Linus at the Tablesaw

The house burned down.  The previous house, that is.  On the lot where our new house is becoming a home, an old house caught fire.  I’ve expended some effort to learn the cause and find a picture of the old home, to no success.  Some things get lost to history, I suppose.

What was not lost to history in the fire was the Murder Shack; my original name for the scarily sagging single car garage still standing on the lot.  After decades of hosting racoons, squirrels and other central Wisconsin Mammalia, the structure was an eyesore at best; battered sheathing, patched roof, a rusty roll-up door that had not opened in decades and a rotted man door that had never closed in the same timeframe.  With a dirt floor covered in I’ll say "organic matter” and roof to floor cobwebs, it looked like something from an unspeakably gruesome horror movie.

I, of course, was smitten.  Because I saw it for what it would be.  My workshop. 

Marcia tells the joke that we designed the house around the old garage and, like all good jokes, there’s some truth to that.  I’ll get to the deeper truth near the end of this, but the shack does fit into a small nook in the house's floorplan, close enough to need extra fire sheathing on the back wall of the new garage.  More importantly though, it is its own structure.  It is a refuge, that can get covered in sawdust that does not get tracked into the house which is becoming a home.

A humble structure, I could not in good conscience tear it down.  Nor, consistent with the zoning ordinance I am duty bound to impartially administer could I rebuild it where it stands.  So it stayed put; a legal, non-conforming use in zoning-speak.  Last year was largely spent shoring it up.  Scraping old paint and bathing the cedar sheathing in whitewash.  Removing rust.  Patching shingles.  Sistering new studs and crossties into the (how is this thing still standing?) framing.  Having the electrician who wired the house do all the electric work in it.  Installing an actual floor; three-quarter inch plywood over six by eight beams resting on concrete.  Plenty sturdy, but warmer and not as hard on the back after an all-day build as standing on concrete.     

Through the course of the refurbishment, it has lost its first name and is now simply ... the Shack.  Marcia and Amanda have even entered and have left somewhat charmed by it. 

As with any good workshop, the Shack is both laboratory and small factory.  It is where vision becomes reality, after some trial and I won’t say error I’ll say learning.  Thomas Edison did not get the lightbulb right on his first try. 

There’s a desk in it crafted from a slab I found in the Amish sawmill up the road.  The desk looks out the window onto the vegetable garden and meadow.  It tends to collect paper sketches of how things need to be cut and assembled.  Above the desk is the piece de resistance of the shop; an old Craig (get it?) receiver and scratchy sounding speakers sourced on eBay to provide music or (seasonally dependent) baseball broadcasts.  The top of the receiver has the important bits – pencils, tape measures, squares, eye and ear protection.  Band aids.  Tourniquet (knock on wood).       

There are tools.  Never enough, obviously.  But enough so far, given their migratory tendencies from Fleet Farm.  The ones handed down from dad will always be the favorites. 

So.  I sit on the old stool at the Amish sawmill slab desk under the meadow window with the scratchy speakers wafting some post-punk through the cobwebbed rafters and sketch something … with the tourniquet looking down on me, just biding its time.  Linus had his sincere pumpkin patch.  I got the Shack.  Same aversion to monetization and hypocrisy.   Same sincere belief and enduring hope.  See also, Malin v. 

The Shack’s latest output was 180 slices of candy.  There are two walls in the basement that form a separate room.  It could be a bedroom, but we don’t need a fourth, so it is an exercise room.  Basements can tend toward afterthought, but afterthought is not a tendency for me.  Which is more of a curse than you might expect. 

We left a hole in one of the walls because one of my genius (?) ideas was to make the door a hidden door.  My corollary genius (??) idea was to hide the door by way of making the wall an appropriately modern wood accent wall, and covering the cracks along the door opening with cleverly (???) positioned wood slats. 

That was the idea, and that idea had to wait until the Shack lost its first name, and then I went off to play in California for seven months so the idea had to wait some more.  But the idea was never really waiting, it was just wandering around in my head, bumping into all the other furniture.  I’ll spare you all the wandering around about what kind of wood, sliced in what kind of way was considered and discarded.  Suffice to say, oh see dee. 

Curly maple is both a genetic and environmental creation.  Aren’t we all?  Maple trees growing on slopes, where they are tensioned and compressed by wind, can have grain that curls and refracts light differently.  It is gorgeous stuff, typically used for jewelry boxes, high-end instruments, and Bentley interiors. 

Nobody makes paneling out of it.  And, if they did, it would be grotesquely expensive. 

Cue Linus and his humble woodshop.  Months and months of sourcing then days upon days upon weeks of slicing and sanding and lacquering 180 pieces of eight-foot long slices of curly maple eye candy.  An inch and a half wide, three eighths of an inch thick, spaced three quarters of an inch apart on a Baltic birch plywood background with pin nails and glue.  Hundreds and hundreds of rips through the table saw, with the tourniquet still resting on top of the stereo at the end of it.  Knock on wood, and never remove the riving knife. 

180 slices of curly acer saccharum making basement light dance just by walking by.  No two alike, each one hand crafted, and not one of them becoming dashboard trim in a some Beverly Hills Bentayga.  Walls to make you swoon, and a hidden door.  Done.

Here’s the previously promised truth which I hope you have not gotten your hopes up about: I just don’t know. 

I do not know, but I have guessed before that the seeing things as they could be and making them be as they could is a by-product of the challenging childhood more than anything.  It is a handy by-product to cart around with you; well-suited for the day job.  To see things as they could be, to work toward a vision with humility and curiosity, and to neither be crushed nor jaded when the Great Pumpkin does not show up.  See also, Cubs fan from 1962, with one great inning.

To say the house is an ode to craft is true.  That was one of its principles.  And I have little doubt the Chicago blue-collar roots skew my view as craft being art.  Inland Steel?  The Bean?  Aqua?  Local Ironworkers 63. 

So, the purposefully simple house ends up with a few jewelry box walls. 

I suppose the bigger principle is we all craft the lives we have.  We all get lost to history at some point so, while you're still in crafting mode, stay humble, curious, resilient and joyful.  See also ... most everything.