Handcrafted

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  This book is dedicated to my wife, Kelly, and to my three children Hudson, Holland, and Camille. Every path I’ve ever journeyed has led me to you. Each road came with its own set of difficulties and obstacles, and I would travel them all a million times to end up by your side.

  A man who works with his hands is a laborer.

  A man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman.

  But a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.

  —Louis Nizer, lawyer, writer, and painter

  A Seed Is Planted

  Building a table, for me, starts with a vision—a seed of an idea. Whether I’m out for a morning run, working in my shop, talking with my wife, or playing with my kids, somewhere I’m sparked with an idea. This dream may revolve around a need, a specific design, or the very real thought of friends and family sitting around the table I feel compelled to build. To be inspired by a vision and then be able to create a physical representation of that vision is a gift I’ll never take for granted.

  In elementary school, my teacher took us outside and asked us all to find a tree. Once we found one, she said, that tree would be ours; we could adopt it as our very own. Although I was born in Atlanta, at that time I lived in Asheville, North Carolina, where beautiful trees were abundant. I was six years old and in the first grade. I found my tree and sat down at its base. My classmates and I just sat there by our trees, quietly getting acquainted with our tall new friends. For all I know, my teacher was at the end of her rope that day, and she came up with this activity as a way to just keep us quiet for a few minutes. I don’t know her reasons and never will, but it doesn’t matter. For me, the experience was magical. That tree was mine and I loved it. I scratched in the dirt at its base, and then dug a little deeper. I kept digging until I found a little rock. I lifted it from the ground and thought that maybe, just maybe, I was the only one to ever touch that rock—it had come from the hand of its creator straight to mine, with no one in between. That day, my heart cracked open to life’s mysterious possibilities.

  Decades later, when I quit my job to pursue a passion to build furniture, in my mind I was once again sitting at the base of that tree. Hidden deep in my heart was an old wooden door, leading to a room full of dreams. For many reasons—not the least of which were society’s ideas about what it means to “grow up” and “get serious” and “be a good provider”—I had closed that door years before. But now it had been flung open. I had walked back into a world where anything was possible. For you, that door might have opened onto a classroom, a farm, a playing field, a church sanctuary, a medical school, an auto repair shop, an art studio. For me, that door opened onto a woodshop—my garage, to be exact. Inside that sweltering space was a universe bigger than any I’d ever imagined, one that I had discovered only because I’d found the courage to embrace the journey that had been calling to me for some time.

  I have a story. So do you. And as we stumble along, trying to follow our dreams and find our way, we’re filling the pages of a giant book called life. All those who came before us, the men and women whose names we don’t always know but who helped lay the path we now travel, had their stories as well. And many more will come after us, making their own contributions and building on what we’ve left behind.

  Take those workers who built the awe-inspiring Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris: the first time I stared up at this French Gothic masterpiece, with its glorious stained-glass windows and magnificent sculptures, I was blown away. How, without electricity, could mere mortals have built such a place? As I wandered through the sanctuary, I began to understand that the workers’ stories were in the very walls, and that all artisans, ancient or modern, leave us their art wrapped in a mystery we get to explore. If we tune into it, we can find inspiration in every turn of wood or note of music, every stroke of the pen or daub of paint. It’s right there, waiting for us.

  Countless musicians, painters, writers, and sculptors have shaped my own work, and I’ll forever wish that I could sit and have a conversation with just a few of them over a beer and a table full of food. But even without knowing the details of the sweat and angst they poured into their artistry, I’m still inspired to do as they did, to embrace both possibilities and impossibilities, to dare to walk into my woodshop every day and work with my chosen tools.

  I’ve learned that handcrafting a life is a lot like woodwork, really. You know you want to create something beautiful, a piece that will last. So you take some lumber, make your first rough cut, and go from there. And the process that carries you from the first rough cut to the last finishing coat—that’s what makes the masterpiece.

  This book is the story of the path I’ve taken: how I got here, where I’ve been, and where I think I’m going. In sharing it, I’m also telling the stories of those who believed in me and pushed me along: all those who brought me into this world and raised me to be the man I am, and of course the woman who became my wife, Kelly, who dreamed this journey with me and dared to embark upon it along with our three children.

  This is not a self-help book, but it is, in part, a book about how I helped myself. It’s not a how-to manual, but you’ll definitely learn how I’ve attempted to blaze a trail for myself. It doesn’t have all the answers, but hopefully it shows how I’ve found a few of my own. As you read, I hope you’ll find yourself in my story, just as I’d likely find myself in yours. At a time in our world when too much focus has been given to what divides us, we’ll always have a few incredibly important things in common: our pilgrimage through life. The company of other travelers. And those magical, sky-opening moments like the one I experienced at the base of an old tree.

  PART ONE

  * * *

  LABORER

  You belong among the wildflowers.

  —Tom Petty, singer/songwriter

  CHAPTER 1

  * * *

  Milled

  When the wood is lying in piles on the floor, all out of order and in every shape and size, I’m no longer thinking about the finished product. Rather, I’m turning my full attention to creating, one board at a time. The entire process is a matter of trial and error. I might imagine it one way, discover that it doesn’t look great, and then reimagine it and start again. As it goes with furniture, so it goes with life: it’s a process, and there’s no magic manual, no ironclad set of rules for every single situation. Sometimes you just gather up the broken pieces from the splinters and the sawdust and you improvise.

  Just off the main highway that runs through Waco, Texas, sits a pink house—one built in that kind of Southwestern adobe style you might find in Arizona or Nevada. Back when it was constructed in the late 1920s, it might have been a gem of a property. But years of neglect, harsh weather, and the unrelenting Texas sun had worn it down so that now it just looked rickety. That didn’t matter to my wife, Kelly. She loved it right away.

  We first saw the place a few weeks after we moved with our two children to Waco to begin a new chapter in our lives. “That’s a great house,” Kelly said, pointing, as we drove past one afternoon. I slowed down a bit and then pulled over so we could get a closer look.

  “Really?” I said, eyeing the crumbling facade and the uncut grass of the yard. “It’s in pretty bad shape.”

  “I
know,” Kelly said, “but we could renovate it.”

  “With what money?” I said dubiously.

  “You never know . . . it doesn’t hurt to dream.” said Kelly to the guy who dreamed all the time but whose dreams were now starting to fade.

  Dreaming is what had led us to Waco. In December 2011, we’d moved back to our old college town so that Kelly could pursue a graduate degree in American studies at Baylor University, our alma mater. Waco held fond memories for us; it was the place where we’d met as students, begun dating, and eventually gotten engaged. Our dream this time around was for Kelly to go back to school while we also worked to get our new business, Harp Design Co., off the ground. My task was to find a shop, out of which I would build handcrafted furniture that we would then sell to anyone who would give us a chance. It was a desire I’d had ever since I was a boy sitting around the nine-foot yellow pine table my grandfather crafted with his own hands. That stained, scarred, timeworn piece had become a family heirloom, and the memory of it made me want to build lasting pieces of my own. Problem was, starting a carpentry business takes money, or so I thought, and Kelly and I had none.

  Four years earlier in Houston, things had been different. I’d landed a job in medical sales with a wonderful company and was making more money than I’d ever seen. I was also brutally unhappy. I mean, cry me a river, right? A cushy paycheck. A house and two cars. A neighborhood pool. A great schedule. From the outside, our life appeared enviable, and in many ways, it was, but every Monday when I dragged myself to work, I felt as if I were drowning. I soldiered forward, mostly out of a desire to be a strong provider. Yet as one year stretched into four and I grew more miserable by the minute, it became clear that I was living someone else’s version of the Good Life.

  So I quit. In May 2011, Kelly and I traded an annual salary that dwarfed any I’d ever imagined for myself so that I could jump in my garage and build furniture and we could start a company together. And we did it with just enough money to last us for six to eight months if I sold nothing. Of course, in my mind, we were going to sell a bunch of pieces right away, which definitely didn’t happen. In fact, even after we blew through our piggy bank, we were still struggling to imagine what our business would even look like.

  A couple of months before our well ran dry, Kelly announced, “I’d like to go back and get my master’s.” Now, I know what you’re thinking, because it’s exactly what I was thinking: Are you kidding? Graduate school? We hardly have money for groceries. Yet as overextended as we were, some part of me—the part that had walked away from the soul-crushing effort of hanging on to a job I knew wasn’t for me—was crazy enough to believe that we could make it work. A few months later, we’d receive the news that not only had Baylor accepted her, the program also gave her a full scholarship. That pointed the way to our next stop. We were heading to Waco.

  One weekend early in 2012, not long after we’d relocated and run across the pink house, some friends of Kelly’s from undergrad, James and Adrianna, invited us to dinner. When you’re as penniless as we were, being invited to eat anywhere is the best news ever. Over pizza, James asked why we’d moved back to Waco. Kelly’s answer was straightforward. Mine was less so.

  “I’m trying to build furniture for a living,” I told him.

  “Oh, where’s your shop?” he asked.

  Long pause. “Well, I don’t have one yet,” I said.

  “So what are you doing for work in the meantime?”

  Awkward silence. “Well, I’m volunteering right now, but I’m on the lookout for a shop.”

  Mercifully, the conversation moved on. But as we were saying our good-byes after dinner, James pulled me aside.

  “You should call a friend of mine,” he suggested. He explained that his pal Chip had a lot of connections around town and might be able to help me locate a shop. He gave me Chip’s number, and a few days later, I called.

  There’s a Seinfeld episode titled “The Phone Message.” In it, George Costanza, the fumbling, anxious buddy of Jerry Seinfeld, goes on a date. Things turn out well except for the fact that, at the end of the evening, he misses an obvious clue to extend the date, which leaves him feeling like an idiot. The next day, George hasn’t heard from the woman, so he calls her. The message is a dumpster fire: it’s too long, he starts yelling, he makes demands, his jokes aren’t funny, and he hangs up in disbelief over what he’s just done. That’s basically a description of the message I left for Chip.

  “Hi, Chip, I’m Clint Harp,” I began. “You don’t know me, but I got your number from a friend . . . and I’m here to build furniture . . . and I’m going for my dream . . . you see, back when I was six . . .” And on and on I went. I probably rambled on about my grandfather, and how he’d inspired me, and how I’d quit my job to move to Waco and was hoping to have a carpentry shop someday.

  Chip never called me back.

  If we were financially stressed when we arrived in town, we were at the breaking point a few months later. At least during our leanest months before Waco, we’d been spending real money. Now we stayed afloat by maxing out our credit cards. What was I thinking, quitting a job with a great company and a potential nest egg north of a quarter million dollars if I’d been willing to diligently save? But no. Not me. I couldn’t wait. I felt like the biggest idiot ever, like a failure as a husband and father. My confidence was gone. I’d jumped off a ledge with my arms stretched out wide and now I was frantically searching for the rip cord. But I hadn’t even thought to strap on a parachute.

  A day came when I realized how my foolish leap had ruined just about everything we’d worked so hard to attain. Kelly and I had reached for the stars and missed by a light-year. That afternoon, I drove over to a place I knew all too well: the dilapidated pink house.

  Kelly had once wondered if maybe, just maybe, we could buy that house and bring it back to life. Shortly after first discovering it, we even called the Realtor, Camille, to discuss an offer. She was kind enough to sit down with us and hear both our story and our ridiculous offer, which was way below the asking price and came with zero guarantees that we could actually get someone to loan us the money. She was as kind as we were insane. We might’ve been broke, but at least we had vision to spare. For us, that pink house came to serve as a reminder of just how crazily hopeful we were. We’d had the audacity to think we could rub two sticks together, in the rain, in the cold, with no kindling and tired hands, and be lucky enough to spark a flame.

  Maybe I went back to the pink house that day because I was trying to remember what it felt like to believe in a dream. It was from the overgrown lot of that house that I called my wife.

  Like many others, I fight feelings of failure until I absolutely can’t anymore. The funny thing is, it always seems that when I end the battle, the best things tend to happen. I think Kelly could hear the struggle in my voice that day, and after listening to me describe my stress through tears, she suggested that we forgo all plans for the day and just take the kids to the park.

  A few minutes later, Kelly showed up with the kids, and off we went. We’d spent a lot of time at parks with our little family. This one was adjacent to the yard of a house where I’d lived during college, and in that yard, I’d kicked off my marriage proposal to Kelly years before. It was just the kind of connection we needed at that moment. We parked our car where I’d parked so many times before, lifted our kids out of the back seat, and found a bench. Kelly and I watched as Hudson and Holland, then five and two years old, built castles in the sandbox, whizzed down the slide, and soared high on the swings, oblivious to my meltdown. That day, it took all the energy we had to just sit there. But someone had once told us that if you didn’t know the next step to take in a situation, you go back to what you know is right, and for us, that was always our family. We may not have known what to do financially, but we knew our kids could use some fresh air and playtime, and that was something we could give them. They played as Kelly and I looked on silently. I’m sure there was some di
scussion of what was or wasn’t happening for us financially, but mostly, we were quiet. We had no answers.

  An hour later, it was time to go home. When I got in the car, I noticed the gas light was glaring. I hate that light. We needed to fill up. There are a lot of gas stations in Waco. But on this day, for whatever reason, I chose to go to the one on Wooded Acres in the parking lot of the H-E-B grocery store. And I chose the pump right at the end of the line, with my car facing the road. I paid for the gas, stuck the nozzle in, and got back in the car to wait.

  When the tank was around half full, a big black truck turned into the gas station and drove right in front of us. On the side of that truck was a logo that read “Magnolia Homes.” I looked at Kelly.

  “Isn’t that the company of the guy I called and left that ridiculous message?”

  “Yep, I think so,” she said.

  Hail Mary time.

  The truck pulled in and parked on the other side of my pump. A man got out. I got out, too, and approached him. “I’m Clint,” I began, “and I left a message for a guy named Chip a few months ago, about how I wanted to build furniture, and . . .”

  He stuck out his hand. “I’m that guy,” he said. “I’m Chip Gaines.”

  As soon as I made the connection, I went right back into dumpster-fire mode, reprising that awful voicemail. “No way!” I said. “Wow! That’s crazy, ’cause I was just sitting there in my car wondering what in the world my next step is, ’cause you see, I quit my job a few months back and I was thinking that I could build some tables, but nothing is happening, and . . .”

  Chip stopped me so he could ask some questions and fill in a few gaps, and probably also to shut me up. For years, he told me, he and his wife, Joanna, had also been building their own company, flipping houses and selling home goods. “I’ll tell you what,” he said after a couple of minutes of small talk, “why don’t you drop your family off at home and then stop by my shop and maybe we can chat some more?”