Seems like a pretty ambitious undertaking for a budding furniture maker.

Unless there is not going to too much concern about the fit, finish and appearance of the furniture, no?

There are many, many specialized techniques used by furniture and cabinet makers to end up with useful, durable, and attractive pieces. It might be an advantage to start with some smaller projects were someone could learn the basic techniques and tools of joinery required to assemble multiple pieces of wood into functional furniture to be proud of.

It would be very easy to mangle a pile of costly material.

Something like the PBS New Yankee Workshop can give you an idea about what might be involved in such projects. Norm uses thousands of dollars of machinery and tools so it's probably not practical to jump into it like he does though.

One of my own favorites is the Woodwrights Shop with Roy Underhill, once you get past the kitschyness of the video production, the basics of simple and solid wood fabrication are pretty well illustrated and explained. And although he uses some of the most basic tools he does show how you can get some respectable pieces in the end.