I had another friend who built his own home, two floors with a wrap around deck. He had three other friends helping him and he paid them only in beer. We became friends after it was built.
Like your wonderful library, it is amazing what people with the right talents can build for themselves.
THANK YOU! Your words are so kind. The absolute joy is to create something where nothing existed before. I was as proud of what I created in each of those boards as I was with the library as a whole.
Everyone told me that poplar wasn’t usable as is. That it was wood to be painted. But I kept seeing this amazing grain and these incredible colors. But if you treat poplar like any other wood, then it acts like tissue paper and stain just fuzzes the lines within the wood and you lose everything.
I finally worked out putting on a base that kept the grain intact. The next stage was using a stain that could go on OVER a base and those were awful to use. But every board was treated that way and I’d take them to show the Lowes people what was possible.
The best boards were the rejects at the back of the stacks. Greens. Blues. Oranges. Purples. The store people would move EVERY board out to get me the ones in the back. And if I found a 1/4 or 1/2 wondrous board, I’d take that, too. And we glued the boards up until we ended up with the required 3/4. Or if we found a board that blew your mind, we’d slice it down the middle into two identical boards 1.5/4 each, glue them back to 3/4, and use them as mirror reflections.
I’d lay out puzzles with numbers on the back and the team would lay them on the wall in that same order. Scared them, but it always worked. They were SO proud of what they accomplished. And they became dear friends.
Actually, this conversation just gave me a major character realization. I didn’t go forward with art history because of this crazy teacher who spent his entire life studying the payroll reports of the stone quarry to get clues as to which sculptor created which anonymous statue on the front of an Italian cathedral. I couldn’t even imagine doing such nitty work my whole life instead of just enjoying the beauty of art. Obviously, this was before I knew myself well. Drilling down into payroll records isn’t much different from the nitty on which I do spend my life. I COULD have gone into art history!