What do we know about woodworking?

Funny enough, both our fathers did woodworking and construction. Jesse’s dad built dams. Mary’s dad built skyscrapers and later houses. So both of us learned the basics from watching our dad. Mary’s mom and maternal grandfather was no slouch with a saw either!

Jesse and Mary don’t know the meaning of, “oh that project is too hard.” If we can visualize it, and it’s made of wood, then we can build it. Thanks to our ADHD, (yes, all 3 of us have it! Can you imagine what that’s like!) we are all really good at spacial reasoning. Jesse and I draw sketches like this …

…and end up with this!

Remember 2020 when everyone was locked down and bored out of their minds? Um, we don’t know the meaning of bored! We Zoomed and Google Meeted for work and during lunch breaks we built bookcases. We did purchase unfinished cabinets though because we wanted to get it done more quickly than building them ourselves would have allowed.

That was also the year Mary and her mother disassembled their family organ. The Wurlitzer was over 50 years old and some of the electric components were broken so it sounded awful. Her mom couldn’t get anyone who would come take it off her hands…not even for free! Mary could bear to think of it going to the dump and saw a writing desk in the organ. So she and her mother spent the summer gutting the organ. Let us just say Wurlitzer in the 1950s overbuilt their organs! Holy heck it was tough going!

The thing had Vacuum Tube inside! So cool! Her and her mom had so much fun seeing the insides of this organ and maybe not so much fun trying to rip it all out! They sure knew how to build things tough in the 1950s! Plus it actually played well for a good 40 years!

Then this organ that we couldn’t get anyone to take away, was a hot item! Everyone wanted one! If she had wanted to sell it, she could have probably sold it for several hundred dollars! But Mary kept the family heirloom and uses it to write her books in her beautiful office. She might be a little bit spoiled! Jesse’s office is next though!