The old saying is as true today as when it was first spoken, first impressions are the most important! This has been reinforced for me time and time again over the past 10 years as a timber frame home designer. If you don’t put your best impression forward initially, clients will lose faith in you and your company. If someone is not WOW’d by a first design presentation, they will quickly question my skills and knowledge as a home designer and even the product my company is providing. This is unacceptable, and it’s why I feel professionally and socially it’s important to get the first impression right!
My name is Casey and I’ve worked for a company called Habitat Post and Beam for more than 10 years designing timber frame homes, additions and commercial spaces. I think it’s a rarity for a person to find a job that integrates their passions with skills learned over their lifetime, that they still enjoy doing for years. I think it’s even more amazing when you fall into that profession mostly by accident.
I didn’t start out as a home designer, or really close to it. Throughout high school I always had a passion for woodworking and furniture construction. My last few years of school I decided classes like calculus and AP physics were not the ticket for me and took more wood shop classes than my school even offered. I was good friends with the teacher and he was kind enough for create new classes so that I could continue my education in woodworking. I don’t think it helped my GPA much, but I already had a post-graduation plan.
You see shop class for many male youths I grew up with was the slack off class. Breeze in, breeze out, make a table or shelf without much effort and get out of high school. That was not my goal.
I loved to build, I still do. At that time I was turning out tables, futons, lamps, kids toys, anything that I saw in a magazine or in someone’s home that I could duplicate. For a time after high school I was constructing custom furniture in my parents shop, but I found it a bit hollow and financially unrewarding. I’ll touch on that later.
By junior year I knew I was going to trades school to learn how to be a home builder. After all, I loved to build and besides school, I was getting an amazing education on my parents small farm learning all sorts of practical building skills with every barn or addition my parents were working on. I knew what I was going to do post high school, so why take a bunch of classes that did not foster those dreams?
School progressed, as did the furniture I gave away or attempted to sell. Then high school was over. My twin brother and I attended a 2 year trade school in Vermont for an Associates of Applied Science, in Construction Practice & Management. The school was great, social life not so much. The main focus was learning residential as well as commercial construction. There was some English, math and physics, but only as a supplement to the main goal of managing a business in the field of construction down the road. It made sense. If you’re running the show you should know how to run numbers, talk to people, do estimates as well as swing a hammer. The education was robust and rewarding.
Returning home after 2 years with fresh eyes for the trades, skills learned at school as well from working for a few carpenters the summers before, I was ready to hit it hard finding work and becoming successful doing something I loved. Unfortunately, the idea of what I thought would happen and the reality didn’t quite meet up.
For several years I had plenty of work to keep me busy. Roofing with an older associate I worked with years before, custom furniture orders, small renovations, painting, landscaping. Before long I noticed a trend. Customers were all too happy to find a person to do jobs that the better known contractors wouldn't touch. One thing I had learned from guys I worked for was that they hated small jobs, callbacks, and working anywhere for less than a day. They really wanted to park their trailer somewhere for weeks at a time. They despised a call about installing 4 pieces of crown molding or replacing some old 1900’s basement windows. I was young and energetic, trying to make a name for myself, and I figured this was the modern day equivalent of starting in the mail room. Working your way up as they say.
Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t all bad. I worked for great people, family friends, neighbors, our family veterinarian. But after 2 years of going it alone, lying in bed at night making notes about which tools to get in the morning, thinking about what to get at the lumber yard the next day, cursing at the rain and snow, irritated at a customer whose custom entertainment cabinet wasn’t “exactly” what they envisioned, the vanity of working for myself was wearing thin.
The final straw was a second floor bathroom closet ceiling damaged by a leaking roof. The older home’s 100 year old slate roof began leaking and saturated the insulation and drywall of the small linen closet. I enlisted the help of a roofer to fix leaks, then I worked on the demo. To paint the picture, this bathroom was between bedrooms without windows. The insulation had all but vaporized to dust from years of water leaks and cat urine and probably contained asbestos. Not to mention the ceiling which I thought was drywall was old plaster and lath. I shut the doors, put on a dust mask and got going. Less than an hour later with the room filled with dust, and the ventilation fan not working, a 3 day allergy attack ensued. I got the room bagged up, cleaned out and ready to move in a positive direction when I left for the day. I came back a week later when I was feeling better to re insulate and drywall the closet ceiling. Cut to the end, closet done and painted, looked great, moved on to the next job.
The next rainstorm I got a call that the ceiling had collapsed again. The roofer never found the leak and the new drywall was sitting on the floor. Not wanting to anger my customer I went back the same day, cleaned up and started again. We checked the roof, plugged more holes, this time put up a wood ceiling and left the customer without charging them anything, after all, I wanted them to feel satisfied the work was done well.
This last experience had pretty much sealed the deal on my contracting days. I decided I wanted to go back to school and pursue another passion that I had tabled since high school. Something in the art field, mainly graphic design. I thought working outside was no longer what I wanted to do. Wondering when and where the next paycheck will come from was no longer how I wanted to live my life. Working behind a computer making graphics would be a much better lifestyle for me. So ended a journey that I had been preparing for since I was about 15, but really longer working for my parents and doing odd jobs. I had some reservations about the next step, obviously nervous about ditching most of my education to pursue an art degree, not knowing much about the field, or potential jobs and where that may take me. However, I seemingly didn’t shy away from it either. Maybe it was the challenge of something new, or the lack of other responsibilities to hold me back.
For the first time I really had a blank piece of paper in front of me and I could have gone out and done anything I wanted to do. There was much freedom in that. So with very little experience creating anything considered art, I jumped in with both feet and enrolled at my local community college where I took the next 3 years learning how to be a graphic artist. Quite a bit different experience than my time at a trade school. The diversity of students, programs and ideas was quite a world apart from that small school in central Vermont. Yet, I had a goal in mind and I embraced all the challenges of being back in a college setting, new friends, new schedule, new me I suppose.
The next 3 years came and went in a flash. Before the start of my second year I met a beautiful girl who I’d later tie the knot with. She was always very encouraging of my ambitions, even when I didn't know where it would take our relationship. By my third and last year I figured I was slated for a career doing 3D design for cartoons, or eventually more education leading to movie productions. However, life has a funny way of keeping you guessing. My mother was chatting to the mother of a older friend from my youth. The company she worked for, the same one I work for now, was looking for a new home designer, someone who knows construction and computers. Seemed like a career just fell into my lap!
I was actually pretty excited about going for the interview. With most of a semester left for a degree in graphic design, I landed a job as a home designer for a company which designs and manufacturers post and beam homes. It was a small company in the same town I went to high school in, go figure. I started part time immediately, but by graduation was full time.
Since starting at Habitat Post and Beam I’ve gone from one of three designers to designing and working on engineering plans, lead designer and now lead designer and head of the engineering department! I will take a home from initial client meetings, through design stages, permit and framing plans, all the way to our manufacturing facility, checking the final timbers after they're cut and loaded on the truck and visiting the job sites to inspect how it’s all going. I really couldn’t ask for anything more in a job career!
So this is where I have ended up. It has been a very windy path to get where I am, but I have no regrets and I’m thankful for every opportunity along the way! My passions about building and construction still exist, they were just shifted a little over time. I thought I had more to contribute at the starting line of home building, rather than the end.
When I heard about the Steemit platform I saw an amazing opportunity! Everybody has unique experiences and skills that others can learn from. I think many of us have at least one instance where we think back and wish we had spoken with an elder or associate a little more, picked the brain of a coworker, learned more about someone else. That’s what I want to share here. I want to build a platform that has an honest dialog about the pitfalls of residential home construction, tips for new homeowners, builders, designers, etc. I want to showcase my work and discuss each design, criticize myself as well as the initial inputs of plans.
I want to approach this content as a person who has struggled with design, built my own home, worked with builders, building officials and engineers and spent several years in the field in less than charming conditions. I’m not a person who towers over clients with an awe inspiring degree in architecture hanging on my wall, reigning over a team of draftsmen. I meet with clients and do the work. I’ve been given an awesome position to assemble a person’s dreams into something tangible. A home that can be seen and touched. I like to think of myself more like a guide through this process. A conduit to get someone’s ideas to reality. And that is truly awe inspiring!
I plan to post casual conversations about the work I’ve done, design ideas, current work, pitfalls of designs, working with clients, working as part of a team, explaining parts of building construction, videos and images of our finished homes as well as under construction, and I’ve got some fun ideas to throw in as well. I’ve got some ideas for some very blunt writings I want to publish. I’m going to give anyone who follows this posting a very honest take on the life a designer, a builder and what it’s like to build a home from the perspective of doing it firsthand! I may even dip into why not to build a home! This blog will be a behind the scenes look at this field and where I have been within it over the past few years.
Thanks for reading and keep checking back for new posts daily!
Sincerely Casey
