The wood shop - #115
A ship comes in.
Ben doesn’t consider himself to be a lucky person. And he has evidence. He’s missed several of the boats that docked in his harbor. He’s often been a year too late, like his clocks and calendars were set wrong by a bemused god, just waiting to see if he can overcome the disadvantage. But he found Cooper, he found me, and together, we found this home — though I will take most of the credit for the latter two. Ben had all but given up on finding a home here, and it’s in those moments I become relentless. And look where we are.
For years, Ben brought up woodworking like an alternate reality, like it was another ship in someone else’s harbor. He was already pursuing a high-risk, low-reward career in professional cycling — how could he dedicate time to learning a craft when cycling already commanded all of his time and energy? He acknowledged that the time he had left needed to be in the household making our relationship equitable. Wood could and would wait.
As we searched for a home in the mountains, it was in conjunction with Ben’s retirement from racing. He was in his late 30s, and his chances of moving up the circuit in contracts were slim. We were both considering what we wanted our lives to look like, and we both knew it was time to move on from how we defined ourselves in LA. We moved to Colorado, leaving cycling and offices behind.
When we bought this cabin, we’d read everything we could about the town’s history and politics. But aside from merely looking and a deep google, it’s difficult to know anything about what your new neighbors will be like. As Ben’s luck would have it, one of our neighbors was just like him.
They were from the same place. They had the same hobbies. They had the same passions. Their grandparents had been friends. They went to the same high school, just twenty years apart. And lo and behold, he was a woodworker selling his wood shop.
“We’re not buying a woodshop,” I said incredulously. “We just bought a house!” I’m a fun wife, but I’m not that fun.
“I already told him no. I said you would kill me.”
But our neighbor, Andy, was incentivized to sell, and more incentivized to sell it to us. If he could convince Ben to buy the workshop, that meant the workshop not only stayed in the neighborhood, but stayed accessible for when he might need it. He made an offer that included mentorship, contacts, all the wood, as well as moving the machinery, and suddenly I didn’t need to be a fun wife: I got to be my practical, planning self and the decision made sense. This was a smart way for Ben to pursue the next phase of his life, with a person we loved and trusted.
Two months after moving in, we moved the woodshop into the garage.
Ben is handy. He’s mechanically inclined. He’s worked construction. He is familiar with and comfortable around tools. But his mentor, our neighbor, went to the Krenov school — one of the best fine woodworking schools in America. (A school we actually visited on our roadtrip to find this house. One of our friends was in attendance there. You can see her work here.) It’s the mentorship that makes this idea work. Not everyone’s dream career just falls into their garage. But Ben’s ship finally came into harbor.
The shop itself took a year and a half to set up, and there are still areas it can be improved. Because it’s in our garage, it’s limited by the size of the garage: around 700 square feet, somehow bigger than our last house but still small for a commercial enterprise. It’s worth noting that while we call it a garage, it would have been difficult to get a Colorado vehicle inside it. It’s a narrow space interrupted halfway in by utilities. You could park a Corolla in it. You could not park a truck in it. Its utility as a garage was questionable.
Given these limitations, the number of tools we could even fit was limited. One giant sander didn’t make the trip. It was the size of 3-4 refrigerators, and it was also “more tool” than we needed for starting a shop. It served a production scale purpose, and Ben’s not at production scale yet. One of you asked “how do you decide which tools to include in the shop,” and this was really decided for us by buying someone else’s. Here’s an overview of the biggest pieces:
Large bandsaw
Small bandsaw
4 in 1 table saw/planer/jointer/router that takes up a bulk of space
Drill press
Wood rat for making joints and complex joinery
Large assortment of hand tools like planers, chisels, etc.
Ten hammers!
Chest of tools for the taking, power hand tools, hand routers, jigsaw
Dust collector and tubing
3-phase converter
Some of this we own, some Andy still owns. After getting all the tools into the shop, it was the shop itself that needed work. The ceiling needed to be drywalled, the ducting needed to be installed, we needed to hang and install lights throughout, as well as put in 220 electrical. The electrical alone took months just because of how long it takes to get contractor work here. On top of this, Ben had limited time to work in the shop, because he was working in a different one.
Andy sold Ben the wood shop because Andy was starting a van conversion business. And then he hired Ben to work at it. So the wood moved slowly while Ben broadened his building skills in the backs of camper vans.
2024, however, is the year of wood. He’s stepped away from van work to focus on the shop. Aside from some minor fixes here and there, the shop is up and running. It’s very well equipped for what he can and wants to do for a while. Larger jobs, like planing a 10-foot piece of cherry for a dining room table top, can be done at other shops further out from here. For now, he’s busy perfecting smaller pieces that sell, namely presentation boards — used to display croissants at rustic bakeries, knives at the local leather shop, charcuterie at parties, and whatever else you want to put on a gorgeous piece of wood that can be moved around.
When I say he’s perfecting smaller pieces, I mean it. Ben is a technique hound. When he gets into something, he gets really into it. He obsesses every waking moment, constantly reading and watching YouTube videos and fiddling. He gets a kick out of making the finicky stuff. Right now he loves making wood keys for cracking wood to prevent the crack from splitting further. His work is immaculate to my lay eyes.
When I or anyone else asks him what he wants to be building in the future, he won’t answer, even for the sake of answering. He wants to try everything and discover what he loves. He dreamed of being a woodworker because it’s expressive and practical. He’s always worked in a shop of sorts, and he enjoys learning. But there are realities to having your own shop that aren’t as fun: building a client base, pitching, selling, invoicing, using Excel.
Even some of the fun parts come with their challenges. You have to learn the “wood market” — what different types of wood are going for, what’s trending, what kinds of wood you’d like to work with the most, what fits your style. You’re not just picking up boards at Home Depot. In an ideal world, you source your own wood: find the tree, get it milled, have it shipped to your shop. But tree hunting is difficult and requires permitting. Or sometimes, it requires luck. Ben’s sister in Minnesota was having a walnut tree removed from their property for safety reasons, and Ben bought that walnut from them after it was milled.
Now, we find ourselves scanning the roadside for falling barns, felled trees, and other finds. But I’ll tell you this even though Ben wouldn’t: Ben’s favorite kind of wood, bar none, is scrap wood. As a man who lives by the three Rs, his favorite is Reuse. He collects the free pallets from the lumber yard, and he uses them.
What’s less clear is what Ben’s favorite tool is. In Wednesday’s paid edition, I asked readers what questions they’d like to ask about the shop, and one of you kindly offered the following. Ben tried his best to kindly answer it.
If he had to grab one tool from the shop and run, what would it be and why?
Ben: “Why am I running?”
Ben, a moment later: “I don’t know what this question is asking.”
Kelton, already annoyed: “The house is on fire, you have to grab one tool, what is it?”
Ben: “The extinguisher, obviously.”
Kelton: “OK, the house isn’t on fire—”
Ben: “You just said it was.”
Kelton: “Ben—”
Ben: “Would anyone ever ask you ‘the house is on fire, what one book would you grab’?”
Kelton: “Yes, babe. People ask that. They have asked that.”
Ben wouldn’t answer this question for at least ten minutes.
Ben, revisiting the question carefully: “But I can’t carry the big tools, and those are the most expensive, arguably the ones you would want to save for sheer cost purposes.” He looks confounded.
Kelton: “OK, what tool would be the most useful out in the world? Could be an apocalypse, maybe we just never get to go home for some reason, maybe—”
Ben: “Do I have to live in their hypothetical world where there’s one tool where I love more than anything? I grew up with a hammer under my pillow, should I just say hammer? Do I have to build a shelter outside? Did the whole town burn down? Do I only get to have one tool for my whole life? I still don’t understand why I’m running.”
Anyway, that’s what being married to Ben is like. He’ll grab the hammer, and I’ll grab the nail gun because not only is it useful but it’s a weapon that allows me enough distance to not be overpowered by someone bigger. Clearly one of us is better at theoreticals.
This year, the shop will earn its keep, both in sales and the freedom it offers us to DIY everything in our house. I’m excited to share what comes from it. It’s not every day your ship comes into port, but it is every day that I get to walk into the shop and marvel at it.
LOL. I would watch a reality show where you ask Ben hypothetical absurd questions while he works on wood projects and tries not to lose his mind. Esp if there are cat cameos.
Such a generous piece and gift for Ben.