She was also trying to find her groove metaphorically. At the time, Gentilcore was in therapy for postpartum depression, and over the course of the remodel, she had begun taking on DIY tasks such as installing door handles and building a rack for firewood.
Because she was enjoying these hands-on endeavors, Gentilcore was encouraged to try making the groovy cutting board of her dreams for herself. She was skeptical, but while driving down El Camino Real, she noticed Woodcraft of San Carlos advertising its woodworking classes.
“I said, ‘This is a sign.’ Literally and figuratively,” she recalled with a laugh. She signed up for her first course on shop safety, learned to use power tools and was immediately hooked.
“From the very first cut I was like, ‘Oh my God, I love this! This is amazing,'” she said.
She took a series of basic woodworking classes, and with the help of her instructor and instructional videos on YouTube she eventually mastered that cutting board she’d been longing for — along with a step stool, an extra-long charcuterie board and a pencil box. And it wasn’t just about the tangible products: She also found the creativity, focus and physical energy involved to be wonderfully therapeutic.
“I bought a couple of tools and started doing some more handy stuff around the house,” Gentilcore said. “I would take the baby monitor out to the garage, and during her nap I would just make stuff.”
Her neighbors admired the cutting board she’d made and asked her to make one for them, and then another to give to friends as a gift.
“I was like, ‘Dang, I think I have a business here!'” she said.
She named that business Tavolo Studios (tavolo is Italian for table), filed as an LLC and made it official, taking pride in doing everything herself.
“I make my own rules — I can design my own products the way I want to,” she recalled thinking. She was “sick and tired” of seeing wooden kitchen products advertised that looked beautiful but warned in fine print, “Do not put food directly on board. Do not use knives on board.”
“What’s the point? It should be pretty and functional,” she said.
All Gentilcore’s products are food-grade and knife-safe. She primarily works with walnut and maple that she sources from several Bay Area vendors, meticulously sorting through and selecting each board that she wants.
Among her bespoke creations are cheese boards and charcuterie boards in various sizes and shapes ($89-$179), including hearts and circles, a small cutting board ($109) and a double-sided cutting board that’s flat on one side and grooved on the other ($249). She also offers custom engraving and donates to the Arbor Day Foundation for every board Tavolo Studios sells.
By 2023, Gentilcore was fulfilling orders not only via her website, but also at eight Bay Area retail locations. While she found woodworking to be great for her mental health, it wasn’t always beneficial for her physical health.
“It really started to take a toll on my hands,” she said. She was developing carpal tunnel syndrome, eventually finding it excruciating to grip her steering wheel or hold a knife to chop food.
“My business isn’t about profit. It’s about building a quality product that I love to make, that people love to buy, that they love to gift, and the therapy I feel working on it,” she said.
When it became more painful than pleasurable, it was time to take a break.
Always open to trying new things, Gentilcore “wasn’t really motivated by office jobs,” she said, having worked in the past as a personal trainer, a Crossfit coach and an executive assistant, among other endeavors.
Thanks to her woodworking, she’d formed ties with several local real estate agents for whom she makes closing gifts to present to clients, and had long had an interest in real estate.
“I love construction; I have an eye for detail; I’m gonna be a Realtor!” she recalled deciding. She studied and got her license in late 2023 and began working with a brokerage in 2024, only to realize after a few months that the environment was not what she’d expected. “It was not the career for me,” she said. “It just didn’t work for my family.”
With her heart in the home woodshop and her hands feeling good again, Tavolo Studios was back in business – this time on a smaller scale, with a careful strategy to prevent physical overwork.
“It’s tricky, but I budget about two days a week max in the garage in my woodshop,” she said. “I do smaller batches of products. It means I don’t always have all of my products in stock, and that can be a little complicated, but I think it’s just forced me to look at past sales and see what products sell well and sort of niche down with those.”
Currently, her products are stocked by Lark in San Carlos, and she’s reaching back out to other retailers. Sales come mostly through word of mouth, local groups and via the Bay Area pop-ups she participates in, including Peninsula School’s annual craft fair in Menlo Park. She often brings her laser engraver along to those events so she can personalize boards on-site. It’s a good conversation starter, she said. “Who doesn’t love a laser?”
She’s also found renewed passion for sharing her activities online, making soothing YouTube videos in part inspired by those that comforted her and helped her focus when she was burned out after her foray into real estate. On her channel, viewers can see her making cutting and charcuterie boards, taking on home projects and reflecting on living more creatively, intentionally and slowly.
“I look at it as a way to share my life,” she said. “It’s another creative outlet for me that I really enjoy.”
Gentilcore’s home is going through another round of renovation now, and she decided to take on the task of building a bathroom vanity. When her husband and their contractor both advised against it, that only fueled her determination.
“‘Oh, it’s on!’ I am going to figure it out and it is going to be awesome,'” she declared. As she went through the process, she documented her attempts, including the initial failure.
“I make so many mistakes. I have no problem with being up front, like, ‘Yeah, I screwed that up,'” she said.
By sharing both her hits and misses, she hopes to model for her daughter that it’s OK to try something, even if it doesn’t always work out at first. Girls in particular, she said, are pressured into perfectionism, and social media can add to the pressure by painting an unrealistically rosy picture. Instead, she hopes to encourage her daughter — and anyone who watches her videos and follows her journey with woodworking and beyond — to step outside their comfort zone.
“It makes it a lot easier when you’ve had practice of trying something and failing and trying again and realizing either you love it and you get better, or you hate it and you want to try something else,” she said.
Tavolo Studios; Instagram: @esterina.gentilcore.
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