The past few years have been filled with its' challenges for a lot of us and I hope everyone is hanging in there. I dug out a few pics from our early construction in 2006 that really brought me back and made me examine how far we've come. I personally did about 90% of the construction with my bare hands, from the underground plumbing up through the mosaic tile floor, bar and wainscoting all the way up to the tin ceiling. I grew up in Westport, Connecticut in a house built in 1787 and practically lived in a construction site until I left home at 18. There's something about these old places that is creepy to some and completely intoxicating to others. I half-joked throughout the Jaynes construction that this building became like Stephen King's Christine. As I stripped away the junky previous remodels and carefully returned the structure back to its 1929 glory, the building took on a life of its own and somehow made the work easier and easier for me. I tried to hire people to take some of the load but it rarely worked out. I guess she just got jealous. Theres no way I could have hired a general contractor to do this job. It had to be me.
My father taught me a lot about carpentry starting when I was very young. I was 8 years old and helping my dad frame a woodshed one day when I gave my thumb a real whack driving home a 16 penny nail. As I sucked on my throbbing thumb my dad told me, "you're not a real carpenter until you've hit your thumb 1000 times." I went right back to work. While I've far surpassed that 1000 hit mark and my throbbing thumb has been replaced by the complexities of adulthood, this little phrase stays with me and tells me to just suck it up and keep working. Thank you for reading and for sticking with Jaynes all these years.
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