My little side hobby

I build furniture. It's a hobby that evolved out of a necessity five years ago that is just starting to grow into something bigger.

A little background. When Bill and I got married our first apartment was furnished so we used our excess wedding money to buy random other things we needed to setup a house, but no furniture. When we moved from there we had a bed and two saddle stools to our name. That summer I was not working full time due to a series of events surrounding Bill and my search for internships. We would be moving back to a normal, unfurnished apartment after that time and the lack of furniture was weighing on my mind. Around that time I happened upon a new blog, ana-white.com, that had knockoff wood plans of Pottery Barn furniture. That blog has evolved over the years to include a huge readership and thousands of plans, but I've followed it from just months after its founding. I still love it.

I had done some wood and metal working in middle school and my freshman year of high school, so I wasn't unfamiliar with building things, but just little boxes and pens and wind chimes and things like that.

Anyway, I decided at the time that building furniture sounded like a fun challenge, so I took it on. I guess I could have just shopped at DI and Walmart and other places I could afford to find some furniture for our place, but I chose to learn to build stuff myself instead and that has actually become a trademark decision for lots of aspects of my life.

Five years later I am much more skilled at this hobby. I can design my own plans now. I use other's ideas as a base, but rarely make exactly the same thing as others. Instead I fit furniture to the needs we have and the style I like. It's an awesome hobby. I've built loads of different things: tables, chairs, a pantry, several beds including our current one, a porch swing, a kitchen table, and many other things. Some we still have, some didn't make it through all the heavy use. My biggest limitations are access to some expensive tools I don't currently own as well as the cost of quality wood. Oh, and fitting my efforts around my three kids, though they love to help, so that's not as hard as I would have thought. I've also built all the easy things now for the most part and I'd rather build things that will last for years now instead of just to fill a need that will probably not last. My expectations for the quality of the final product have gone way up over the years, so I don't build things as cheaply anymore.

Building is a deeply ingrained part of my life and something I miss when the break between builds gets too big. Lately that hole has been filled in a way I never expected. People have started to commission me for projects they need built. It's only happened a couple times but I'm thoroughly enjoying it and it's totally filling my need to build when I can't do it for me.

Earlier this year I looked very closely into expanding the work I do for my job into some other areas and possibly walking away from my current job that has filled a need for the last decade. I nearly jumped head first into it, but I had some trouble committing to going down that path because I just don't love editing or designing for other people as much as I like some other things. If people would pay me to go hiking or play sports or read books or run, or play with my kids, heck, I'd be all over that. But editing or designing PowerPoints and teaching people how to make better decisions? Yep, I'm skilled in those areas and I find a decent level of fulfillment there, but sometimes it just seems like entirely too much work and not enough enjoyment. And it feels like I do entirely too many things that feel like work and not enough that feel like fun. And since I spend my days with three little buddies that focus entirely on how to best have fun, I feel like I'd like some of that too. Haha! Well it turns out that there is something that I consider fun, building furniture, that others will pay me for. So hey, I'm trying it out a bit. No plans to quit my day job, but you never know what might happen. Though I can pretty much guarantee that if I do more of this that some new tools will make their way into our possessions. Hahahaha!

So who knows, maybe I will pull the trigger on those other work ideas sometime and maybe I won't. Maybe I will start doing a lot of building for friends, maybe I won't. For now the few projects I've done so far are fulfilling and we'll see what happens. Suffice it to say I'm open to requests.