Justin Rhodes of Brandon worked for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office for 17 years. When he retired from the sheriff’s office in 2020, he started to make his wife’s Pinterest dreams come true.
“Like a lot of wives, my wife spends a lot of time in Pinterest,” Rhodes said. “She saw this bed swing on Pinterest and asked me to build it for her. I built one for her and then the next thing I knew, I was asked to build another one for someone else, and that’s how Flip Flop Wood Shop got started.”
He doesn’t have a website, just a Facebook page that he started in June of 2020, and since then he has been building nonstop.
“I started to get tons of orders from Facebook and Marketplace,” Rhodes said. “This led to me branching off and doing other woodworking things like wood roofs, ceilings, buildings, bookshelves, entertainment centers and other wood creations. I’m currently booked out with projects through the end of March 2021.”
Rhodes has been woodworking for more than 15 years, but only built things for his house.
“Since I retired this past June, I’ve been doing Flip Flop Wood Shop full-time,” Rhodes said. “It kind of blew up and I think everyone needs to have one of my bed swings on their front porch.”
If you ask Rhodes what he likes most about what he does, he’ll tell you the challenges he gets from his customers’ requests.
“I like building new things,” Rhodes said. “Every project has a new challenge and I like that because when I was working for the sheriff’s office, it was kind of routine. Now, I get to do something new and different every day.”
Rhodes is thankful that the Brandon community has made this business grow so quickly.
“My wife and I were worried when I left the sheriff’s office for the first few months. We thought we were going to be eating ramen noodles for the rest of our lives,” Rhodes said with a laugh. “This business took off so fast that it’s hard for me to get back to customers with estimates quickly. It feels great that my customers like my work and then recommend me to other people. It’s a wonderful feeling to know that people appreciate my work.”
If you would like to learn more about Flip Flop Wood Shop or if you’d like to hire Rhodes for a woodworking project, visit his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/FlipFlopWoodShopLLC or call him at 352-0248.
