Woodworking

I decided to get into woodworking from my admiration of reclaimed furniture. Originally part of a crew building homes with DH Contracting, I saw a lot of subcontractors come and go. One that has stuck around because of his work with reclaimed lumber is Scott Henderson with Meticulous Matters. If I picked up any knowledge from Scott it was to source your own lumber. His reasoning was because of skyrocketing lumber prices but I had a bit of a different take on it.

Sourcing my own hardwoods from downed trees is some of the most satisfying work I have ever done. I loved it so much that when I started ‘woodworking’ 90% of my time delegated to it was spent going out, getting trees, milling them myself or having them milled, and storing them through their drying process. Over a year into this I finally started creating pieces of furniture with this lumber I gathered myself. Through all that time of others and myself second guessing this lumberyard I was building - it finally made sense. You just can not build what I can build out of my stock of hardwoods from a hardwood store. The character isn’t there, the story isn’t there.

Remodeling

When I started construction as a teenager I was all about it. For years I was the demo, dumpster, errands guy and I always looked at the finish guys. I took my mental notes on what they were all doing right and what they were doing wrong, listening to others opinions on their work and keeping it in the back of my head. It was the showers and the kitchens that seemed so difficult to accomplish and get right. Wood? Wood i can cut, cut again, throw away and cut one more time but ceramic, porcelain and stone? It looked impossible. Those guys were magicians. It was only until I found out what they got paid when I decided to figure it out. Loading the dumpster everyday was going to be a thing of the past.

I then completely manipulated my parents into letting me renovate their basement bathroom, told em “It will be easy I help the guys at work all the time” - complete lie. I built this bathroom from youtube videos and it took forever but I succeeded. I needed something to show the contractor I was working for so he would give me a chance. That contractor gave me that chance and I wasn’t about to waste it. I built bathrooms for him on a day labor rate, pennies on the dollar compared to what I had heard of tile guys making, but I was learning. There were days I was on the job long past dinner with the contractor calling me “I can’t afford all these hours you’ve got to go home”. He learned pretty quick, I didn’t care about that. Through my learning process I spent so much time on attention to detail, took too long and lost money on my time. I believed in what I was doing and that one day someone will see my work and really admire it.

Years into this I found myself on a Lake Norman waterfront property balcony with my tile saw building out a master bathroom, two full baths and two kitchens. By this time I was not fast, slightly more efficient and my attention to detail never faded. To date I have dozens of lakefront bathrooms and kitchens to look back on along with the dozens of beautiful home builds and renovations all around Mooresville and Denver, North Carolina. It makes me extremely grateful and proud that there are people all around this beautiful lake admiring my work everyday.