Handcrafted Read online

  Though I initially contemplated pitching a tent, I, the do-it-yourself guy, decided I’d make my own sweat lodge. What could be hotter than a garage in Houston? (Don’t try this at home!) Temperatures had consistently climbed north of 100 degrees every day that summer. So on Monday morning, I went into the garage, closed the door, and got to work. I’m not really sure what I did that day. I know I didn’t build anything. I think I mostly tore apart pallets. And thought. And sweated. A lot. By day’s end, I’d probably dropped ten pounds in perspiration alone.

  I dragged myself into the house that evening, took a shower, and sat down on the couch with Kelly. This was it. This was the moment. I’d sweated, hammered, sawed, and prayed out all my crap. I was finally ready to face myself and my wife.

  “Kelly, I’m an idiot,” I told her. “I’m scared, and I honestly have no idea what I’m doing. And I’m sorry.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I can work with this. We’re good.”

  What? What did she just say? This wasn’t how I’d seen the conversation going. I’m sure my confusion showed on my face, so Kelly clarified.

  “Clint, you quit a job in sales to go for a dream, and yet you’ve been selling me all summer long,” she said. “I know you. You can’t sell me. And when you try to sell me, it makes me scared, because I know you’re hiding something. Don’t sell me, please. Just tell me what’s going on and we’ll be good.”

  And then we actually were good.

  In the following weeks, Kelly and I would go on walks around our neighborhood just about every afternoon. It was still terribly hot, but we went anyway. We’d just walk. Talk. Dream. And just be together, with our kids riding along in the double stroller. Yes, sometimes we still argued, but the disagreements took a different tenor. We weren’t tearing each other apart. We were pushing each other to grow. We were asking each other the hard questions and actually listening to each other’s responses. Best of all, I was no longer hiding from Kelly. Not that I’d been successful at bluffing her in the first place.

  Every day on our strolls, we’d walk by a man, easily in his late seventies, who was painting his whole house, section by section, one afternoon at a time, beneath the scorching sun. First, he sanded it down before even thinking about the first drop of paint. Weeks would go by and his ladder wouldn’t move an inch while he concentrated on one specific area. He was determined. He was patient. He was also smart, waiting until the shade rested on his specific work area. And he was meticulous. Slow and steady. By the end of that summer, his house was done, and it was gorgeous. Kelly and I saw in that man’s efforts what it would to take for us to be successful. We’d have to commit to our venture for the long haul. It wasn’t going to be easy, but if we stuck with it, it would be beautiful.

  It was on one of our last walks that summer that Kelly said to me, “I’d like to go back and get my master’s.” She’d held on to her desire to teach at the collegiate level, and through her sessions with Paul, she’d come back around to the idea of pursuing something that was just for her. When we started Harp Design Co., our initial plan was for me to take half the day to work on furniture, while Kelly took the other half to work on home goods, so that someone was always with the kids. Over the course of that summer, that plan had already dissolved. It turned out that I needed the whole day to develop the furniture we were designing. With little to do in regards to HDC, Kelly needed something of her own. At the time she dreamed aloud about returning to school, our house was still on the market and wasn’t drawing many offers. My first thought—Where will we get the money?—was quickly followed by a second: This is perfect. If Kelly got a chance at a master’s degree somewhere (and it would have to be on a full ride since we were broke) I figured dominoes would start to fall.

  I recalled a spring break trip to New Orleans that I’d taken with my youth group during high school. One day, I found myself sitting next to my youth minister, Allen, whom I hero-worshiped. We were eating beignets at the famous Café Du Monde when he said this: “Clint, there are three types of people in this world. Those who make things happen. Those who watch things happen. And those who say, ‘What just happened?’ Also, Clint,” he continued, “remember this: your integrity is the most important thing about you.”

  As Kelly made her announcement, I could practically taste the beignets and hear the words he’d spoken. I could also still hear what Paul had often told me: “Clint, nothing is really going to happen in your life until you put yourself in the position where things actually have to happen.” Now I understood what they both meant. Kelly and I weren’t just a couple of bystanders watching our lives happen. We had to actively craft our experience, one plank and one choice at a time. We couldn’t predict what would happen, and God knows tough circumstances can befall any of us. But even then, we’ve got a say in how we respond—whether we’ll become paralyzed or forge ahead. Chill out on the sidelines, and you get one kind of life. Charge out onto the field, roll around in the dirt, and do some fumbling, and you get another kind. We all get to choose.

  “We have no money to pay for this,” I finally said to Kelly, “but that’s okay, because you’ll definitely get a full ride somewhere.”

  She laughed and rolled her eyes, but I turned out to be right. A few weeks after she took the GRE and applied to a program in American studies at our old alma mater, an email arrived. “Dear Kelly,” it read, “we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the American studies graduate program at Baylor University on a full scholarship.” And there it was. We were moving back to Waco.

  * * *

  After living in Houston for four years, we sold our home in October 2011—right at the tail end of the Great Recession. When we’d bought the place, we’d put down $20,000 and hoped to get that much back. But our buyers wouldn’t budge on their offer, so we walked away with only $5,000 in equity. Ouch. That hurt the budget, because I still hadn’t sold any tables and our savings were thin. But we agreed we weren’t doing it for the money. We were on an adventure. We decided to take it.

  A quick side note about money: Before I quit my job, we’d had many difficult conversations about possible consequences: bankruptcy, bad credit, home foreclosure, student loan default, car repossession—you name it—but in the end, we decided to go for our dream. I mean, is there ever really a good time to hang up your badge and start a business? When do we ever have enough money to do what we’ve always wanted to do? Kelly and I were at the point where we refused to make any more excuses. There’d always be car payments, a mortgage, and mouths to feed. “It’s not your job to have all the answers,” Paul would often remind me. “It’s your job to go after what you truly and deeply feel you should be doing.” That doesn’t mean any of us should rush off half-cocked, with absolutely no plan or cash in place. A certain European misadventure had once taught me that painful lesson. But Kelly and I had a decent blueprint and around $25,000 in savings. Granted that money had to cover our bills and loans, car payments, a trip to New York City for my sister’s wedding, a move to Waco, and anything that was needed to build our business. But I figured, even if I sold absolutely nothing, we could make it stretch for six months, maybe even eight. Ultimately we were willing to face any harsh financial realities that would likely arise if our plan went south. Every one of us has a unique financial picture that would make such a leap either sensible or senseless, depending on the circumstance. But in our case, it was time to jump. And jump we did.

  Just before Christmas 2011, we moved into a tiny two-bedroom apartment in Waco, close to Baylor’s campus. The plan was for me to rent a shop where I could bang together some tables while Kelly settled into her studies. We lived off a combination of our savings and my wife’s $1,200-a-semester stipend. While I looked around town for a workshop I could afford, I decided to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity.

  Why Habitat? My grandmom Martin, my mother’s mom, had, in a way, led me toward it long after she’d passed away. She’d once worked for former president Jimmy C
arter at the Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta. When the place first opened, I got to be there and even took pictures with the former president, who has since spent countless volunteer hours with Habitat and has championed its mission over his lifetime. I was around eleven or twelve at the time, with those buckteeth and a bad crew cut. I will always have a fond place in my heart for Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn. They cared for my beloved grandmother. When she retired, they threw her a huge party at the library and my family attended. Years down the road, as my grandmother lay on what we thought would be her deathbed, her old friend gave her a call to say good-bye. She got so excited when she heard the president was on the phone that she immediately rose from her hours-long nap and almost broke my cousin’s wrist as she ripped the receiver from his hands. As if bolstered by his and Mrs. Carter’s good wishes, my grandmother rebounded and lived a few months more.

  I swear I could hear my grandmother telling me from the other side to go and volunteer for Habitat in Waco. I figured that in addition to getting involved in a worthy cause, I’d stay busy honing the very skills I’d need for building furniture, so that’s exactly what I did when we moved to Waco. As Kelly dived deeper into her studies, I volunteered like it was my full-time job. I was building houses. I was working with tools. I was digging pipe trenches with inmates from a women’s prison just outside of town. I was getting to know people. And all the while, I felt as if I were getting closer to something. I just didn’t know what that something was.

  Trouble is, volunteering doesn’t pay very well. We were running out of money as the haunting questions mounted: Would I ever be able to find an affordable shop to rent? When would I start building furniture? Would Kelly have to take on a part-time job at a community college to help keep us afloat? Some days, my brain was in overdrive, chewing on the low moments from my past: the scarce funds and pillar-to-post existence of my childhood; the music career I’d never gotten off the ground; the lean days of scrubbing toilets in St. Petersburg; the decision to leave Paris after our money ran dry. How familiar our current situation felt.

  Here we were, in the city where we’d first met, falling behind again in every conceivable way. As the pressure mounted, I felt like I was about to suffocate. I couldn’t turn off the reeling thoughts and the feeling that I was about to drive us into another ditch. Then came the day when, in tears, I called my wife from the lot of that pink house, the place Kelly had spotted during our first days in Waco. For us, that ramshackle home had come to symbolize the bold, courageous dreamers we were, which is why I’d gone there in my lowest moment. I was trying to hold on to our bold, courageous dream. And then, less than an hour later, during a chance encounter at a gas station with a guy named Chip, the insane journey we’d been on took a dramatic and unexpected turn.

  CHAPTER 9

  * * *

  In the Groove

  When I got serious about making tables, my granddad gave me some advice. “If you’ve got a table saw,” he told me, “you can make just about anything.” He had me get a dado blade, which is a stacked blade system for a table saw that allows you to cut a thicker groove, or dado, in whatever you’re cutting. Say you have a board that’s 1 inch thick. If you run it on its edge over a half-inch stacked dado blade, you’ll have a half-inch groove running down the length of the board. Flip the same board on its face and run the opposite edge over the dado blade on both sides, and you’ll be left with a tongue. The same thing can be accomplished using a router with tongue-and-groove bits. It’s a great feeling when those boards snap together just right. Everything fits. All the chaos that was once laid out on the floor is now taking shape. Tongue-and-groove all your boards and then join them together with glue and clamps. A tabletop is born.

  The afternoon I met Chip at the gas pump, we chatted for ten minutes or so while our tanks filled up. Then he noticed Kelly and the kids in our SUV. “Listen, take your family home and come back to my shop so we can talk some more.” he told me. I agreed and hopped back in the car. Kelly had figured out who I was talking to, and of course knew about my previous blown and unreturned voicemail, so she was immediately hopeful.

  Soon after I dropped the family at home, I met Chip at their office over on Bosque Boulevard—an old Craftsman style house, turned into a workspace, that was the original Magnolia shop. I walked in to find an empty meeting space. A young lady, who I’d later learn was one of Joanna’s design assistants, appeared from around the corner.

  “Hi, I’m Kristen,” she said. “Can I help you?”

  “Yeah, I’m Clint,” I told her. “I just met Chip at a gas station and he said to come here and we could talk for a bit.”

  “Right!” she said. “Okay, great. Hmmm. Just give me a second and I’ll see if I can find him. What was your name again?”

  “Clint,” I said. “Like Clint Eastwood.”

  Moments later, Chip appeared. “Hey, bud!” he said. “Come hop in my truck and we’ll drive around for a bit.”

  That ride was the shortest three hours of my life. We talked nonstop as he drove all around town, showing me some of the houses he and Joanna—or “Jo-Jo,” as he affectionately called her—had already flipped. He also showed me others they hoped to renovate. He even took me to a housing development he was in the middle of constructing, which was a whole new kind of project for him and his wife. And in between each stop, we connected. About our families. Our lives up to then. Our dreams going forward.

  “Jo-Jo has been wanting to add a furniture line to her home goods offerings for a while now,” he told me as we finally pulled into the back lot of his shop and parked. “I think she tried before with another guy, but it didn’t work out. The furniture was great, but I’m not even sure he’s building anymore. You never know, man. I’m sure she’d love to talk to you.” Then he invited our family to dinner.

  Sounded good to me. At this point, I didn’t have a single client. In fact, with our finances looking so bleak I’d even started toying with the idea of looking into a full-time paid job on the Habitat team. But now it looked like other possibilities might be sparking up. The following Wednesday, when we entered the front door of the Gaineses’ ranch house, it was clear these two had talent and style. The place, which they’d renovated themselves, was gorgeous. “Come on in, guys!” Chip said, ushering us into the entryway.

  All the kids ate first and then rushed out back to play. That left us four grown-ups sitting at the table over heaping helpings of pasta and marinara. We talked for a good uninterrupted forty minutes, which started with a round of “Do you know so-and-so?” In Waco, everybody is connected. Talk to someone long enough, and there’s no doubt you’ll find an acquaintance in common, or maybe even learn you were in the same class together back at Baylor. After a few minutes of that game—and after realizing we had some acquaintances in common—we got down to business.

  I filled Joanna in on what Chip already knew: I’d quit my job in Houston so Kelly and I could start our own little furniture company. We hadn’t yet sold any pieces, but we knew we eventually would. And that’s when Joanna asked me the one question that changed the game, a question that would become a precursor to a similar conversation we’d end up having over and over again: “Clint, do you think if I drew up some designs on a piece of paper, you could possibly build them?”

  You already know I said yes. What you don’t know yet is what she asked me next. “You’ve mentioned pallets and reclaimed wood a bunch,” she said. “Are the tables going to look like they were once pallets? Because if it’s okay with you, I’d prefer they didn’t.”

  “They won’t, I promise,” I said, assuring her that I could build her just about anything. Never mind that there were a grand total of four tables in my Harp Design Co. portfolio. And never mind that all my tools were in storage, and that we’d hauled none of the wood I’d gathered in Houston with us. And of course, I didn’t have a shop . . . minor detail. “Just give me a bit of time to get some wood together,” I told her. As I spoke, a slew of memori
es came rushing back: Me pulling apart old pallets in the garage for hours at a time. The sweat lodge. The wood-floor tabletop design. Notes in my sketchpad as I tried to figure out how to make those pallets look like tables and nothing else.

  “Oh, and I’d love for one of the tables to have turned legs,” she continued. “Could you do that?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. “I could make a farm table with a turned leg. I can do that.”

  Only tiny problem: I didn’t really know how to use my lathe yet. At all.

  The next day, when I went back to my volunteer job at Habitat, I knocked on the door of the director, John Alexander.

  John had been overseeing Waco’s chapter of Habitat since 1998. I’m sure he saw me as a bit of a mystery. I seemingly showed up out of nowhere, worked Monday through Friday for months without pay, could pretty much handle whatever was thrown at me on the jobsite (thank you, Granddad Martin), and talked on my lunch breaks about one day building furniture. “Hey, Clint,” he’d shouted up at me once when I was on a ladder trimming the front of a house. “Do you live off a trust fund or something?” I laughed so hard I nearly fell to the ground, then yelled down, “Definitely no trust fund!”

  John and I had gotten closer since then, and seeing as he now had a better appreciation of my finances and lack thereof, I felt comfortable asking him if he knew of an affordable garage or even a storage unit with electricity I could use to set up shop.

  He thought for a minute, then said, “We do have a place over on Fifteenth Street, just down the road less than a mile from here. It’s actually the original Habitat cabinet shop. Some Habitat homeowners and I got together and built it with our own hands. It’s about 1,600 square feet and it’s got all the electrical you’d need to build furniture. What if we rented that to you?”

  I did the math in my head. Kelly and I had learned, when looking at homes around Waco, that you could expect to be in for about $1 per square foot for rent, which would make this place a minimum of $1,600 a month. And I figured a commercial space might run even more. But I played along.