How I became a carpenter
(a love story)
My journey into non-toxic carpentry, like many great journeys, began with love—specifically, the love I felt for my first child, whom my wife and I affectionately called "Pinecone" before he was born.
In early 2015, Pinecone, his expectant mom, and I were living in a very groovy cohousing community in Oakland, CA, albeit, in a small, cold, and damp apartment on the ground floor.
Surrounded by fellow idealists, changemakers, and artists, we knew that the community was a special place and didn’t want to leave; however, we could sense that change was coming. “Cold and damp” just didn’t seem like the right place to bring a baby home to, and we’d already begun tripping over the crib, car seat, and baby bouncer. But where could we go? Diving into the Bay Area housing market is like attempting to swim to Alcatraz with your fingers crossed: even if you make it and survive, you’ve only made it to a cold, foggy, overpriced rock with an impossible commute. We wanted to make the community work - but how?
Of course, there WAS one empty unit in the community, and it WAS twice as big as ours, and it WAS up at the sunny top of the building no less. BUT! The catch was that the unit was in horrible disrepair: toxic lead paint raining down from the windows and walls, a family of raccoons living in the ceiling, a crumbling green flooring material – maybe containing asbestos – covered up by another flooring layer of sticky brown vinyl, and an untraceable fish smell steadily emanating from the bedroom anytime you turned on the lights. ​​
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Beneath the chaos, however, we saw potential: sweeping Bay Area views, a little castle turret that could fit a crib, abundant sunlight, and a large rooftop deck where we could imagine hanging out in the evening with Pinecone strapped into the baby carrier on my chest, singing Nat King Cole lullabies in two-part harmony and watching the sun set over the golden gate bridge… (did I mention that we were idealists?)
(here's a recording of my wife and my musical duo singing "Too Young" by Nat King Cole)
The community was excited by the vision too (did I mention that they were also idealists?). So we collectively voted that if I could somehow come up with the labor, the community would somehow come up with the materials.
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So I dove into research, learning everything I could about lead safety, asbestos testing, and green building materials. I studied formaldehyde emissions (this was what the fish smell turned out to be), and I found out about Oakland’s “tool lending library” where you can check out scary, expensive power tools as easily as a library book. (A city of idealists!).
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But the real moment of truth came when I faced an actual table saw for the first time. It felt like voluntarily kicking a lion - and just as stupid: the bone-rattling roar, the uncountable sharp teeth, hungry for my fingers, waiting for me to make one false move (which I was certain to) so it could pounce on me and maim me. But there was no other way forward down the path of real woodworking except for the way guarded by the table saw.
​I thought about turning back. I mean –what if I actually got cut in half!? What use would I be to Pinecone then? How would my wife feel? All alone!? In our cold, damp apartment!?
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I turned off the table saw and walked out onto the roof deck. I looked out over the city. What had I gotten myself into? Who was I fooling? I was a musician, not a woodworker! I needed my fingers! You don’t learn about lions by throwing yourself into their enclosure at the zoo! You gotta become an African wildlife biologist or something. You go to school. Or…something!!!
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But the city was dispassionate. It had a roar of its own. A quieter roar, but a roar nonetheless. It was the sound of another machine–far bigger– with no off switch. A sound that, no matter how many roof decks a person walked across, in any direction, even into the jungle, or the furthest desert, would still reach their ears.
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I knew that sound.
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It was the sound of lead paint raining down from so many walls, in so many old houses, it could fill an ocean; of asbestos for eons; of formaldehyde forever. It was the sound of “new housing” built with endocrine disrupting adhesives, carcinogenic carpets, and immune system scrambling spray foam. It was the sound of bulldozers pushing all of these materials into landfills and oceans and waterways. An entire housing system with racoons living in its ceiling. It was the sound of no better options for Millennials: the glub-glub-glub of my generation— drowning in rising home prices while our wages stay stagnant. It was the sound of a home renovation project that’s the size of an entire planet, passed down to future generations, that I didn’t know how to begin fixing.
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But in the middle of these rising, toxic waters, here was a lifeboat. This roof deck. This apartment. Up here in the sky. My golden ticket. The impossible opportunity that my kind and idealistic community had given me, a total novice with no qualifications for the job: to begin learning what it takes to create a safe shelter for my family right in the middle of the mess.
And it all became crystal clear to me: there was no safe harbor “out there”. Nowhere “out there” to go. If I was going to make a non-toxic home for my family in this world, it was always going to need to be right here, right now, or nowhere and never.
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I knew what I had to do.
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I turned around, picked up a long piece of bamboo flooring, and strode toward the table saw. I grit my teeth, flipped the switch, and fed the bamboo to the lion!
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It turned out that the lion was a vegetarian.
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YES!!!
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So with the community lending a helping hand when they could, I began working on the apartment every day, for months. I never was able to fully relax around the table saw, but soon outright fear was replaced by the cautious and worthy respect that only a series of close calls working around lions can give you. I was learning. I still had my fingers. A feeling of transformation was in the air: as above, so below.
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Above was the sound of a hammered nail ringing,
and below my wife holding her tummy and singing.
Above the clacking of bamboo and beams,
below curtains sewed on a sewing machine.
Cumulative moments of miniscule, cellular progress, powered by love, compounded; and everything grew ripe. It was in the middle of the summer when, with life brimming over, the apartment was completed, and when, a couple weeks later Pinecone arrived.
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We came home from the birth center in Berkeley to our freshly renovated apartment and laid down in the glowing light, exhausted – a brand new family of three. Everyone and everything had been transformed. In the middle of the mess, we were making something beautiful.
tiny Before/After video:
Although I didn't document this renovation almost at all, I was able to find a short "Before" clip and a short "After" clip of the castle turret section of the apartment. The "After" clip was captured in the couple weeks just before Pinecone arrived. After he was born, neither of us (apparently) took pictures of anything other than him for the next year! Classic.