Whirlwind

So I didn't really intend to take spring and summer off from blogging but, as my boyfriend likes to say, "time went ‘poof’."  Things started feeling really busy for me and I had a typical Rachel reaction – simplify where I can.  The unfortunate casualties of this simplification were my blog (whoops!) and my diet (I had just started running, so I used it as a not-so-good excuse that I didn't need to worry as much about food).  Not true, as it turns out.  If only simplification could be that simple!

The rainy run that started a healthy addiction: the 2011 St. Patty's Day Dash with my aunt Catherine.

In March, I started taking an evening class at a community college on energy auditing.  If you, dear reader, are like 95% of the people I talk to about this, you just read the word "audit" and felt the urge to skip ahead past this section.  So at the risk of boring you, I'll simply say that I have a keen interest in sustainable building.  Energy is a clear place to start any conversation on that subject.  It's a pretty basic concept -- build houses and buildings that don't fall apart or hog energy (in the form of materials or fuel) and try to save houses that currently do.  So now, after 130 or so hours of training and rigorous written and field exams, I am a BuildingPerformance Institute Certified Building Analyst.  Hopefully that will come in handy in the not too distant future.  If not, it still does sound kinda cool, no?

In May, I was offered a job as a finish carpenter and cabinetmaker with a new company.  My new employer is a general contractor, as opposed to a finish carpentry subcontractor.  They mostly do high end residential and restaurants.  I was familiar with the company, as I had worked last winter on one of their restaurant jobs (see below).  I really liked all of the people and was very comfortable with the general "feel" of the company.  That gut reaction, combined with the fact that the general manager encouraged me to help facilitate some of the company’s own sustainable building goals for the future, sealed the deal.  It was honestly one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to make.  I felt very close to my former employer and hated the idea of leaving at the beginning of summer (a busy time in this line of work) for this new opportunity.  But aside from my concerns about the timing, the decision was very clear for me.  So I had to do what was right for me and my future.  I have been happy with my choice.

This is an accent wall that I installed at the Asian street food restaurant "Revel", where I originally met my new employer.  It was actually one of my favorite projects ever - the wall is made up of random sizes of old lath, a very cool re-purposing of material. 

In July, I became enamored with sailing.  Seattle is a beautiful place to live.  I love the weather here year-round (I rarely complain about the rain), but summer in Seattle is quite simply unbeatable.  My boyfriend has had a lifelong dream of owning a sailboat, while I had never even been on one.  So we took a couple of free rides at the Center for Wooden Boats (if you live in this area, I highly recommend checking these out), and he started looking for a modestly-sized (and modestly-priced!) trailerable sailboat.  We found the perfect fit: Swallow. Now, I had never understood the tradition of deciding boats are female, always referring to "she" or "her."  I would trip over such talk, and it grated on my ears when I heard it from others.  But Swallow is a beautiful wooden boat, a one-of-a-kind designed by a Boeing engineer and built by a shipwright in Anacortes, WA.  Suddenly, I was tripping over using the word "it."  She has soul.  And, yes, she needs a little repair -- mostly just in the form of sanding and varnishing.  But she is a really solid little boat and has absolutely no leaks or structural failings.  In fact, she's overbuilt.  So I'm absolutely thrilled to have this labor of love to spend some time with.  I am actually looking forward to getting out there and starting some of our projects.  None of them are overwhelming – I know how to work with wood!  Fiberglass and metal, not so much.  But wood, I know and love.

My first repair: the rub rail had a scarf joint that had come loose over time. Glue and clamps worked like a charm.

Out for a sail on the Puget Sound, Myra and Gunther snuggled into a blanket on my lap.

Family visits and vacations pretty much brings us up to the present.  And now it's October.  Fall is here.  Some stores even have Christmas displays up!  That's just crazy, if you ask me.  Fall deserves to be celebrated – bring on the brisk winds!  I have scarves and sweaters!  Bring on the rain!  I own a crock pot!  Bring on the dark evenings!  I have a blog!  So yes, I promise not to let so much time go by before my next post...

Fall = delicious hunkering down.

It is what it is

There's a phrase you hear a fair amount in this trade: "It is what it is."  It grates on my nerves.  It serves as the excuse for why things are taking longer than expected.  But, being that I'm often more stressed about jobs than people around me, I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't summon some inner peace and find a way to embrace the philosophy behind that statement.  This economy hasn't softened people's expectations.  It's made reasonable people behave quite unreasonably.  You've probably heard the old business adage—"You can have it cheap, fast, or high quality.  Pick two."  With the slow flow of new construction and the desperation of people in the industry, clients these days want it done free, yesterday, and perfect. 

I heard recently that Washington state's construction jobs have shrunk by 2/3.  Ponder that for a second.  A mere 33% of the people who were working in this industry 3 years ago still have their job.  My glass-is-half-full take on this bad news was that I hoped people who got into this work for the wrong reasons would discover a new rewarding career.  And that has happened in some cases.  But here's another thing that has happened: many people are out there offering (begging?) to do my job for cash, under the table, for less than half of what we have to charge to stay in business.  We really do have slim margins.  Between business insurance, taxes, labor and industries contributions, unemployment insurance, and health benefits, the overhead really can be a liability when you are competing with people who aren't even licensed, bonded, or insured, let alone paying any taxes.  There are quite a few builders who would never consider hiring a finish carpenter who isn't operating completely above board, but there are also many who have a penny-pinching client breathing down their neck about the schedule, while simultaneously having unreasonable expectations for quality.  So feeling backed into a corner, they use Jim The Laid Off Finish Carpenter—he's pleased as punch to work long hours for little pay.  A job is a job.  And though Jim isn't our direct competition, he does have an effect on the general expectations out there.  Every bid we do feels like it has to be tight.  No room for error, no room for a cushion, and sometimes, no room for a profit.

Speed is relative.  This is common sense, right?  Well, imagine a world where a high school track star was beating his own personal best at every race, but his parents were still disappointed because his cousin two states over consistently runs faster.  Or perhaps there's an expert cake decorator known for their creativity and attention to detail, but clients often expect to walk into their shop and walk out with a cake—"Hey, that's how it works at Safeway.  You want me to take my business there?"  I guess my point is that I sometimes feel like a high school track star crossed with a high end cake decorator.  Add to that my own impatience and let's just say I'm prone to...stress out about time.  But now we're getting into the super obnoxious paradigm that's permeated my industry.  Most contractors are still doing bids.  In fact, they are flooded with them (people are shopping around more than ever before).  And we are too, but we secure only a small percentage of these, and sometimes we'll hear we've got the job only a week before it actually commences.  The contractor may have secured the job, but the client has them on a tight schedule—I mean, who doesn't want their home to be done as quickly as possible?  And what is it that they say about shit rolling down hill?  So, even though we've scheduled everyone at jobs for the next month or two, we'll get a call out of the blue asking if three guys can start on Tuesday for a three week job.  No.  Problem.  Grrrrr...

Quality is also relative, of course.  What I've grown to understand about my job is that what separates the high end projects from the "ultra-high end" (as my boyfriend likes to call them) is mostly the high quality materials that you use.  I mean, you're always aiming to form perfect miters, cut tight scribes, and avoid nail holes, so there's not really all that much more "game" you can bring to the ultra-high end jobs—but that doesn't stop the clients from expecting superior workmanship.  They still demand just a bit more from you.  Perhaps no visible nail holes are tolerated and you have to fasten everything with biscuits from behind, or maybe a 1/32" gap on a scribe is 1/32" too big.  These jobs will obviously take more time and thus cost more money.  It's just the nature of high expectations—if it were easy to make everything perfect all the time, then everything would be perfect all the time.

And that's where the real conundrum lies—you cannot get all three?  Try telling that to one of these clients who are demanding as much from their contractors or subcontractors.  You know what they'll say?  "Well, I'm sure I can find another person who WILL give me what I want."  And these days, they may be right.  But it's a skewed perception of how things ought to be.  Sure, there may be some down-and-out contractors just desperate enough to bend over backwards to meet unreasonable demands for the equivalent of $5 an hour or less, but it's an unsustainable model for the industry as a whole.  It reminds me of how I found my first mechanic in my hometown—he left a flyer on my VW rabbit for a free oil change, no strings attached.  Of course, I took advantage of the coupon and he found a couple things wrong with the car (my dad had warned me that was bound to happen).  But he gave me a very reasonable quote for the work and I ended up going back to him for years, even when I moved three hours away.  I found him to be a very honest, good mechanic.  Whenever I did shop the work around to others, he was always on the lower end of pricing.  What kind of a skewed perception would I have if every other mechanic offered to do the work for half of whatever quote I already had?  I may have been tempted to always shop around to find the cheapest possible price for every single repair.  This might have saved me some money in the short term, but in the long term, quality inevitably would have gone down.  That seems to be what's happening around me.  It's the "race to the bottom" up close and personal.  Client's expectations for the better deal just keep increasing, and it's getting more and more difficult to meet them.  Something's gotta give.

It is what it is.  Are these really "words of wisdom"?  What do they tell you except that the person who uttered them has somehow resigned themselves to just accept a situation?  Although it can be grating to hear someone admit this sort of defeat, I do believe that there is some importance in the meaning of this phrase.  Projects are always on some sort of tight budget these days, so I hear over and over again: "Try your best to stay on track and keep things running smoothly.  This bid is tight."  But when something goes wrong and throws you off, you can either beat yourself up about it and lose sleep or you can try to regroup and go forth to make the best of a bad situation—it is what it is.  Inevitably, a project can fall behind schedule pretty easily, usually before we even arrive on site.  There is pressure from all sides:  from our boss, the contractor, the homeowner, and the other subcontractors, to try and "catch up"—but there is only so much control you can exert over the situation.  You can work long hours and weekends, or add extra crew-members.  Sometimes, you actually can catch up.  But sometimes, it's just not going to happen; it is what it is.  In the end, the one thing we have the most control over is quality.  We're set up with the skills, tools, and brains to create truly beautiful finish carpentry.  But, if the budget and schedule do not allow for truly masterful carpentry, what are you going to do?  You have to stare that tiny 1/32" gap or puttied nail hole right in the eye and think to yourself, "it is what it is." 

This should give you a good idea of where I am right now.  Though I have always hated that stupid phrase, I do feel I should somehow embrace it.  Because, for better or for worse, there is very little in this industry (alas, in this world) that I have control over.  When I really stop to think about it, it's not such a bad thing to admit that "it is what it is." Or is it?

My Ladies

Lest I've misled you with all my talk about how being a female carpenter is such an anomaly (I assure you, it truly is), I'd like to relate to you a couple of wonderful "small world" stories about some ladies in my life. 

I’ll start by stating that I have worked with hundreds of carpenters from other companies on various projects.  I can count on both hands the number of women I have seen at the jobsite (not counting designers, homeowners, cleaners, or girlfriends of workers).  Most of the females I have seen – more than half – were painters.  One was a metal worker, one was a plasterer, and one was a carpenter – a framer, to be specific.  While it's possible I may have forgotten one or two people (my memory seems to work in fits and starts), that's the reality of the jobsite situation.  I go months without running into another female at work.  That’s probably why I’m almost always falling into conversations with men at the jobsite about what it's like being a female carpenter and how I got into this career, etc. etc.  They’re curious!  Which in turn led me to realize that perhaps other people may also be curious, hence the blog. But I digress.

Here's what I'm getting at.  I had no female coworkers at the cabinet shop (although a female woodworker did rent shop space in the co-op above our cabinet shop).  When I moved on to finish carpentry, of all the companies I could have applied for, I was naturally drawn to the one I had any familiarity with whatsoever – the one that also rented shop space above our cabinet shop.  I had seen the owner come down to deliver a rent check a couple of times.  I figured, hey at least he’s familiar with the company I work for...perhaps he'll consider giving me a chance?  Indeed, he gave me a chance.  And what's more – he is one owner and his wife is the other.  Not only is she co-owner, but she's a carpenter!  Upon learning this, instead of flipping out with joy (a more appropriate reaction for a confident lady like myself), I was incredibly intimidated and nervous that she was a rock star carpenter with a rock star attitude.  After all, she'd been doing it for several years more than me and for all I knew, she may have had some weird female defense mechanisms at play (some sort of "there's only room for one female carpenter in this company!" kind of bullshit).  As it turned out, nothing could have been further from the truth. 

Monica functioned as a stay-at-home mom for the first several months of my employment, so I only saw her swing by a jobsite occasionally with her two young boys, usually to drop off tools or food.  I had brief chats with her, but mostly I got to know her through her husband.  He assured me she was excited to have another female carpenter on board and she was exactly not the kind of woman who was catty or competitive.  He explained that she was a super laid back Norwegian and her primary passion (aside from being a mom) was for art.  My ears perked.  I have always had wonderful artist friends.  I'm creative in some ways, but have pity on my poor friends who have to pretend to appreciate my paintings or drawings!  So I admire the artists around me, amused (alright annoyed) sometimes by their disorganization but always in awe of their ability to create something that has the potential to move people to tears.  Amazing.

Monica, prepping her floors for finish.  Which is perhaps one of the least impressive things she knows how to do.

Lo and behold, she and I finally got to work together as a team.  And lo and behold, we had great fun.  It is difficult to convey to you how weird it can be for a woman to work around men non-stop for 5 years.  Bear in mind that my coworkers are all guys who I would hang out with voluntarily outside of work.  But having a supportive, empathetic, female coworker around is not to be underestimated.  Our conversations range from storytelling to deeper philosophical discussions, the kind of talks that lead to personal growth and life enrichment.  Not that I didn’t have great conversations with male coworkers, but working with her was different.  I guess it’s the same type of difference between talking with a sister versus a brother (I suppose only the lucky ones can understand that one).  The same difference exists in friendships, though – girl friend vs. boy friend.  And after being surrounded by boy friends for 5 years, I finally got to hang out with my girl friend.  Because I work for (I say this with 98% confidence) the only finish carpentry company in Seattle with a female carpenter, let alone two.

The crazy coincidence doesn't end there, either.  Over the summer, I had the honor of getting to know an amazing female apprentice.  She randomly contacted our company to see if she could shadow one of our carpenters to learn the trade and my boss immediately thought of me, not even knowing at the time that she was a female (she has an unusual name).  I was delighted to discover a like-minded woman interested in carpentry.  Although her motivation was not to switch to a career as a carpenter, she had a "do-it-yourself" attitude about life and was highly motivated to pursue a sustainable lifestyle (okay, what’s all this past tense stuff? – she still is!).  Thus, learning carpentry for her has been a way to learn how to make and fix things.  We get along like old friends (truth be told, she is one of my most favorite people) and I’ve also discovered that I very much like teaching. 

The classic bffs, Laverne and Shirley, worked together (okay, they did everything together...)

So, there’s the real truth.  There are quite wonderful women who I get to work with from time to time.  And I’m extremely grateful for that.  Frankly, I think most people onsite are usually also really happy to see us there.  Women just have the ability to bring a different vibe to the jobsite, and that can be a good thing for everyone. 

Rock, hammer, jackhammer

Okay, I'll have to get back to fashion in another post since I've barely scraped the surface of that topic.  I feel like shifting gears and talking about some fun stuff.  TOOLS! 

Time to get real here, ladies--men generally have more upper body strength than women.  Yeah, I said it--because it's true.  Case in point: how many times have we handed a pickle or peanut butter jar over to a nearby boyfriend/brother/dad with the assumption that the damn thing is about to be shown who's boss?  Half of the time, they get the lid off instantly and hand it back to you casually with that annoying little smirk.  The other half of the time, they ream on it and grunt, giving you those 15 seconds of glorious vindication before vanquishing their stubborn opponent and handing it back to you with a little more humility (if they know what's good for them, that is).  Bottom line is, they always get the jar open!  Sure, yeah, you can tell yourself you loosened it.  But I propose there are several other factors working in their favor, not the least of which is the male ego.  What are they gonna do?  Hand it to a burly next door neighbor?  Put it down in defeat and declare that it is just stuck for good?  HELL NO!  They have something to prove here, and frankly I'll be happy to let them do it (I want my pickle!).  They also have larger hands (the better for gripping with, my dear) and extra strength in their forearms (the better for turning with, my dear).

Art by james@verbotomy.com

So there you have it: in the area of upper body strength (from twisting off lids, to picking up heavy things, to adding pressure to a drill while screwing in a cabinet) there is a distinct male advantage.  And for a long time, it was an arduous physical struggle for a female carpenter to prove herself.  She may have had the brains, the skills, the gumption, and even the thick skin--but, if she just didn't have enough strength to apply to a heavy hand drill (imagine those big old manual beasts your grandfather had hanging on his garage wall), she simply couldn't cut it as a carpenter.  I imagine the men might have "voted her off the island", or she may have left by her own free will, disappointed but convinced that it just wasn't meant to be.

But here's what's changed for the modern female carpenter: now we have power tools!  Those old hand crank drills are history--or at least, they are sequestered to a life of being old-timey decorations.  Welcome to the age of the Lightweight 18 Volt Lithium Ion Battery Impact Driver, ladies.  Simply make sure the bit stays in the screw head and pull the trigger and it practically does the job for you, applying tiny hammers of force to the screw to assure it goes in as deep as you need (deeper if you're not careful).  Seriously--if you have the right type of screws and you do exert a bit of pressure, you can get away with driving a 3" screw through a cabinet, all the way into a 2x4 stud, without pre-drilling, above your head because the thing only weighs like 3 pounds.  And yes, the drill version of this same model will make some nice deep holes in very dense wood.  If you can't tell, I seriously LOVE these tools.

This drill and impact driver are definitely my most beloved power tools.

And it doesn't end there.  Chop saws and table saws are relatively new to the on-site woodworker, and these days they have better motors than ever.  So long as you have sharp blades, you can cut through dense, thick wood with just a little finesse (force will actually work against you in many cases).  One story credits a woman named Tabitha Babbit for inventing the first circular saw after watching two men try to cut through a log with a two handled saw--she noticed that half of their motion was wasted and came up with the idea of a spinning disk, always moving toward the cut and never backwards.  She was a Shaker, so never sought legal credit.

Talk about patience.  Can you imagine sawing through a whole tree with one of these things?

The list goes on and on.  If you are having trouble cutting through a metal rod with a hack saw, consider the mighty porta-band.  If you are having trouble making a cutout in a cabinet with a japanese hand saw, consider a jig saw or a multi-master.  If it's taking forever to cut a 2x4 in half with a manual saw, just use a circular saw.  If you are tired of swinging a hammer, use a pneumatic nail gun and let the compressed air do the work for you.  This is not to say that hand tools are obsolete.  Honestly, if I was given the choice of having either all of my power tools or all of my hand tools with me, I'd probably prefer the hand tools for most jobs.  But, power tools do help level the playing field between me and the men I work with.  I mean, I already come home sore as it is, I can't imagine how it would be if I didn't have access to all that electro-magnetic torque.

For those who are unfamiliar, this is a porta-band.  It cuts through metal like it's butter.  Seriously.

There is no doubt about it.  Power tools have really helped to make carpentry a feasible career for females.  Social change is another "tool" that is certainly on our side.  At this point, I think one of the less obvious things keeping us out of the field is just our own narrow dreaming.  As a young girl, I had really never considered carpentry as a career.  Not because I dismissed it, but because it didn't occur to me.  So I think what's working to our advantage these days are all these new reality shows on cable networks that depict women using power tools to build houses and furniture right before our eyes.  While it's true that they may be cast for sex appeal, the happy side benefit is that they can serve as role models for young women, helping them understand that they really can succeed at some nontraditional roles in society.  But that's a topic for another day...

Industry Fashion

Do you want to know one of my biggest struggles, being a female finish carpenter?  Well, as vain as it may sound, one disappointing difference between comfy job and current job: I used to look pretty cute and put-together at work.  Now I look…well, like a carpenter.  It’s one thing that really bums me out about my current profession – it’s hard to feel like you even look clean, let alone presentable.  Going out to happy hour after work with friends becomes an exercise in self-affirmation.  I tell myself that I’m just as smart as all those professional women with their attaché cases and adorable hairdos, I’m just as beautiful as those women wearing skirts and make-up, *sigh* but you’d probably never think any of that by the way I look after work: unkempt, covered in dust, and just plain worn out.

Here’s my self-imposed uniform: a pair of double front brown carhartts (I’ve learned that the normal carpenter pants and jeans wear through too quickly and other colors fade too soon), a small and sturdy t-shirt (bonus points if it doesn’t have a stain or paint on it), and sensible dark leather slip on shoes with steel toes (easy to take on and off when entering/exiting a client’s home).  I usually also have zippered hoodie or something of that nature--though I usually take that off if I’m working with rotating blades.  Aside from the shoes (I am 100% excited about those because I just discovered the brand and style), my work wear is completely uninspired.  Practical and plain, just like my hair – it’s short, and there’s no sense in putting any effort into styling it when it’s likely to get messy within thirty minutes of arriving at the jobsite. 

I love these shoes (thanks Catherine!). They are slip on, waterproof, steel toed, and have big luggy soles.

So, you may be able to tell I have a dilemma.  It's impossible to feel pretty when I'm so dirty and messy.  I consider myself to be a reasonably attractive woman, generally speaking. But I never feel sexy or pretty at work or in my work clothes.  I suppose I’m partly to blame.  I rarely wear any make-up at work because I don’t want men at the jobsite to get the wrong idea. I have a boyfriend and I’m not trying to attract any unwanted attention.  My carhartts are expensive and when a hole wears through the first layer, I just ignore it until it wears through the next -- why did I pay for the double front? That’s why.  I only recently went through my t-shirts and threw out the ones that were truly beyond repair, but most of them were originally purchased at a thrift store -- it’s hard to feel compelled to spend money on new shirts when you know they’ll be trashed in a matter of months.

Juliette Caron was a female carpenter born in 1882 -- amazing.

I found this great old photo of a female carpenter named Juliette Caron wearing what’s called a “largeot” in the early 1900s.  Even though I think she looks fantastic, I bet her attire (which is about as impractical as it gets) was the least of her troubles on the job.  So all this got me thinking…if feeling grubby is one of the worst things I can think of about being a female finish carpenter, we sure have come a long way!  I mean, I know Seattle is particularly progressive, but I rarely encounter rampant sexism.  There are so many things I have the propensity to dwell on, and in the end I delight in reminding myself that it is indeed a luxury to worry about anything as mundane as fashion.

Mis-shapes, Mistakes, Misfits*

One thing I particularly appreciate about finish carpentry and woodworking is that there is always more to learn.  No matter how long you've been a woodworker, there is always another technique to learn or master, there will forever more be an abundance of those "tricks of the trade" to file away in your woodworking arsenal. (I use the word "arsenal" because sometimes it does feel like a battle.)  Don't get me wrong – it's not that there aren't true masters out there.  It's just that even if you take the most educated, gifted, experienced woodworker of all time, there is something left to teach him.  After all, the industry itself is constantly changing and evolving – with new tools, new materials, new standards, and new people.  And I'm happy to be part of that evolution.

I remember on my first day at the cabinet shop, my boss took me aside and explained, "so, it's possible that I will teach you how to do something one way and then the next day, someone else will explain how to do it another way.  It's not that one way is better than the other.  We both have our reasons for liking our way best."  Then he explained that he preferred that I default to his way.  After all, he was the owner and he was trying to develop a consistent system for producing a consistent product.  I understood and respected that.  But it took me a while to be comfortable with this type of learning environment.  I am usually the type of person who just wants someone to tell me the best way to do something.  The idea that there is no best way is a little disturbing.  Since then, I've realized that knowing multiple techniques for accomplishing the same task is what separates the masters from the apprentices, the pros from the newbies. 

This brings us to perhaps the most important part of a finish carpenter's job description: how to fix mistakes.  These aren't necessarily mistakes that you yourself have made.  They are, in fact, mostly mistakes that others have made.  And it's why finish carpentry exists.  Think about your house, the room you're sitting in right now...the finish carpentry includes the doors, windows, trim, and cabinetry among other various things (mantel, stairs, etc.).   Back before a finish carpenter came in to do their job, there may have been an exterior window installed and a big hole where the door should go.  We come into these rooms with uneven floors, walls that are anything but flat, ceilings that drop to one side, and we make everything look nice and square, level, plumb, parallel – pleasing to the eye.  The door should swing easily, but not pull itself open or closed.  The trim should look even around the doors and windows, and it should hide the gaps that exist between the wall and the floor, between the casing and the wall, between the window and the framing, etc.  The cabinets should be level even if the floor isn't.  At best, you wouldn't notice any of these "mistakes" of the room.  As finish carpenters, these are the mistakes we solve every day.  And yes, it's quite satisfying.  Also, I am pretty content with the fact that my job cannot be done by a robot.

Then there are the mistakes we make ourselves.  After all, nobody's perfect.  Sometimes I have a really dumb moment and am faced with the super frustrating decision of how to fix my own mistake.  At best, no one will notice.  Luckily, I am my own worst critic.  This comes in handy when you are fine-tuning a fix to correct something you messed up -- once I'm satisfied, the client most certainly is.  And going back to this "arsenal" of multiple techniques, you now have something to work with.  You start asking questions to hone in on the best solution:  What tools do I have?  What type of material am I working with?  How visible is this boo-boo?  Etc.  If you only have one method to work with, it limits your ability to fix things well.  Different materials jive with different tools.  For instance, laminates don't always get along well with a power plane but they are usually all right with a belt sander.  You can't cut a perfect plug in pre-finished wood, but if you have a little stain pen and some spray lacquer in your van, you might be able to make everything look golden.  And that's the idea.

On a recent stair, I cut this riser a little short.  Argh!

The best solution was to trim a fill strip (grain matched) and glue it in place with a tiny removable shim.

The finished stair looked fantastic (and a little less fuzzy in person...)

There's something about this job...you get to go in and make slightly messed up rooms look amazing.  That's the measure of a good finish carpenter.  You're not necessarily judged by whether you make a mistake, but rather by how you fix it.   You're not judged by whether you have a skill set, but how you use it.  The more you learn (about methods, techniques, tools, materials, etc.), the better equipped you are to make an informed choice about how to do just that, to choose your own best way.

* yes, for those who recognize the title of this post, it's borrowed directly from a Pulp song.

All Work and No Play?

Being a finish carpenter, you quickly realize that many people have a fascination with woodworking.  It’s a fun answer (especially for a girl) to the cocktail party get-to-know-you-in-a-sentence question, “so what do you do?”  Your new friend replies excitedly, “Really?  A carpenter?  That must be fun!”  To which I usually reply, “Yes.  It is.”  But I always feel that I’m somehow misleading them.  I’m pretty sure this person imagines an entirely different version of my day-to-day lifestyle than what I actually experience. 

Perhaps they are imagining a dusty cramped workshop, all littered with sawdust, hand planes and chisels.  Sunbeams shoot through the old leaded glass windows (it’s always sunny in the mind’s eye, isn’t it?).  A table, half built, sits in the corner, its final leg being carved carefully on a lathe.  A small jewelry box is nearly finished -- all that’s left to do is the sanding, waxing and attaching the tiny brass hinges and clasp.  That’s the workshop daydream, trumping all other potential daydreams in my experience.  If someone is fascinated by woodworking, 9 times out of 10, this “Gepetto scene” (as a former colleague aptly referred to it) is their secret fantasy.  Come to think of it, that colleauge looked an awful lot like Gepetto himself...

This is our real workshop, with enough space to park my van inside after hours.

The jobsite daydream, for those who aim a little closer to reality, may be a bit hazier.  The details aren’t filled in.  Who knows where you keep your chisels?  At best, maybe a rustic old wooden toolbox, folded in a leather sleeve. Who knows what this house looks like that you may be working on?  Is it a Craftsmen or maybe even a Victorian?  One thing is for sure -- you are crafting a home with your mad skills and you must be the happiest most fulfilled person on the entire planet!

Honestly, these are the typical reactions I’m used to, and I can’t blame anyone for feeling this way.  These are the dreams that my reality is based on.  If it weren’t for the romance and the intrigue of crafting something with the skill of your hands, standing back to admire it and seeing it finally in its finished state, there would be no love here and I would be doing something else with my time.

So it all kind of begs the question -- is this really still fun for me, in the way I originally intended for it to be?  The simple answer is “yes”.  I am fulfilled by my work.  I love what I do and I literally crave learning more (so much that I actually let out squeals of delight when someone shows me a particularly clever trick).  The more complicated answer, though, is “sometimes”.  Let’s face it: not every job can be the crème de la crème, where a healthy budget meets a beautiful design concept meets gorgeous materials meets my own two hands.  Sometimes, someone just needs you to fix their rotten threshold….for as little money as possible, by the way.  Also, even my most favorite jobs (the ones that leave me with a huge perma-grin and a spring in my step) -- even those jobs can’t capture my interest beyond the 40 hour work-week (okay, let's face it.  I’d probably be happier with only 32 hours).  There’s just nothing on this planet that has so far captured my interest in that way.  I think it’s a big key to my personality.  I love balance in my life -- between work, hobby, home, family, friends, dogs, etc. 

Les and I did have fun building this maple and walnut cutting board as a wedding gift.

So, what’s fun for me about woodworking?  Why do I stick with it?  I love the craft.  I love learning about wood and techniques.  I love using all my cool tools and learning to use new ones.  I love putting more beauty into the world.  I love putting myself into my projects.  I love seeing some of the most beautiful architectural details I could imagine come to light.  I love the camaraderie and the history of the trade.  I love the challenges and troubleshooting that each job requires.  I love the feeling that I get when I have made someone’s day just by doing my job.  I love making little blocks for my adorable nephew’s birthday or gifting a homemade cutting board as a wedding present. These are the elements of my work that make it all worthwhile, despite the fact that it's only "sometimes" fun.  All this love is what drives me to continue on this path.

It's particularly gratifying to see my nephew Kegen enjoy playing with those blocks!